The following is posted as a response to members who have asked where the donation target of $65,000 will be spent. If you have additional questions about the donation program or this initiative, please post them here so that we can provide a timely response.
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How will our donation money be spent?
While it would seem simple to answer in one or two paragraphs, we feel it is important to provide some history and perspective along with the details for where donation money will go. We hope this additional information will be satisfactory.
The past couple of years have brought tremendous changes to the orthopedic industry. Gradual consolidations and cuts to marketing budgets have influenced the Foundation for the Advancement in Research in Medicine, Inc. (FARM) and BoneSmart. As companies consolidated and budgets tightened, so did our sponsorships.
These changes took place while BoneSmart was expanding to a larger and more stable platform, redesigning both forum and website, and developing the BoneSmart app that many of our members use to access BoneSmart. We had commitments for design, programming, testing and implementation that extended over a couple of years. All our plans came to fruition and BoneSmart, as you see and use today, is the result of that effort.
Unfortunately the implementation coincided with the industry consolidations and reduced funding. We currently have unpaid expenses from these improvements. In addition we also have unpaid expenses required to recover BoneSmart from multiple hack attacks in the last 9 months. For those of you who have been on the forum for a while, you may remember these hacks totally crashed our system and we were actually offline for several days until our programmer got the problems resolved. During this time, the BoneSmart team voluntarily performed the work needed with only a promise that they eventually would receive compensation for their many hours work.
We need to honor our agreements and pay for these services. Our donation initiative SaveBoneSmart will enable us to satisfy those debts for all our BoneSmart offerings.
The world is a different place today than it was even two short years ago. We can no longer depend solely on corporate donations to keep FARM and BoneSmart operational. As we go forward you may see a number of different initiatives to help us keep BoneSmart the vital support site that it has become. We have a strong internet presence largely due to the quantity and quality of information and support available. We truly value our members’ role in achieving that level of recognition and want to continue to be there for past and new members.
**************************************************************************************
How will our donation money be spent?
While it would seem simple to answer in one or two paragraphs, we feel it is important to provide some history and perspective along with the details for where donation money will go. We hope this additional information will be satisfactory.
The past couple of years have brought tremendous changes to the orthopedic industry. Gradual consolidations and cuts to marketing budgets have influenced the Foundation for the Advancement in Research in Medicine, Inc. (FARM) and BoneSmart. As companies consolidated and budgets tightened, so did our sponsorships.
These changes took place while BoneSmart was expanding to a larger and more stable platform, redesigning both forum and website, and developing the BoneSmart app that many of our members use to access BoneSmart. We had commitments for design, programming, testing and implementation that extended over a couple of years. All our plans came to fruition and BoneSmart, as you see and use today, is the result of that effort.
Unfortunately the implementation coincided with the industry consolidations and reduced funding. We currently have unpaid expenses from these improvements. In addition we also have unpaid expenses required to recover BoneSmart from multiple hack attacks in the last 9 months. For those of you who have been on the forum for a while, you may remember these hacks totally crashed our system and we were actually offline for several days until our programmer got the problems resolved. During this time, the BoneSmart team voluntarily performed the work needed with only a promise that they eventually would receive compensation for their many hours work.
We need to honor our agreements and pay for these services. Our donation initiative SaveBoneSmart will enable us to satisfy those debts for all our BoneSmart offerings.
The world is a different place today than it was even two short years ago. We can no longer depend solely on corporate donations to keep FARM and BoneSmart operational. As we go forward you may see a number of different initiatives to help us keep BoneSmart the vital support site that it has become. We have a strong internet presence largely due to the quantity and quality of information and support available. We truly value our members’ role in achieving that level of recognition and want to continue to be there for past and new members.
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