Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The price of a song, the value of a cause

Back when I first talked to the RESCIND guys about letting them use "Everybody Knows About Me" to raise money for ME awareness/research, the assumption was that they'd put a buy button up for $5 or so. Jerry, the webmaster, is the one who came up with the idea of letting people donate anything -- or nothing. He didn't believe people would stiff a charity. I thought this a little naive, but it didn't matter. The people who donated larger amounts would hopefully compensate for the freeloaders.

Yesterday, Jerry e-mailed me with the news that "Someone thought the song was worth $20!"

So cool. Of course, what he really meant was, someone thought the cause was worth $20. I'm pretty sure nobody would pay that much for a song, regardless of how good it is.

For fund-raising purposes, I hope RESCIND gets as many of those big donations as possible. But for awareness-raising purposes, I'm interested in the people who don't know or care enough about ME to part with more than the obligatory dollar or two. Maybe now I'm the one who's being naive, but I hope they listen to "Everybody Knows About Me" and come away with a better understanding of what it's like to suffer with the illness, and why it's not okay to dismiss it as "yuppie flu."

P.S. Thanks to all the readers here who donated. You rock!

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