Posted on 10/07/2004 4:55:44 PM PDT by Core_Conservative
Dear Donor,
Thank you very much for your donation to the victims of the Beslan terror act.
We would like to ask you for several minutes of your time to update you on the status of our project, let you know how else you can assist the children in Beslan, and provide you with other important information.
This message is divided into 5 sections:
A. Status report B. Appeal to donors from the Board of Trustees C. New projects for the children of Beslan D. Conference call to be held for donors and supporters E. Receipt for your donation F. Communication with the Foundation
A. STATUS REPORT
On September 3, 2004 the world stood still, shocked and horrified to see what happened in Beslan. This terror act had over a thousand victims, casualties were in the hundreds, and a majority of the victims were children... Just like all Americans will remember for the rest of their lives where they were on September 11, 2001, every single person in Russia will remember where they were when they heard about Beslan...
In the next few hours after the situation in Beslan unraveled, our Foundation received over 100 phone calls from supporters who were all asking us to run a campaign to help the victims. It was clear that the families in Beslan would need a lot of help.
On 03-Sep-2004 at 4:27 p.m. our web site, completely rewritten for the Beslan aid project, went live and began collecting donations. Our Board of Trustees and volunteers contacted everyone they knew, informing them of the effort. The Russian Embassy and New York Consulate immediately placed links to our web site on their home pages, calling on everyone to support us.
What happened after was, in the words of charity experts, unprecedented. For the next several days, donations poured in virtually every minute. Information spread primarily by word of mouth through various Internet forums, blogs, by e-mail and through dozens of popular web sites that quickly joined our effort.
By the end of the long weekend (September 6 was Labor Day), with virtually no publicity or advertising, more than 2,500 donors from 30 countries donated over $250,000 to our cause. Our volunteer team included over 20 new members, and every one of these volunteers worked 18-20 hours a day, doing what they could to help.
A week later our team in Beslan was already forming, and in another week it included 17 volunteers who were visiting hospitals and going door to door collecting information, consoling victims, and distributing the much-needed emergency financial assistance.
Now, after 1 month of hard work, we are well along the way in fulfilling our mission, and we have kept all our commitments:
* We have raised nearly $1 million in mostly private donations from 7,300 donors in 51 countries * All our team members working on the project are doing so pro bono, so our administrative expenses are zero * We are the only major charity actively distributing large-scale emergency financial assistance to victims * We are the only major charity collecting information about every victim through independent interviews with each family
There is still much to be done:
* Even though we have basic data on the 550-600 victim families, we have directly interviewed only about 40% of them. We expect to complete the interview process in 2-3 weeks. * Most importantly, at the current level of donations an average child will receive less than $2,000 in assistance. Even though $1 million appears to be a large number, it translates into rather modest amounts due to the very large number of victims. We still need to do a lot to reach our goal of providing each family with a substantial, meaningful amount. Although prices in Russia are generally somewhat lower than in the West, healthcare proves to be notoriously expensive.
To give you an idea how serious the health situation is for many of these kids, we translated the notes collected by one of our volunteers at one of the hospitals where the children are being treated. Please use good judgement before you choose whether to read these notes as they contain descriptions of grave medical conditions of the children who were injured during the terror act.
The families of these kids and hundreds like them are receiving our financial assistance. Their condition is the reason we need to do the best we can to help them.
B. APPEAL FROM THE PRESIDENT AND THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Dear Donors,
We are an organization that is built on the principle that if everyone does what they can, miracles will happen. As a group of activist just like yourselves, we have already succeeded in raising more money than any other international charity did for the same terror event.
We consider you, our 7,300 donors, to be our most important staff members, our spokespeople. You are the reason our effort is able to exist, you are part of us!
We have a huge task - to provide financial assistance to 550-600 kids who became handicapped, were seriously injured, lost their parents, or whose parents became handicapped. We cannot give them back their health or replace their loved ones... The only thing we can try to do is to alleviate the terrible financial burden that this terror act has imposed upon their families. These kids will have very large ongoing medical expenses and their families are often left without a provider.
Our goal is to offer substantial, meaningful assistance to the victims. After a lot of research and discussion, the Board of Trustees has set the goal for this donation drive at $10,000,000, or $15,000-$20,000 per average child who became a victim in Beslan. Raising this money is crucial to pay for these children's recovery and long-term care, for the families to be able to survive.
We are not asking you for additional financial assistance (although we will be grateful if you do decide to provide it), but would like to ask you to do the simple things described below which can help us a lot:
The attention to our cause has receded with the hurricanes and elections stealing focus, and with people simply forgetting... You are the only ones who can help is re-ignite our donation drive. What it takes is a one-two punch outlined below:
1. The most important assistance you can provide is in spreading the word. Please forward this e-mail (without the donation receipt at the bottom) to all your friends, family and co-workers. Ask them, in your own words, to go to our web site, do their own research, and if they find the cause worthwhile, to make a donation to help the victims in Beslan. Explain to them why it needs to be done. Tell them what you know about our foundation, why you donated. Even if only a few of them make a contribution, we will be much further along the way to our goal. Irrespective of whether they can donate or not, ask them to please forward the e-mail to their friends, who can then make up their own mind. Our current donation drive has succeeded after 15 people (our Trustees and a small volunteer team) sent such requests to their friends and family members, who then forwarded it to others. In 3 days our call for action reached 2,500 people in 40 countries. We now ask you to be our new volunteer team in repeating that effort on a much larger scale. 2. Everything we have done so far has been done with little or no national media attention. If the story of how our effort operates (all-volunteer grassroots effort with extensive use of newest technologies to cut all overhead) got on the national prime time news, it would generate an influx of new donations. We would like to ask you to help us attract this attention. If you feel that we are doing a good job and would like to help us, we ask that you please e-mail any national media program you can contact and tell them about us in your own words. Please note that local media coverage does not help us much. The clips they can put in their programming are too short and go right past everyone's attention span. However, if we can get exposure on Larry King Live, Scarborough Country, O'Reilly Factor or similar programs, we will be able to tell our story and explain why the whole world needs to do more to help the victims of Beslan.
Please be assured that we will do our part - we will stay committed to this project for as long as it takes to fulfill our mission.
C. NEW PROJECTS WE PLAN TO LAUNCH FOR THE CHILDREN OF BESLAN We have several new projects, many of which will answer requests we are receiving from you:
1. Anyone who wants to send a message to the Beslan children and their families can do it via our forum page. A brochure with all these messages (translated into Russian) will be handed out to each family which receives our assistance. Please make sure to put basic identification information below your message (such as John, age 44, Syracuse, New York, USA) . 2. We are launching a project we tentatively call Virtual Family. In 1-2 weeks we will begin registering families in America and Western Europe which want to establish a direct contact with a family in Beslan. A database of such offers will be created, and the offers will be matched with the needs of each specific family in Beslan. We expect to have a database of over 550 children in Beslan who will need various kinds of assistance. Virtual Families will be able to offer direct help, with our Foundation only providing initial assistance in establishing communications between the donor family and the victim family. Please visit the Virtual Family page on our web site to read more about this project. 3. Jointly with a Dutch tourism company we are in the process of organizing a trip to the Netherlands for all the kids who were hostages on September 1-3, 2004. A lot is already in place (accommodations, support etc), but we are still working on arranging travel. All this is done at no cost, with all services donated by the respective companies. 4. Together with an event production team in New York City, we are planning to organize a fundraising event in New York City on February 14, 2005. The event will take place at Lincoln Center and will include dance performances by world renowned dancers, followed by a charity dinner. We will send you more information on this event as details become available. We will try to accomodate donor request for the best seats during this event.
D. CONFERENCE CALL HELD BY BOARD OF TRUSTEES FOR DONORS
The Board of Trustees will hold a conference call for donors and supporters on Friday, October 8, at 3 p.m. US Eastern Time (12 p.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Mountain, 2 p.m. Central).
There is no pre-authorization required to participate. If you would like to participate, you can dial in at 1-580-474-3529 (if busy dial 1-580-474-3671 or 1-507-726-3423) and enter passcode 55513 when prompted. You will be joined into the conference call where the most popular donor questions will be answered.
You can post your questions in advance at: http://www.privet.com/moscowhelp/viewtopic.php?t=448. Please do not call us or e-mail your questions as we will not be able to include them.
E. RECEIPT FOR YOUR DONATION
Below is your official charity receipt. If you are a US taxpayer, you can use it to claim a deduction on your 2004 tax return. If you live outside the United States, you will need to consult your tax code for deductibility information. Please note that if you are one of the many donors who made several contributions, you will receive a separate receipt for each donation.
CHARITABLE DONATION RECEIPT Charity Information Name of Charity International Foundation for Terror Act Victims Street Address 959-A Bristol Pike, Bensalem, PA 19020, USA EIN (Federal Tax ID) 37-1447194 Donor Information
International Foundation for Terror Act Victims is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization
All donations are tax-exempt for US income tax purposes
F. COMMUNICATION WITH US
We are overwhelmed with phone and e-mail traffic. Please visit our web site and read the information there thoroughly before contacting the Foundation. We would prefer if you communicated with us via the forum page if you don't find answers to your questions on our web site.
On behalf of all assistance recipients, we would like to thank you again for your tremendous support. It is very much needed and appreciated.
Kindest regards, Board of Trustees and Volunteer Team International Foundation for Terror Act Vicimts www.moscowhelp.org
When did you get this? I donated and didn't. Maybe they are sending them out in batches.
I got this in my e-mail yesterday (7-OCT-04)
Bump
Got mine this morning, too. I will forward this, something I wouldn't ordinarily do but these kids are not getting any help from the typical charity.
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