Update:: PayPal will donate an additional $5,000 to the winning team!

So, it is even more important that you take a few minutes, go to the Call to Action page, and Donate. 

Again, why do I Stand Up to Cancer? In May 1992, my step-mother Carol had a lump on the side of her face. They thought it was some sort of ‘nerve bundle’ problem. I will never forget the moment the surgeon told us it was some sort of cancer he had never seen before, hugely aggressive. The specimen was sent to NIH or some other famous place to be analyzed.  By September, Carol was dead. Cancer was a terrible killer. 

There’s another Carol, this one in my neighborhood. She’s currently fighting Lung Cancer, and has gone through huge amounts of chemotherapy. She’s lost her hair, but not her dignity. I never see her complain and she always seems to have time for her grandchildren, who are friends with my kids.

For the first Carol it is too late, but for Carol, please donate $5 or what you can afford to Stand Up To Cancer. What if your $5 bought the test tube that was used in the research that cured some form of cancer? It could happen. Donate today, please. 

I’ve stated that anyone who donates more than $100 in the next hour, I’ll give social media lessons. Ok, I totally stole that from @christinelu. But hey, all is fair in the Smackdown.

Over on the Stand Up To Cancer blog, they tell great stories of people who are inspiring. One of my stories and reasons for Standing Up To Cancer is about my cousin, Abby. At age 12, when many of her friends were more interested in boys, haircuts and bat mitzvahs, Abby had some symptoms that no one could figure out.

She took it upon herself to go online and do her own research, and her conclusion was unfortunately correct: she had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. And if you quote her the Larry David quote about “the good kind” she’ll look at you with fierce anger, then tell you there is no good kind of Hodgkins.

Abby went through hell, lost her hair, was sick all the time from chemo and radiation, and basically lost a year of her childhood. All while managing to complete school work and come back the next year as President of her class.

I look at her now, a grown woman, at an Ivy League school, working for a prominent government office as an intern and probably in line for a serious job there, and I marvel at how she has continued her life.

But I also know she and her family always have be on the look out for the Big C.

So, as part of this Smackdown, I Stand Up for Abby, and I’ve made a donation today to Stand Up To Cancer, in hopes that my amount will make a difference for the girls like Abby in the future.

Click and donate, please. The Dropdown menu lets you donate more than $5, by the way.

I’ve been asked to participate in Charity Smackdown 09 – a cause marketing event contest between teams lead by Celebrities with Social Media ‘notables’ on each team. Each of the Smackdown Teams has from March 16th at 11pm EST to March 26th to raise as much money as possible for the causes.
My cause, as it has been since last year, is Stand Up To Cancer. Cancer has touched my life in terrible ways through family and neighbors over the past few years, and this is my way to give back. (More stories as the week goes on).
My team is “Team Corbin” led by musician (and High School Musical star) Corbin Bleu, and including Natali Del Conte (@NataliDelConte), Tech Reporter for CNET and CBS’ the Early Show, and Jared Eng of celeb blog JustJared.com (@jaredEng). My team is up against some stiff competition, from celeb power like Alec Baldwin and 2 of the stars of Heroes, and also from some top social media celebs like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, WalMart’s 11 Moms, MCHammer and Chris Brogan.
Will You lend me your friends and your network to help promote this cause?

*****Call To Action******

Please help me to at least place respectfully in this competition by taking one or more of the following actions:

1.    Look for the donation widget below and Please link to it.(A simple way to do this is to copy the Web Address of this page, and make it a link via your Facebook Status message – see below). (UPDATE:)

2.    Make your own post in support of my team and link to or embed our donation widget.
3.    Donate. If you can spare the $5-10 you’d usually spend on Starbucks for the week or something, that’s great. It all helps. If I could get 100 friends to send $5 or $10 I’d be absolutely ecstatic. If Cancer has touched your life, consider doubling what you’re giving.
4.    Add my team’s donation Widget to your blog,  MySpace, or webpage. There’s going to be a separate thing for Facebook.
5.    I’ll be Tweeting about #Smack09 – please follow me and my teammates on twitter (@howargr) and ReTweet my posts – or “like” them on FriendFeed. The hashtag is #smack09. Also, follow @smack_talk on Twitter.
6.    Change your social network status or IM status to “Support Team Corbin and help @HowardGr to Stand Up To Cancer”  http://tr.im/smackdown #smack09 please RT”
7.    Send an email to friends: “Hi, my friend/colleague/this guy I know Howard Greenstein is part of an online event to raise money for Stand Up To Cancer. Please see URL for more details and to support his cause, donate at URL.”
8.    Suggest something that I should do here that I haven’t thought of yet. Comments are open.
Anything you do (even donating to one of the other causes) is helpful to this event, and to me. This event goes for 9 days –  if I’m bugging you let me know, or just delete the mail.
Finally, this event is called a “smackdown” because some of the fun is talking smack to the other teams. It is all in good fun, and no one (including me) should take offense.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You for helping me and for helping my team in this cause.

Disclaimer: The event is called a “SmackDown” because there will be “Trash Talk,” defined by the Urban Dictionary as: “In the course of a competitive situation putting down your opponent verbally or saying how good you think you are. Often involving talk of moms or sisters” ie: “Your momma’s computer is so slow, she can’t even use Facebook.”

I have no intent to personally insult or harm anyone, make them feel bad or send them crying home. This is all in good fun. And we’ll all watch the “Your momma” references. My mom reads the blog. Enough said.

Full Disclosure part: The contest is sponsored by PayPal and Tech Reporting blog Mashable (Disclosure – I’ve recently been working on an article to be published in Mashable – non-compensated).

The contest money raising will be done via PayPal – and the organizers assured me that aside from the usual transaction fees (2% or so for Non-Profits) that the full money goes right into those charity controlled accounts.

I was asked to participate by my friends at Weber Shandwick (I’ve consulted for Weber in the past, but not recently), who first introduced me to Stand Up 2 Cancer last summer. SU2C  is

“a new initiative created to accelerate groundbreaking cancer research that will get new therapies to patients quickly and save lives. SU2C’s goal is to bring together the best and the brightest in the cancer community, encouraging collaboration instead of competition. SU2C utilizes the entertainment industry to create awareness and to build broad public support for this effort.”

SU2C supports AACR.org – which states in its financials that “88 cents of every dollar spent supports research grants, fellowships and scientific education for AACR member scientists, as well as public education. ”

A few folks on the net have recently complained about these kind of online fund raising events – even saying this promote the corporate interests over the charities. I disagree. Having worked on the 9-11 relief efforts as part of the Twin Towers Fund from 2001-2003, I can tell you some of the largest companies in the world made huge donations that, while they may have hit the newspapers or news wires for the day, helped the lives of people for years to come.

I sense this long term awareness and effort to help is the intention in this event, and I’m supporting it. Kudos to Pete and the Mashable team for stepping up for this event.

If I can help raise money for my cause, for any of the great causes, if I can raise awareness about these causes, then I will have done something useful and valuable during this week. I’m going to be asking you, my friends and readers, to pass along messages, support the cause (any one you choose) and enjoy the playful smack talk that goes with this ’smackdown.’

The widget below (to be inserted when it goes live) will allow you to donate to SU2C and the “promote” page for Team Corbin will allow you to add a badge to your blog, MySpace, website,  or other site in order to spread the word.

Please help me promote this fun online event, and please donate what you can. Thank you.