A blueprint for funding your fight

Welcome! 

This site provides a blueprint for those trying to raise money to fight life-threatening illnesses. While I focus on cancer patients and clinical trials, the principles I share here can work for a wide variety of similar needs. 

Every day we see astonishing breakthroughs in medical science - breakthroughs that have the potential to turn human cancer into something that can be cured with an injection or a pill, or even be prevented entirely by vaccines. But to realize those goals, clinical trials need patients willing to put it all on the line for a real shot at life, and those patients often need enormous sums of money. Very few people know that many of these clinical trials do not have funding and that insurance rarely covers even a portion of participants' costs.

I am a cancer survivor who was blessed to have a fairly common disease that was controlled and effectively cured by a standard regimen of chemotherapy and radiation. It’s weird to say that I was blessed with cancer because it was, and remains, a hard journey. But the truth is that I was lucky. My journey was nothing compared with my sister-in-law’s journey and the journeys of tens of thousands of people who turn to experimental treatments each year. 

I refer to her throughout these pages as my sister because we have grown very close over the years. I have been privileged to love and support her throughout her seven-year fight with an extremely rare cancer. As a marketer by training and trade, I helped her to raise nearly two hundred thousand dollars through GoFundMe to fund her trial entrance fees, experimental drugs, and the non-stop expenses of living while seriously ill. 

With her enthusiastic support and permission to use her story, I built this site to teach you how to raise money to fund your journey. There is no one right way to raise money. However, this blueprint uses the same principles I teach as a college professor to MBA marketing students who want to raise capital for their startups, or acquire customers for their businesses.

Simply put, there are systems and methods that are proven to move people to action. In the following pages I will show you exactly how they work, and how you can use them yourself. 

While I strongly believe in what I have to share, I must say that the content of these pages is only my opinion. You should use this information, or not, according to your own judgment, and in keeping with your own values. Much like your doctors, I cannot promise you a good outcome. As is often said, your mileage may vary, and I would encourage you to make the best decisions for you. 

That said, as someone who has both the visible and invisible scars of having fought for his own future, I deeply and sincerely hope this information serves you well. With concerted effort – and a little luck – the money you raise will build a bridge between where you are now and the breakthroughs that will make our generation the very last generation to live with the scourge of cancer. 

We may have never met, but know that I am rooting for you, always. 

- Dan

You probably know by now that most medical appeals fail to reach their goal. A 2017 study by Berliner and Kenworthy published in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine showed that not only did 90% of GoFundMe appeals fail to meet their goal, most never even came close. I have personally seen more than were unable to reach even a few thousand dollars. There are many reasons why this happens, but most of them boil down to a lack of planning and know-how. 

The truth is that asking people for money is a real challenge for all involved. There are so many emotions on both sides of the ask that need to be considered. Plus, there are ethical and cultural standards that need to be carefully observed if the appeal is to be optimally effective. 

This blog explains the three major parts of building an effective campaign: the Planning Process, the Appeal, and Promotion. I strongly recommend that you read and work through them in order. At each step I will show you exactly how I used these strategies in my sister's campaigns. 

I literally wrote this to function like a blueprint: each section builds on the last until you have a strong, well-built product. Skip or gloss over any step, and it probably just doesn’t work as well as it could. 

It’s very much like assembling furniture. Skipping important steps can result in frustration and maybe some swearing, right? Same deal here. 

However, one key exception is if you have a very short window of time to raise the money – maybe a week or less. Then, you may need to start in Promotion and build your campaign at the same time as those promotional activities. They do take a bit of time. 

Having said that, I have worked to make all of this absorbable in an afternoon. Even still, realistically, it is probably going to take a few days to get a finished product ready for launch. 

If you have a close-knit circle of family and friends who can readily fund your needs then most of this is probably unnecessary. If not, read on, starting with the Planning Process.