Fundraising

I hate asking for money. Let’s just say that, right off the bat.

Now I have to tell a story.  I once worked for Green Peace.  This was a long time ago.  I canvassed door to door.  I knocked on doors, told people about whatever interesting thing Green Peace was up to at the time, and asked them for money.  I sucked at it.

I liked most things about the job.  I liked talking to people about saving dolphins and rain forests and things like that.  I loved the people I worked with.  They were interesting, diverse, cared about things like the environment and social justice, and liked poetry and folk music.  I liked the office, which was housed in a cool old building near the university. 

Perhaps what I loved best was that, every afternoon after we met at the office to get our assignments for the day, we piled into a van and drove to the area where we would be canvassing, and then we found a place to eat.  Sometimes we ate at Wendy’s or Pizza Hut, but whenever possible, we ate at small interesting places.  We ate at vegetarian places, vegan places, ethnic places.

But after we ate, we went out to canvass.  And I even enjoyed most parts of that.  The walking was nice, being outside was nice except when it stormed, talking to people was not bad.  But it was the asking for money part I hated.  And that was the part I sucked at.

We had discretion as far as how much money to ask for.  If we were knocking on the door of a big house with a fancy car in the drive, we would ask for more money than if we were in a neighborhood of modest houses.  If the people at the door seemed really interested in our mission, we would ask for more money than if they didn’t seem to care much.  But I was always worried about asking for too much.  Sometimes we’d canvass in pairs and after I asked for, and received, a modest donation from someone and the door was closed, my partner would whisper to me, “She would have given twice that much if you’d asked.  She was explaining to her three-year-old that we were activists and what that means!”

OK.  Anyway.  My point is, I have never liked asking for money and I have never been any good at it.

Unfortunately, service dogs are expensive, I really need a service dog, and my income puts me just a smidge above the poverty line at present.  This is the case, I think, for the majority of people that need service dogs.  Not all disabled people are poor, of course, but many are.  Those that cannot work, or that cannot work very much, may qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).  I believe the maximum amount one can get from SSI in 2012 is something like $710 per month.  Can you imagine living on that?  People on SSDI get more, but often not a lot more.  The amount is based on how much they earned before becoming disabled and unable to work.  My condition affected my ability to earn money even before I went on disability, which may be the case for many disabled people.

Even when they are able to work, people with disabilities may have somewhat limited job options.  They may be limited with regard to how many hours they can work because taking care of a disability can take a lot of time and interfere with typical work hours.  For instance, when I had a regular job, I had to have a job where my boss didn’t mind me leaving work early one day every single week to go to therapy.  And people with some disabilities may tire more quickly than most people; it was difficult for me to work a lot of hours when I was working because I was always exhausted from getting only four or five hours of sleep each night.  And it can take a lot longer to do some things when you have a disability; for instance, I sometimes have a lot of trouble concentrating so it might take me two or three times as long to write an article as it would take someone else to do it.

In addition to earning low wages, or receiving limited payments from Social Security, it’s important to understand that it is expensive just to exist as a disabled person.  Of course the cost varies depending on what type of disability someone has and what their specific needs are, but people with disabilities frequently have expenses that people without disabilities don’t have.  I spend a lot of money on therapy.  I also pay for several prescriptions each month and pay to see my psychiatrist at least once every few months and am still paying for the ECT (electoconvulsive therapy) I had 18 months ago.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m trying to justify why I have to ask for help raising the money for my service dog.  I’m just trying to provide some information about the socio-economic issues facing people with disabilities.  I think.  But maybe I feel a bit guilty about having to ask for help.  Asking for help is not easy for me.

You can donate through Paypal.   I tried to put a button here that would make that easy but it didn't work for some reason and I can't figure it out.  So I'll give you a link, instead.  Paypal  My Paypal address to send donations to is poet_kelly at yahoo dot com.

You can also donate by check or money order through the mail.  I recommend against mailing actual cash, though; it’s too easy for cash to get “lost” in the mail.  Checks and money orders can be made out to Kelly Morris.  They can be mailed to 1307 Preakness Drive, Mansfield, Ohio 44906.

Any amount would be helpful, even just a couple of dollars.  All funds raised will be used to cover the cost of a service dog; I will stop fundraising when I’ve raised $6,000, the amount I need initially to obtain a service dog.  If I somehow end up with extra funds, they will be donated to a program that provides service dogs for people in need.  The actual cost of raising and training a service dog is more than $6,000, often closer to $20,000, so organizations that provide service dogs need donations in order to keep costs down for the people they serve.

Thanks to all that can help.