My niece Mia was diagnosed with severe congenital heart failure at 5 weeks old and was admitted to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in NYC. My sister Nicole & brother-in-law James picked up & moved into an apartment across the street from the hospital to be at Mia’s bedside while she waited for a heart transplant. Feeling helpless we decided to organize a fundraising event to help with the costs of living, food, medical bills, rent for their NYC apartment, their mortgage for their home in Massapequa, etc. We wanted to have a fundraising page if there were people who couldn’t attend the event but still wanted to contribute. We had heard about Fund the First through family members who were first responders and being that my sister Nicole is a nurse we thought it was the best platform to use. I never organized a fundraiser before, I started making the page, putting my sister’s information instead of my own, & the page was instantly flagged and shut down. My sister had to provide several documents for proof of identity- shortly after I received a phone call from CEO Rob Garland apologizing for the miscommunication. In hindsight I can appreciate that they are on top of any inkling of possible fraud. I spoke with Rob and told him more about the situation and he wanted to help in any way that he could. He explained the entire process, how to properly set up the page, how to get the most donations possible, he was just extremely helpful. Any time I had a question I was able to email Rob or send a text and he had an answer within minutes. We didn’t have a specific goal but after about 2 hours of the page being live, we had raised almost $10,000. We had our fundraising event 2 months after making the Fund the First page and by that point we had raised over $100,000. Rob even came to the event we had which was incredible. The amount of support we received for Mia, Nicole, & James was overwhelming. I would absolutely recommend using Fund the First for any fundraising platform.
