Raising Awareness and Donations for CF

If any of you participated in the CVS pharmacy’s Advancing Medical Research fundraising campaign which benefited ALS and Cystic Fibrosis I would like to say “THANK YOU!!!!” Not only to the individuals who donated but also to the families and the CVS pharmacy for making this happen.  In the 5 week campaign people donated over $5 million.  Each organization will receive roughly $2.5 million.  This truly is remarkable!!

Here is the web link:

 http://www.drugstorenews.com/article/cvspharmacys-store-fundraising-campaign-raises-over-5m-als-cystic-fibrosis-research?utm_source=GoogleNews&utm_medium=Syndication&utm_campaign=ManualSitemap

When this campaign first started I heard some pretty awful stories about how cashiers were not allowing the customers the option to donate through the credit card swipe pad.  This really irritated me to no end.  So I had to see if this was true.  I found that one of my local CVS stores in fact were guilty of this and I had to call them out on it.  I bought some item and went to pay with my credit card and I saw the option on the pad to donate and before I knew it the option was gone!! I asked the cashier “what happened and she stated oh wait you wanted to donate?”  “Yes!!” I said.  She got all nervous and said “Oh I hit the wrong button.”  She then proceeded to tell me that a lot of people were donating etc etc. I think she was trying to cover it up. So over the next the weeks I went to various local CVS pharmacy’s to see if I found the same issue. But I did not, thank goodness. In fact some of the cashiers told me a bunch of people are donating.  I was wondering if CVS would publish somewhere how much was raised just for my own knowledge and I am glad that they did.  I am still shocked at how much was actually raised in this brief time.  THANK YOU AGAIN!!!

From all of this it got me thinking about what we/I can do in our local community to raise more money and awareness for diseases.  I have seen at my local grocery store something very similar to the CVS fundraising campaign.  They have had the option to donate a few bucks to a local children’s hospital, united way, and harvest for hunger on the credit card swipe pad.  I am planning on doing some research on who I can contact to see if I can do something like this for cystic fibrosis at the local grocery chain.  I think I may want to get my local CF foundation chapter involved in this because they may have more voice in this matter.  I will keep everyone informed if this really does come to fruition.  My thing is hey it doesn’t hurt to ask?