X-Message-Number: 30323
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:46:25 -0800 (PST)
From: david pizer <>
Subject: Advancing Research and Alcor

ADVANCING RESEARCH, GETTING HOSPITALS TO COOPERATE
WITH US AND DOING OTHER WONDERFUL THINGS FOR ALCOR.

Mathew has said recently that his thoughts are
directed starting to get the  ball rolling  so that
when his time for suspension and perfusion (we all
hope will be a very long time from now) he can have it
done in a hospital,  where it belongs.    I think many
of us would think that having our suspension
(perfusion and other things needed to prepare a
patients to go into storage) is a good idea.  How can
we make this happen?

First we have to improve research so that we can show
the hospitals that there is a pretty good chance that
someone, someday in the future, can bring the patients
back.  To do this it will take a strong fund raising
campaign to motivate our members to contribute.

When I was doing the fund raising for Alcor I took a
fund raising course at Arizona State University.  One
of the key things they impressed on us students is
that in most campaigns and fund raising in general,
80% of the proceeds come from 5% to 10% of the members
of that nonprofit organization.  Alcor has already
lost the confidence of many of its wealthy members who
lost large sums of money donating to the last major
Alcor campaign where Alcor's, then, president misled
the contributors and their money was lost.  The
wealthy members, many of whom I know well, are going
to feel they have to have more control before they
might think about putting up more large donations.

The other problem we have is that it will take a lot
of  lobbying  by a large group of people to get the
hospital industry interested in doing business with
cryonics's.  From now on,  Alcor is not going to be
able to motivate the members to do any big projects. 
Many of the Alcor members are very disappointed with
Alcor right now.  They don't trust Alcor to lead any
big campaigns for most anything because they feel that
Alcor directors do too much in secret and are not
accountable to the members.  

Alcor's past history of making many mistakes, secrecy
and no accountability is going to be a damper on *any*
major campaign spearheaded by the Alcor board.   Also,
I doubt that any hospital would want to do business
with Alcor after they check out Alcor's reputation in
business matters and find out about all the mistakes
Alcor has been making the last several years.  This
will start to change the day the first fully elected
member-elected board members take their seats and
their finally is accountability at Alcor.

My request to every Alcor member who wants to see good
things start to happen for Alcor members is to start
discussing ideas to design a member-elected directors
system and make it as safe as possible, and then start
to help generate support for this idea from other
members.  We can't do the wonderful things we dream
about for Alcor until we fix the single largest core
problem - get a system of making the Alcor leaders
(directors) accountable to the members and other
companies that we want Alcor to do business with.

 David




      
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