5 reasons to donate to healthtalk.org this Summer
As we welcome the news that our friends at New World have kindly agreed to match all regular donations we receive before the end of September, our Chief Executive, Luís Carrasqueiro, lists 5 reasons why you should support our website.
1) healthtalk.org is more than just a website, we’re an online charity. We help people all over the world by giving them the ability to find out more about their illness from lots of people who’ve already been through it. Often, the best support comes from others in the same situation as you. This support can be in the small details, like using a white board to communicate when motor neurone disease has taken your voice, or in bigger decisions like deciding what treatment to have for pancreatic cancer.
2) Our impact is huge. A major benefit of being an online charity is that, with a staff of just 2.8, we reach more than 2 million people per year. Of the people we reach, three quarters leave the website feeling less alone and better informed, more than 90% would recommend the site and more than 80% say our information is better than what they’ve received elsewhere.
3) Websites are expensive to keep going. We may be an online/virtual charity but our costs are very real; video is the most expensive thing you can do on the web and we deliver 36 hours of it, every day. Keeping up with ever-evolving technology is costly too.
4) It’s hard to get support for anonymous people. We need to raise funds like any charity, but we can’t show emotive pictures of the people we help, to pull at the heartstrings of potential donors. We don’t know exactly who comes to our website, but we do know they come at their time of need, be it at 3am when they are so worried they can’t sleep, or during their lunch break at their desks, wherever they are, at whatever time they choose to seek help. I looked for help in 2004 when my father was prescribed treatment with hormone therapy for his prostate cancer in Portugal, without any explanation of what its impact would be in his life. I used the internet to find out more information and found reassurance in the sensitive, candid experiences of people who had been through it, on healthtalk.org.
5) Your donation will be doubled. All regular donations made to healthtalk.org this summer will be doubled! It’s the charity equivalent of buy one, get one free and who doesn’t like a BOGOF? The generous offer from New World includes regular giving and will keep going until we raise ¬¨¬£10,000.