How to create awareness for a 1200 km sponsoring campaign?

This morning Professor Conny left Groningen, the Netherlands, by train with Rotterdam her first stop on the journey. From there she will take an airplane to travel to Bordeaux, which is close to the starting point of her 1200 kilometre walk: Eiffel’s bridge in La-Réole, France. Tomorrow, Professor Conny will take the first steps of her 1200 km walk to raise awareness and money for chromosome 6 disorders.

Professor Conny wants to raise money for the Chromosome 6 Project, her research project on chromosome 6 disorders. This means that we, the Chromosome 6 Project team, need to attract as many people as possible to this amazing fundraising project. How are we doing that? And how can you help?

The Chromosome 6 Facebook group is very important for us. We would like to ask all the members to spread the word via their own networks. We also encourage them to organise their own walk or fundraising event. To assist in this process, we provide PR-materials on our website and, if the event organisers wish, we can announce their event on the same web page: www.chromosome6.org/walkforchromosome6

The promotion material includes a QR-code that Professor Conny is wearing on her backpack, and this code can also be used by others. Scanning the QR-code brings viewers to an attractive webpage, so please try it for yourself!

The QR-code that brings you to the sponsor action page

We have also designed a mascot of Professor Conny. This mascot plays a role in the animation that can be used to make your own video to raise awareness for chromosome 6 disorders, as well as in the Facebook profile picture frame. You can get your own frame here: Professor left or right.

Professor Conny using the Facebook frame

In addition to Facebook, we are informing as many people as possible via our own private and professional networks and asking these people to inform their networks as well, hopefully spreading the word into even larger circles.

Professor Conny has given several interviews last week including a live radio interview (starting from 10.52 min). You can also read an interview here. The Chromosome 6 Project team is further active on Twitter and the fundraising activities can be followed via Facebook. Short videos (vlogs) will be made for this blog and for YouTube. 

What are we aiming for? 

That is a very difficult question for a group of modest researchers. We and the parents involved are very enthusiastic about the Chromosome 6 Project, but it remains difficult to obtain grants for research on these ultra-rare disorders. Nonetheless, we have a dream that we are chasing: to have more and reliable information available for parents. So what do we need?

For €12,000 (= $13,500) we can employ a student for 1 year to analyse data received from parents and write papers and informational material for some selected chromosome 6 aberrations.

For €120,000 (= $135,000) we can employ a bioinformatician and programmer to develop an interactive, self-analysing system that can automatically group information for different chromosome 6 aberrations, analyse the results and deliver these results in a meaningful summary directly on the website. This allows us to automatically analyse and give information on all chromosome 6 aberrations.

How can you support Professor Conny?

1. Donate to the Chromosome 6 Project via JustGiving or via Geef.nl, or see the webpage for other donation options: www.chromosome6.org/walkforchromosome6 
2. Spread the word within your own network. Tell your friends, family, colleagues and other people in your community about this amazing fundraising project for chromosome 6 disorders. Share a post on Facebook, retweet, share the webpage, share these blog posts or show your support with a Facebook frame: Professor left or right.
3. Organise your own walk or fundraising event and donate the money raised to the Chromosome 6 Project. If you inform us about your fundraiser we will announce the fundraiser on our webpage and social media.

If you have suggestions on how we can create more awareness for chromosome 6. Just drop us a line at chromosome6@umcg.nl 

What will we do?

Via this blog we will update you once a week on the progress of Professor Conny on her 1200 km walk to Santiago de Compostela and on the amount of money raised. However, if the donations exceed our expectations, we will make a new blog post for each €1,200 ($1,350) raised and a video (vlog) for each €6,000 ($6,750) raised. The more money raised, the more often we will post blogs and vlogs. Thus, if you like the blogs and vlogs: keep donating!

To donate please go to JustGiving or Geef.nl or see the webpage for other donation options: www.chromosome6.org/walkforchromosome6 

Follow @c6study