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Thanks to my Movember contributors. Oh, but the message was Mo-stly lost at the Party

on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 14:45

As I blogged and tweeted this month, I've been throwing my hat in with the Movember movement this month, and grown a mustache to "change the face" of Men's cancer.

First, I want to take a minute to thank all the contributors who contributed, and sponsored my 'stache-growing effort. (I'm sorry to say that I was SO anxious to get rid of it this morning that I forgot to take a picture before I shaved it. Sorry...)

Everyone gave proportional to their means, and I'm happy to have been the recipient of their charitable gift. I'm also pleased that the Movember organization is doing this. I've been happy to be part of this because I've often thought women have been better organized when it comes to breast cancer, etc., and I thought "Ok, here's the guys getting their act together. Kudos to the organizers."

I'm also proud to be part of the Fu Man Drupal Movember team. Once checks snail-mailed-in are credited (including a $1k check I forwarded Wednesday), we'll have raised right around $25,000 for men's cancer causes - Livestrong and the Prostate Cancer Fund. As I write this, our team is sitting at rank #16 across all US teams of 11 people or more. Once the checks and a couple of straggler contributions are credited, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up at #15. A pretty amazing accomplishment for a team of 27 guys from a 75-person startup. We even raised more than Google's team did.

Last night, the Movember organization threw a "Gala Party" in many cities around the world. I went to the Boston party.

And, while I don't want to be a party pooper and write a downer blog post, last night's Party is an area I think the organizers haven't got it quite right yet, and somebody somewhere should say something. So I'll nominate myself.

The party was fairly good; a couple of hundred folks, many really taking the fun to the max with costumes, and some of the men had truly grown fanciful mustaches. Midway through the evening, the MC got up to do the official-stuff for the night. "Now," I thought, "we'll hear some good stuff about the great things both the fundraisers and the organization are doing with all this." Nope - I was mistaken. The sole mention the MC had about the fundraising was this 15 seconds at the start:

"Heyyyyyy Boston!!! Yeahhh!! Great year for Movember. For something that started in Australia, the U.S. has done good. We raised close to $7 million! A record. Whooooo! And nobody thought we'd need a big party in little old Boston, eh? We showed them. Whooo!!!! And we have some guys with some amazing mustaches here tonight; let's have a contest! Whoooooooo!!!!!!

And that was it. Period. No overview of what Livestrong of the Prostate Cancer Foundation are going to do - or have done with prior years - money for those battling cancer. No awareness building of screening. Oh, and I guess the thing that probably gets me to write the blog entry: No shout-outs to top fundraisers - people who begged, and spent hours cajoling their networks to pony up (sometimes serious) money. None of the stuff I see done at women's fundraising things (marathons, etc.) After that last "Whoooo!" from the MC, it was all about the mustache contest.

I realize maybe I'm just personally wounded that our team didn't at least get a little shout-out, and you might legitimately think this blog post is just me expressing sour grapes. (And to be clear, as I arrived, I _did_ let the MC know about our team accomplishment, and even _asked_ for a short shout-out.) I'm happy our team raised some serious cash. And I know women's events are going to be different than mens - more mushy, more emotional, etc.

But really and truly, I did the fundraising because my best friend has cancer. This cause became personal and important to me. And I put in some late-night hours emailing old friends, and badgered others when I saw them face-to-face to contribute (something I always feel just a teeny-bit awkward about.) And yet, at the party, the only thing that got awareness was a bunch of guys who didn't shave. It doesn't take a lot of time or commitment to not shave - compared to the time and commitment it took for our team to raise the money they did.

On the remote chance that the Movember Foundation reads this, I hope they'll accept thanks that they're doing a good thing - but take away from this that I think there was a serious opportunity lost the post-event Party. I'd even call it an organizational breakdown.

Regardless of whether they bring notice to the top fundraisers or not, and even though this is a celebratory Party (and you don't really want to bring the party down), this whole thing IS all about bringing emphasis and awareness to mens' cancer. And there was absolutely no awareness-bringing going on at the Party. I would feel much better about having done all the hours of fundraising I did if the MC had a much more organized focus on the cause - and not just the facial hair.

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