Hi, everyone, I hope this message finds you well. Our next board meeting is Wednesday March 16, regular time! 🙂
Second Fundraiser Scheduled
Unfortunately, Indiegogo was not able to extend the fundraiser deadline to February 29, Rare Disease Day, so the main holiday fundraiser ended earlier than we planned. Â We still raised enough to get started (see below) but since we didn’t have time to roll out the fundraiser to everyone (including the board of advisors) we have scheduled a smaller, second fundraiser to run later. Rose will be in touch to get your help with that fundraiser.
New Campaign: http://donate.bensfriends.org
Platform Migration Update
The good news is that the main holiday fundraiser raised enough for us to get started on the platform migration and we’ve already gotten started.
During a call last week, Jeff Atwood, founder of Discourse (leading discussion software), pledged to get our communities successfully migrated over. The integration teams of both Ben’s Friends and Discourse have already begun testing data migration.
Below is a screenshot of our Amyloidosis support community migrated to the new platform. This is amazing to see!  We could not be more pleased!  🙂
Medical Advisory Board
Thanks to Eric for connecting me to Professor Jeremy Block of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. We had a great conversation today and would like to continue the momentum by creating our first medical advisory board. Jeremy would like to get involved, starting with some introductions to rare disease doctors and researchers he knows who would also like to contribute! I think it’s a brilliant idea and kudos to Jeremy!
Edit: added medical advisory board update and postponed second fundraiser