Just a few weeks ago, you and thousands of others banded together, spread the word, and voted for the Matthew Shepard Foundation to receive a grant from Chase Community Giving.
Your efforts produced amazing results! MSF finished in the top 100 charities nationwide, won a $25,000 gift toward our educational work, and earned a chance to compete in the final round for a $1 million grant that would transform our outreach to schools and community groups nationwide.
With all that good news, we’re further pleased to announce that we've joined forces with our friends at GLSEN and The Trevor Project, the only other LGBT-focused organizations in the top 100.
By working together, we hope to ensure that each of our organizations' lifesaving work receives as much support as possible.
Here's what you can do to make sure that happens:
- cast your vote for MSF beginning today, Friday, January 15th.
- contact every one of your friends and family members, and ask them to vote for MSF before the voting ends next Friday, January 22nd.
- cast two of your four remaining votes (everyone gets 5) for MSF’s strategic allies - GLSEN and The Trevor Project - and encourage all your friends to do the same.
Thanks to you, MSF outperformed more than 500,000 other organizations in the first round of voting for this amazing fundraising opportunity. That’s a true testament to the importance of our issue and the passion of our supporters to “Replace Hate with Understanding, Compassion and Acceptance.”
With $1 million, the Foundation would hugely expand its outreach to high-school and college students to address, and prevent, bias and hatred in campus environments nationwide. Judy Shepard and our staff are able to visit dozens of schools, churches and civic groups every year, but are unable to personally visit every community that invites us. Our plan is to design interactive, scenario-based, live-action e-learning tools which will guide students, teachers and parents through realistic everyday situations involving bias or hatred, offer them a choice of responses, and show the possible outcomes of each decision. We already have the experts on board to put our program on the Web 24/7/365 for anyone who wants to experience it. Your action this week can make the difference in providing the funding to complete the project.
So, please, click on any one of the links and vote for MSF now, as well as our friends at Trevor and GLSEN! And after you’ve voted, spread the word on Facebook, Twitter and all your other social networking outlets to generate a winning number of votes for MSF and for LGBT youth.
Thank you for all you do to support our community.
Jason Marsden,
Executive Director
P.S. The rules of the Chase Community Giving competition allow for just one week of final-round voting. That starts today. It’s important for you to vote for MSF and our LGBT allies. And it’s even more important for you to rally as many friends and family members as possible to do the same. So please, starting today, go to the Chase Community Giving Facebook Fan Page and cast your vote for the Matthew Shepard Foundation, The Trevor Project and GLSEN. After you’ve voted, don’t forget to spread the word! Thank you!
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment