Freedom to Vape Foundation

[DaDuke]

Just a thought... Seems the biggest problem to getting e-cigs past a banning is the lack of testing which costs money and none of the manufacturers in china care to foot that bill. Can't say i blame them as they already have a huge market outside the US and the reach of the FDA.

What i would like to see is a non-profit org started with the goal of funding the testing, legal battles and public awareness campaigns in the USA. I would suggest several of the larger and more popular e-cig distributors in the USA along with possibly this forum as the founders. Any e-cig co that gave a certain % of sales to the foundation would be allowed to fly a "proud sponsor of the Freedom to vape Foundation" (or whatever).

Of course it would need to be financially transparent with proper bean counter watchdogs in place but I would certainly restrict my purchases to sponsor sites in order to support the effort and i'm sure lots of other vapers would as well.

Wel, that's my idea whatcha think? I had thought of naming it Foundation Of Fighting For Freedom or F-OFFF for short but that's prolly a little too confrontational

 

[kristin]

CASAA is primarily about public awareness, but if we got a lot more donations, we'd be able to do exactly what you are describing. We already are earmarking 20% of all donations to fund research. We are also working on a vendor donator program, which will get them a graphic to display. We sent a CASAA board member to speak before the city council in Savanah and are sending another to speak before the New York senate later this month, to stop them from banning e-cigarettes. Another will be attending the opening statements at the SE vs. FDA trial September 23rd. We also send legislative packets and letters to any city or state government talking about outright bans or indoor bans.

Our mission statement is "...to ensure the availability of effective, affordable and reduced harm alternatives to smoking by increasing public awareness and education; to encourage the testing and development of products to achieve acceptable safety standards and reasonable regulation; and to promote the benefits of reduced harm alternatives."

But we can't do it unless people donate more and become more active as members.

 

[WillieB69]

I think it would be a great idea. Testing would have to be done by independent non-biased researchers though.

 

[DaDuke]

CASAA is primarily about public awareness, but if we got a lot more donations, we'd be able to do exactly what you are describing. We already are earmarking 20% of all donations to fund research.

CASAA seems like a good start. I made a small donation but wasn't asked what i wanted the donation to go towards and that's fine since it was a small dontion BUT your site did say i would be asked to select 1 of 3 areas. Also, it didn't ask if it was a one time donation or a recurring billing which your site said would be asked. You should look into that.

I would feel more motivated to donate if there was say a research proposal outlining a project, it's goals, the organization/lab that would do the research, their credentials, the amount needed to launch, etc etc. A graphic meter could show how much funding has been acquired and how much is remaining to start the project. All donations could then be assigned by the donor to a preferred project.

This could easily include legal advocate projects to pay for salary, reasonable expenses, transportation, petition drives, etc to have advocates go speak to the appropriate politicians etc. With enough voters and petitions from ecf, CASAA and other sources, these advocates could actually carry some clout when speaking with politiicans looking for votes.

If i see your org doing what it claims, I pledge to give 5% of the value of all my e-cig related purchases to your org. If i see your org do anything like i suggested, i'll give more. Gotcha bookmarked and will check in now and then to see how you're doing. Good luck...

 

[kristin]

To be honest, I think the type of organization, with the specific criteria you suggest, would be nearly impossible to establish out of the gate and your expectations unrealistic.

CASAA has been trying to get set up for nearly a year now and it's been slow going.

It's a catch 22. People don't want to donate until the infrastructure is in place, yet setting up those things takes money. Consequently, CASAA has relied exclusively on the efforts of a volunteer board of directors, who have had to support most of efforts out of their own pockets. Getting vendors heavily invested is nearly impossible, because of industry politics.

CASAA is made up of some of the most dedicated and prolific e-cigarette advocates to be found and we are still struggling. We started CASAA with the intention of achieving everything on your "wish list."

If people want to start from scratch and try to do everything that CASAA is already trying to get support for, I wish you luck. After a year of doing this, I can tell you it is not as easy or simple as it sounds. We started out with 13 elected board members and only 7 of those original members are still actively working for CASAA. There are unforseen roadblocks and hurdles at every turn.

I would encourage people to consider supporting CASAA instead - not only financially, but through volunteering their services and expertise. (For example, we could really use someone with accounting or tax expertise, research or scientific experience and someone with experience running a charity or public health organization on our board.) CASAA already has the ball rolling and can achieve a lot more with member support.

There IS a propsed research study we are funding - IVAQs. There is an article about it in the August Newsletter: CASAA.org

Getting testing/research going is also not as easy as it sounds - trust me, we've been working closely with other advocacy groups and the nightmare maze of IRB approvals, scientific requirements, getting researchers on board, fighting roadblocks put up by the FDA and anti-ecig groups is something best handled by experts. But experts cost money, too. You have to get the money FIRST - there's just no way around it.

Read our current newsletter and you can see all of the things we have already achieved on a shoestring budget with dedicated volunteers. You won't find a more dedicated, passionate and hard-working group of people. If we can't do it, no one can.

I'll have Webby check the site inaccuracies. We did recently change our fundraising strategy, because so much money was being allocated to just one research proposal, that CASAA was no longer getting any other funds coming in for advocacy efforts. We now earmark 20% of all donations to research efforts. But we have discovered the hard way that dedicating donations to a "pick-your-own" system is neither efficient nor practical.

If you have expertise in this area, I would love to talk to you personally. We are looking to fill spots on the CASAA board and could use the assistance.

 

[kylewinther]

yeah some sort of electronic cigarette testing foundation would be good to get the FDA off our back!

 

[DaDuke]

Well spoken response and you actually addressed some issues I intentionally left out for brevity. I figured targeted donotions could lead to several projects that stall due to underfunding and then how would one deal with those funds. As a potential rememdy for that situation several policy options could be put in place. For example, a policy that a % of all directed funds would go to the donors favored project while the remaining portion would go a general fund. This way donors could still target donations which imo would increase overall donations. The general fund could be used for priority projects the organization believes best serve the near term goals.

Not trying to tell you how to run your org or saying "you're not doing it right" and don't want to come off like that. These are simply some thoughts i have on the subject as it is a passion of mine. I completely sympathise with the difficulties of running an org or a business. A lot of headaches and red tape that most do not take into consideration or like myself, don't even know exist.

I can also sympathise with the difficulty of getting past the catch22 threshold. Needing funding to get impressive results which further the cause and increases donations but needing the donations to get impressive results. I agree wholeheartedly that there is no need to form another org when a fine one such as CASAA already exists and has made a valiant effort towards this goal.

I would love to see some political activist type efforts like picketing government buildings etc with intelligent and well spoken signs. It's a tried and true method of getting free advertizing and increasing public awareness of ones cause. Combine that with some pamplets and petition drives would seem to be an effective avenue of action. I would volunteer for such activities in my area (las vegas) although i have no experience in organizing such things. I do have some sales experience and could be utilized as a meet and greet mouthpiece but would be happy to be a silent pamplet passer if that was deemed best.

After some searching i now see you have a forum here on ECF. Didn't notice that mentioned on your website but i still have a lot of reading to do there. I will catch up as i have time and will probably see some of my suggestions have already been addressed.

If you don't already have one, what about some premade signatures people can add to their forum sigs linking your site and forum? Looked around a bit but didn't see anything. maybe i'm just blind, i'll look harder and if not then i'll probably ask one of your current members to borrow theirs if i see one i like.

I'll become active in your ECF/CASAA forum and see if there's something i can do to assist that fits my abilities and area or acceptable range of travel. Anyway, hats off to CASAA and all it's volunteers for all their hard work. I've been and "off n on" member of this forum for over a year and was never aware of CASAA, thank you for bringing it to my attention.

 

[PoliticallyIncorrect]

One little problem to get around with this sort of thing: any study funded in whole or in part by an advocate party is presumed to be rigged.