An Open Letter

By David Ozab

To the anonymous donor who gave $60 to Team Anna for our 2012 Walk for Children with Apraxia of Speech:
 
I want to say "thank you." I know the chances of you reading this post are very small—perhaps infinitesimal—but on the slight chance you see a link to this post, I want to tell you a bit about the girl you're supporting and the many kids like her.
 
Anna is an amazing girl. I know I'm biased since I'm her dad, but she really is. She is six-and-a-half and she just started first grade: she loves to read, to swim, and to perform for anyone who'll watch, or when she's alone in front of a mirror. She wants to be an actress and I think she'll be a good one: we're looking into classes for next spring.
 
But to act she has to be understood and that's a challenge for her. At two-and-a-half years old she was diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech. CAS is a motor-speech disorder where her brain knows what to say but the mouth can't keep up. It's a spectrum disorder: some kids don't talk at all while others talk non-stop but can't be understood. Anna was in the latter category: she still is, but thanks to almost four years of intensive speech therapy, we now understand her most of the time. She's not done yet, but she's come a long way.
 
Speech therapy has made a huge difference in her life and we are grateful to all the speech language pathologists (SLPs) she has worked with over the last few years. SLPs undergo intensive training in order to work with children with CAS, and CASANA helps fund some of that training. They also fund research, iPad app development, and outreach to over 350,000 people each year through Apraxa-KIDS.com, the Apraxia-KIDS blog, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. None of this would be possible without donations like yours.
 
Every year, kids with Apraxia and their families participate in walks across the country to raise money and awareness. Last year, we walked with a small group of families in Salem, Oregon, and despite registering just before the deadline we still raised $360. This year, with more time to plan, we hoped to do better.
 
We did. My wife's employer gave us $1000 (meeting our original goal) in early-September. Friends and family contributed too. And Anna decided to do her part. She saved change from household chores in a special Apraxia piggybank, set up a lemonade stand during a church garage sale, and contributed half of the money she made selling her pre-school aged toys in the same sale. She raised $50 all by herself, which we matched to bring her total contribution to $100.
 
After the sale was over, we submitted her contributions to our fundraising page, leaving us only $60 short of out new goal of $1350. I posted the story of her lemonade stand on both Facebook and Twitter and with less than two weeks to go we hit our goal.
 
Thanks to you, anonymous donor.
 
It's been said by many people that the greatest testimony to a person's character is what he or she does when no one is looking. This contribution, however big or small it may seem to you, is a great testament to your character. You didn't give it in hope of recognition. You knew that no one would ever know your identity and yet you gave anyway.
 
We will never know your name, but we will always be grateful.
 
Sincerely,
 
David, Julia, and Anna Ozab.

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Biography: David Ozab is currently editing and revising his first non-fiction book, A Smile for Anna, which tells the story of his daughter’s cleft diagnosis and surgery, her difficulties with speech, and her incredible outgoing spirit through it all. He is a Contributing Editor at About This Particular Macintosh and a Guest Contributor at MyEugene. His writing has been (or will be) featured such diverse publications as Chicken Soup for the Soul, Errant Parent, and Catholic Digest. He is a stay-at-home dad and blogs about parenting and life at Fatherhood Etc (http://www.fatherhoodetc.com). He lives in Oregon with his wife Julia, his daughter Anna, and two lop rabbits named Jellybean and Oreo.

For more information on David Ozab, visit his website at http://www.davidozab.com/ 

Father Leads Team to Raise Awareness and Over $22,000 in 2011 Denver Apraxia Walk

(Top Photo from left to right: Jill (Gillian) Green, Saoirse Green, Dan Green, and Siobhan Green; Bottom Photo: Siobhan Green)

On November 15, 2011, Team Leader Dan Green of Westminster, Colorado was selected to win an iPad for his efforts of raising $20,861.31 for Team Siobhan, bringing his team total to $22,053.31 in the Denver Walk for Children with Apraxia of Speech. CASANA selected Green as the Team Leader of the Top Fundraising Team out of a total of 44 Walks held all over North America.

However, for Green, his family, and his team, the incentive was more than winning an iPad; it was about raising awareness in his community and while doing so, raising funds to better the future for his four-year-old daughter, Siobhan, and other children with Apraxia.

When Siobhan was around the age of two years, Green and his wife, Jill, noticed she was not speaking, prompting them to take immediate action like any other parent. From researching online, getting involved with a local county program, to hiring a private speech-language pathologist, they were determined to find answers and to get a proper diagnosis for her. It was not until nearly a year later that she was formally diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS).

“CASANA raised awareness so that Siobhan could be diagnosed, and early enough so that we could make an aggressive push to get her to articulate,” said Green, a consultant to startups and venture capital firms. “It was very helpful to go through all the research on the CASANA website and understand what we would be dealing with. The Walk in our area was also instrumental in getting us in touch with other parents of children with Apraxia in the area, allowing us to establish a local social network.”

This network included contacts to trained speech therapists and information that made Green a “smarter consumer of speech therapy services” which introduced him and his wife to techniques that would best help Siobhan resolve. After receiving this help, Green wanted to do more for Siobhan and for CASANA, so he decided the 2011 Denver Walk for Apraxia was his opportunity to do so. When he became aware of CASANA’s iPad prize to be awarded to the Team Leader of the Top Fundraising Team, Green decided to make this his goal; he wanted to win the iPad for Siobhan so that he could help her learn language and help reduce her frustration level.

So with a clear target in sight, Green developed a strategy that combined his passion for photography and knowledge of business he obtained from Harvard University. He gathered several photos of Siobhan he had posted on his Facebook and he drafted letters that could be customized later. Next, he compiled a list of contacts from social media websites including his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, both of which have a combined 835 personal and professional connections. His determination to reach his goal allowed him to see every person in these networks as a Walk contributor and a supporter. He felt the more people he reached was one less person he had to give an explanation to about his daughter having Apraxia.

“Folks raising money on behalf of the kids shouldn’t feel shy about approaching anybody, as long as there’s a personal connection. You’ll be surprised who’s going to donate. Our donors included two bestselling business authors whom I know and have worked with,” said Green, who found a surprising number of people he reached out to also have kids with Apraxia. Furthermore, most were talking about their child having Apraxia for the very first time outside of their immediate families and donated because they were glad an organization was finally there to support kids with Apraxia.

Green managed his fundraising goal continually by changing the amount a few thousand dollars at a time, so that it would only take 10 or 20 donations of average size to reach it. Ultimately, he wanted donors to know they had a real impact in helping him reach his goal.

“None of the past donors object if you’ve been successful enough to raise the bar a bit more,” said Green. “They usually applaud the success. Somewhere in the back of my head I thought we’d raise around $10,000 but I didn’t want to put that into print because it’s too unattainable to the average donor,” said Green. “Then we blew through $10,000 and I started to think about $20,000, but even then I didn’t put it in print.”

Green’s strategy zeroed in on prospective donors who looked for clues about average donation size when asked to “give from the heart.” He explained that providing guidance to prospective donors and how the question was framed really made a difference in a donation size. For example, he would ask for a donation of $10, $25, $50; of $50, $100, or $250; or of $100, $250, or $500, depending on what the prospective donor’s capacity was and what their willingness to give would be. He also utilized additional page features, such as the ticker and thermometer widgets to help guide and nudge the donation levels up.

“We went to people we thought would be $500 to $1,000 donors first; they were the pacesetters,” Green said. “We made sure that group included senior family members and colleagues whose names on our ticker would be a beacon for other donors. Then we stepped down to folks who were earlier in their careers and had less capacity to give.”

He felt that anchoring at higher numbers from respected members of the community, which people could see on his personal donation page, enticed people who would not have given to give and those who would have given anyway, to give more. Finally at the end he asked people of some means to stretch a bit and to help him make his then-goal of $20,000; a goal that at one point he was at risk of missing.

“We thought we were tapped out at around $18,000, then saw some extraordinary generosity by people who love Siobhan and really wanted to help in her name,” said Green. “They’d been holding out because they wanted to be Team Siobhan’s second wind.”

In the middle of all of this, a crucial moment for Green helped him find more motivation to keep going beyond his goal. “Siobhan got flustered while trying to tell me about a doggie she saw,” he said. “She cried, held her tongue, and signed, ‘Daddy, help me talk.’”

Pushing all doubts aside, Green continued to support his daughter by raising a total of $20,868.31 in his enthusiastic campaign. With a couple of additional donations and company matches, his team’s total reached over $22,053.31 for the 2011 Denver Walk for Children with Apraxia of Speech.

“Following up with donors to ask for a company match is usually well-received, as it's often not much work on the donor's part and is a great way for the donor to magnify the impact of his or her donation,” said Green. His widespread reach included a total of 186 individual donors that as a result would help support CASANA and benefit important funding for future programs and research.

To find out more about the Walk for Children with Apraxia of Speech, visit: http://www.apraxiawalk.org/