Tonight's picture was taken on St. Patrick's Day of 2009. Several of Mattie's friends gave him green gear to wear. Mattie was always big on decorations and wore this get up to the oncology clinic that day. I still have the shamrock headband and sunglasses. The headband is actually on display in Mattie's bedroom. Certainly the gifts did not change the nature of Mattie's cancer or treatment, but what they did was actually priceless. When Mattie would get upset or down, which happened multiple times in a given day, I would pull out a gift. Thankfully we had many to choose from because of our care community. Turning to a gift to open and to play with was an outstanding distraction for Mattie, and at the same time helped Peter and me feel the support of our community behind us.
Quote of the day: In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
To me this is a major accomplishment as we struggled the first couple of years with only one or two sponsors. But each year as we grow, so does our list!
Our new additions this year are:
Anthem, Georgetown Pilates, Robert & Tyler, and After-Mouse.Com.
Landing corporate sponsorships isn't easy. In fact, with just about every sponsorship there was a personal connection that made this possible. The only sponsorship that was rather a cold call, was Robert & Tyler, who are stellar realtors at Washington Fine Properties. They found Mattie Miracle from advertisements for our November Candy Drive. They participated in the Drive, sent photos of their candy collection and even delivered the candy to us! Given their extensive participation, I reached out to them about our Walk and they were eager to participate. Wonderful, no?
With regard to our other new sponsors this year, each one of them has a story behind it. For example with Georgetown Pilates, this is where Peter goes for pilates lessons. He has been going for seven months now and his instructor is Marisa. Marisa is a friend of ours, runs our Walk bake sales, and when she was in high school helped us with Mattie when he was home between hospital visits. It was Marisa's idea to reach out to the owner of the pilates company, and once Peter had that connection, the rest is history.
Our connection with After-Mouse.Com, is a bit different. Someone reached out to Peter on linked in. Originally he thought Amanda wanted to set up a meeting to talk about what he does by day.... mobile health solutions. It turns out though, when they actually met it wasn't about his day job, but about Mattie Miracle. After-Mouse designs touch table entertainment systems and they were interested in getting connected to medical facilities (since they have touch tables at hotels and cruise ships, but not in hospitals). We really helped to make this happen for After-Mouse, so much so that now they are running a research study on the effectiveness of these electronic play tables in hospital settings with a researcher at the NIH who works closely with us. Given our work with After-Mouse, asking them to be a sponsor of our Walk seemed like a good fit.
Given that sponsorships are about networking and personal connections, it takes time to develop these relationships. However, what I am most pleased about is that our sponsors are loyal. They commit to us year after year. TeraThink has been supporting us since 2011, and they are one of our very first sponsors. We are truly grateful to them, because once you have a legitimate sponsor, it is a lot easier to ask others to take a leap of faith and join our Mattie Miracle family.
1 comment:
HURRAH FOR THIS WONDERFUL BLOG AND YOUR GENEROUS SPONSORS🎗⭐️✨
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