What would you buy with PowerBall win?

I buy the occasional MegaMillions and PowerBall ticket. I know the odds of my being struck twice by lightning are better than my chance of winning. But it’s not like I’d keep the money for myself–at least not very much of it. I might buy a tiny condo in the city so I wouldn’t have to drive quite so far quite so often.

…what we really need is a March of Dollars.

But I’d really like to buy a cure for several diseases–first and foremost, NET cancer–and that’s where the money would really go. It’s where every spare dime goes now. I’d just like to have a lot more spare dimes.

Leveraging what I have

I’m not wealthy. I live frugally and try to spend wisely when I buy something. I’d rather pay for a good chair and never have to replace it than a cheap one I have to replace every five years. I push my own lawn mower, bake my own bread, raise some of my own food. It all creates money I can spend on the things that matter.

…I’d really like to buy a cure…

And where I can, I increase those donations by leveraging them to create more money. I’m a decent photographer, so I make limited editions of my best work. I frame them and sell them at craft fairs. I take items other zebras and their friends make and take those items with me as well. Every penny that comes in goes to fund NET cancer research.

Other methods I try to use

My friends and I put on dinners and golf tournaments and other events, each of which doubles or triples the initial investment. I write letters and send them to people I’ve never met, hoping they will be moved to make donations to the cause. I give speeches I hope will move people to open their wallets.

I’m not wealthy.

I’m trying to write a book about grief. It isn’t going very well. Last year it left me in such a funk I had to walk away from everything for a while. Reliving the end of Jane’s life and coming to terms with her death is still too painful to deal with in large doses. But when it is done and finds a publisher, half of what it makes goes to NET cancer research. The other half helps a grief group keep going that has helped me get through the roughest parts.

Turning thousands to millions

I put solar panels on my roof last winter. The company that did the work offers me $1000 for each person I get to sign on with them. I think solar is a good idea whether people believe in climate change or not. Burning coal isn’t good for my lungs–or anyone’s. Any bounty I get from them is already pledged to NET cancer research. No one has taken the bait yet…

I write letters and send them to people I’ve never met…

Fourteen months ago, the NET cancer program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute asked me to volunteer to chair a major fundraising campaign for NET cancer research there. The goal is to raise $3 million over the course of three years. From the perspective of someone whose annual income never reached $70,000, $3 million feels like a lot of money.

Buy big by buying small

From the perspective, however, of someone who has seen what research costs, it’s a mere starting point–and nowhere near what we really need to raise. There aren’t a lot of people with deep pockets out there interested in NET cancer, so I know an awful lot of it has to be raised a few dollars at a time.

…$3 million feels like a lot of money.

When my grandmother came to Massachusetts for the first time, she insisted we take her to see the USS Constitution, which lives in Boston Harbor. She told us that, as a small girl, she had donated her milk money to restoring the ship. She wanted to see what her investment had bought.

One person at a time

In the late 1950s, I went door-to-door in my neighborhood, collecting dimes from our neighbors for the March of Dimes, FDRs plan for defeating polio. Today, no one would allow an eight-year-old to do such a thing, but it was how we defeated polio.

…a few dollars at a time.

I think of those two events frequently as I write my letters or sit behind a table at a craft fair. Two weeks ago, I spent eight hours raising $75. I had two conversations about NET cancer that raised awareness in four people who had never heard of it before. I handed out another five pamphlets on the disease.

A March of Dollars

It wasn’t much for an eight-hour investment. But it was $75 more than we started with and at least another nine people who heard about NET cancer. Even counting in inflation, it was a lot more than I raised in my eight hours of knocking on doors in 1960.

…it was how we defeated polio.

But what we really need is a March of Dollars. If we could get just $1 from every person in the US, we’d have more than $325 million for NET cancer research. We solved the riddle of polio for less than that a year. Maybe we could buy a NET cancer cure for that.