What if I want to donate more money, don't want to (or can't) donate online?
Why is it so complicated? What is Million Dollar Yard? What is EveryDayIsPrecious?
Who is Rob Payne? How did this site come about?
Seven years ago my wife, Marcy, was winning 5 and 10K races she ran. She was room mother and Brownie troop leader for our daughter (now 13) and soccer mom for our son (now 18.) In August of 2000, she was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. This is a motor neuron disease which doctors say is always fatal. 50% of patients die within 3 years of diagnosis.
October of 2000 Marcy had to resign her executive director position at Happy Tales Humane - the no kill animal shelter she started in Franklin, TN. She stopped walking Thanksgiving of 2001, had to get a feeding tube to eat September of 2002, and since March of 2003 has been quadriplegic and on a ventilator in our living room at home. As Marcy's caregiving took more and more of my time, I had to leave the advertising agency I helped start. Since March of 2003, caring for Marcy has been my 24/7/365 job.
Since that time we have collected some Social Security benefits, and friends and family have contributed enough to keep us from having to sell our house. In April 2007, our income to expense ratio changed when Marcy's son, Matt, turned 18 and his biological father was no longer required to pay child support, even though expenses increased when Matt planned for college.
Flowers for Marcy is our way to try to keep from burdening our friends and family more than we already have. Every dollar received goes directly to us, except the fees to process credit card transactions (a little over $1/flower.)
You can read about our entire journey at EveryDayIsPrecious.com.
Basically, the site walks you through these steps:
1. View our virtual yard to see flowers and messages from other people. This is the screen that I show Marcy every morning to brighten her day. Since you can change flowers anytime and new people donate, the flowers in the yard change almost every day. You may want to bookmark this page so you can come back often to see what's going on.
2. Choose the place you want to plant your flower. Once your location is chosen, you choose the amount you want to donate and "plant" your flower by paying for it using the online credit card payment feature.
3. Once payment is complete, choose your flower image, save it to your computer, then upload it and add your message to Marcy.
Your message to Marcy, your link to your web site (optional,) and your family photo (optional) are visible when the mouse rolls over your flower in our yard. When someone clicks on your flower they are linked to your web site. You can use (link to) your family site, myspace page, corporate site, or another charitable site.
You can come back to this site any time to add or change your flower, message, site link or photo. You can donate in your own name or donate in someone else's name as a gift.
For the first couple of weeks this site was up flowers had a fixed expiration date. In practice, we decided we would like to see the yard filled and it might get frustrating for us and for friends if flowers kept expiring.
So we changed the function of the site to make flowers last until the yard is full.
What if I want to donate more money, don't want to (or can't) donate online?
We appreciate all the help we can get. If you want to donate a different amount from what the site allows - or if FlowersForMarcy.com isn't working for you - please send a check via snail mail to Rob Payne, 2051 Harvington Drive, Franklin, TN, 37069. If you want a flower planted, just include a note with your check with your message to Marcy and any preferences you have for a flower and I'll plant one for you. If you include your email address, I'll email a note telling you where your flower is planted.
If you were able to complete your donation but don't want to mess with the downloading and uploading, just email a note to me with your message to Marcy and any preferences you have for a flower and I'll plant one for you within the next 48 hours. I'll email you when it's done.
Why is it so complicated? What is MillionDollarYard? What is EveryDayIsPrecious?
We hope this site is a fun way to help us out, rather than just asking for a donation.
This site first started as a result of the success of the Million Dollar Home page. Originally I planned to adapt an existing pixel selling script to sell square inches of our virtual yard to total $1,000,000 which would be invested and interest generated would help pay our living expenses. I set up the script and the site using the URL milliondollaryard.com. The more I worked on that idea, the more greedy it sounded. After all, all I want to do is provide for my family.
With the help of a brilliantly creative design group (Cabedge,) we developed the flower idea (Marcy loves flowers) and adapted the same script to work for FlowersForMarcy.com. There are many things about it that are annoying, but it works and starting with the existing script was more time efficient than starting from scratch.
EveryDayIsPrecious is the site I started in 2000 to help communicate to our friends and family about this part of our journey in life. It is also the name of my PayPal account, so if you donate, you'll see that name on the PayPal page and on your credit card statement.
Who is Rob Payne? How did this site come about?
Rob Payne
Born 11/28/55 & Raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Living in Franklin, TN since 1996.
BS Communications – Georgia State University 1982
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For almost 30 years I wrote marketing plans and advertising materials to help mega-million dollar companies like Fruit of the Loom, PPG Industries (Olympic Stains & Lucite Paint,) Gibson Guitars, Travel Centers of America, and Tractor Supply Company build their brands and increase market share. I led advertising agencies in Atlanta, Indiana, Pittsburgh, and Nashville and held ownership in two of those agencies. I helped create simple and memorable messages, then put them in front of tens of millions of consumers. I still have many friends working in the business world and they have helped me create FlowersForMarcy.com. |
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Marcy’s diagnosis came at the peak of my career. Upon diagnosis, I began building a platform, Every Day Is Precious, for communicating to people who care about Marcy. With Marcy’s tracheostomy early in 2003, care for Marcy became my 24/7/365 job. I left my other (paying) job and my ownership in the agency. Contributions from friends and strangers became our primary source of income. To share stories of how people help us and to encourage readers to help others, I started writing a weekly column for the Nashville newspaper early in 2003. In 2004, I self-published a print-on-demand collection of the first 30 of these columns titled "30 Ways to Help in Helpless Situations." Hundreds of contributors and other friends get daily updates from our blog at EveryDayIsPrecious.com along with other information and entertainment. |
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In April of 2007, I had lunch with Mark, an ex-client and good friend who had been racking his brain for ideas on how to help me and our situation. He remembered a case history from a book in high school in which in the 1950's Quaker Oats gave a square inch of land from the Yukon gold rush territory in return for 3 boxtops and a quarter. Over 21 million people responded. |
Mark also told me of a kid in England who created the Million Dollar Home Page - a web site that sold pixels at $1 per pixel as ad space for Internet based businesses. He sold out all million pixels in less than 6 months. That lunch, these remarkably successful promotions, susequent meetings with lots of friends, and the guiding hand of Jesus led to the design and launch of FlowersforMarcy.com in August 2007. |
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