Fund-raising and Giveaways: Help my nephew and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

I have seen some other bloggers do things to raise money for charity. I have a Great Strides Walk coming up in April for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. My sister-in-law, Stacey is organizing it and it's a local function but all money goes to the CF foundation (donations go through their home page). I would love to help my SIL out .  My family plans on walking in it, but I would love to donate some money too. This is where my followers/readers come in.

First a little history. My nephew, Hunter (see above) is a beautiful and strong five-year-old who looks very healthy. However he was born with cystic fibrosis. Through research this disease has become more manageable, but a cure really needs to be found so Hunter and others with this disease can live his life to the fullest.

Once upon a time the life expectancy for CF was very short (teens), but through research it has been extended out to the 30s and 40s (which is still way too short). Help Hunter and his family along with the CF foundation find a cure and in the meantime find other treatments to prolong and increase his quality of life.

How you can help:

• Individual donations would be very welcome. I'm part of my sister-in-law's team, but have my own donation page here.  For every dollar donated you will get 5 entries into  these giveaways, just let me know that you donated in the comments of this post (you don't have to say the amount - I can figure that out) and a way to contact you if your email is not available in your profile and I will enter you. Here are the current giveaways and I hope to add more as I contact more people:

• Choose 5 books from a list of books (these may be ARCs, recent books and they may be older books but you can have your choice)  (From me) (1 winner - worldwide)
• $20 Amazon GC. Giveaway open worldwide.  (From me) (1 winner - worldwide)
• Two sets of JP O'Donnell's Gallagher series that is reviewed highly here and on Amazon.com - this is a copy of Fatal Gamble and Deadly Codes for two winners (donated by author J.P. O'Donnell, see his web site here) (2 winners - US/Canada)
• $25 Gift Certificate to Amazon.com (donated by author J.P. O'Donnell, see his web site here) (1 winner - worldwide)

• Blog about this post for an additional giveaway entry.  Tweeting/Face Book mentions will also get entries - just link up in the comments. 

• Don't have any spare money at the moment (who does?) then help me by commenting here on the blog. For each comment I will donate 5 cents to the CF Foundation. Simply comment on reviews, any of the memes, tours or giveaways and I will donate money. I will tally it up at the end and let everyone know how much you helped me donate.  This is for posts starting today (2/21/2010) through April 1st.  It won't count if  you go back and comment on older posts, though I do love the comments, I just need an easy way to keep up with things :)

• If you know of anyone that will sponsor or match funds or offer giveaway prizes - I will do all I can to promote them for a donation.  I'm not above using my blog for advertising to help out a child (and lots of children and adults) :)

The walk is April 24th so I will run this starting now and with this post through April 1st so I can tally up in plenty of time and make the donation.

Thanks for helping out my nephew - his cousins (my boys) adore him and we all do so we want him as healthy as he can be!

In the coming weeks I will post updates and hopefully some more prizes - the more interest this generates the more the message of what the CF Foundation does can get out there.  Until my SIL was told that her son may have CF when he was born, I did not know much about the disease.  I knew there was a telethon and it was "bad" but knew nothing about it.  Since then I have learned a lot but still do not know all I should.  Awareness is a big thing.  Help me spread the awareness and raise money to cure this disease once and for all.