CrowdRise, ALS Michigan and Quicken Loans are out to raise $70,000 dollars in just seven days using Facebook, Twitter and Social Media. Urban Optiques is Donating His and Her Tom Ford Sunglasses to the Top Fundraiser!

In Downtown Detroit right now, there is an entire group of passionate, dedicated people on a mission: Help whip ALS.

They are out mining their Facebook networks, reaching out to bloggers, Tweeting like crazy, throwing in not only their own dollars, but also their precious time all to hit a very lofty and aggressive goal: Raise $70,000 dollars in just seven days for ALS Research and do it all via small, $10 donations from people on Twitter, Facebook and a social fundraising website called “CrowdRise.”

ALS — Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The mind stays sharp, but the body literally withers away making the person a virtual prisoner in their own body. The disease is fatal and has no cure. And it typically claims the persons life within 2-3 years.

The Tweet for ALS Team at Quicken Loans put together a video explaining ALS and what they are trying to do this week on YouTube. Take a just a few minutes to watch it:

How You Can Help?

Urban Optiques has joined the “Tweet for ALS” Cause this week because as one of the lesser known diseases out there, ALS simply doesn’t get the type of attention or fundraising dollars that other big (but equally important) causes like breast cancer receive.  But for anyone who has known someone who has battled ALS or understands the awful, debilitating and lethal toll this disease takes on its victims, it deserves our attention and dollars.

We also have lots of patients and clients from Quicken Loans, so we like supporting the causes that our clients support.

Finally we like that “Tweet for ALS” is trying to make a statement about the power of social networks to do good. The goal of the seven day fund-raising campaign is to raise $70,000 dollars in a very short period of time not through giant corporate donations, but a series of small, affordable $10 donations from average people.

When you think about it, this should be easy to do:  The average Facebook user has 130 friends, so if just 500 people were able to get a mere six $10 dollar donations from their friends, Tweet for ALS would have already met nearly half of their goal. If each of those six people who donated were able to get six more donations of $10 dollars themselves, we’d be at $60,000 dollars almost overnight.

You can donate by joining the Urban Optiques Tweet for ALS Team on http://www.crowdrise.com/tweetforals/fundraiser/urbanoptiques

Upping the Ante: Free His and Her Tom Ford Sunglasses for the Top Fundraiser!

To help the fundraising effort, Urban Optiques is giving away a pair of his and hers Tom Ford sunglasses with a retail value of nearly $1,000 dollars to the top fundraiser on the Urban Optiques “Tweet for ALS” Team on CrowdRise. We’ll award the sunglasses to the person who has raised the most money as of midnight, Thursday September 23.

To sign up and start raising money and qualify for the prize, just go here: http://www.crowdrise.com/tweetforals/fundraiser/urbanoptiques

It literally takes less than 60 seconds to sign-up and Crowdrise makes it easy for you to share and reach out to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.  Our goal for the Urban Optiques team is to raise $1,000 dollars in the next 48 hours.  So let’s get started!