Hello Friends and Happy New Year. The initial Fundly campaign I had set up was victim to a hacking campaign on 12/26. Thousands of transaction attempts were made, which overwhelmed Stripe, the payment processor that was collecting donations. Stripe was unable to mitigate the attack and resorted to disabling the payment pathway, which means that all successful donations that were collected needed to be refunded. Those of you that have donated, you should see refunds to your credit card for your initial donation.

While all of this was happening, me and my family were in Europe where it was difficult for us to deal with the customer service issues as we didn’t have a laptop to log into the various dashboards that Stripe uses to handle customer support. I realize many of you were having a hard time making donations as Fundly/Stripe were unable to differentiate between legit attempts and the automated bot attempts, and I’d like to share my apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

Long story short, I’m having to start over and using GoFundMe this time around. This new campaign is aiming for a little extra as we exceeded the $7,500 goal the first time around thanks to the generosity of the amazing community of friends and family that wanted to help Bill and his family find a little extra comfort through these difficult times.

This experience has reminded me of the old saying, ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ so to those of you that have to go through the donation process for a second time, my apologies. For those of you new to this effort, welcome, and I trust this new campaign will work more smoothly. I’ve copied and pasted the initial fundraising story below for people donating for the first time, but for those of you that already donated once, no need to keep reading. Jaime and I will plan an event in the coming weeks, most likely at the American Legion in Evanston, and invite all donors to attend. During that event, we’ll present the Robert’s with the funds raised and have a guest book that everyone can leave a message in. For anyone that can’t attend, feel free to send me or Jaime any message you’d like to leave and we’ll make sure it gets into the guest book.

Thank you for being such amazing people and please continue to keep Bill and his family in your prayers.

Gabe

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[Original Story from the Fundly page appears below]

I've talked to so many people, who like me, have been greatly saddened to learn of Bill's recent brain cancer diagnosis. While we're all sending the Robert's family positive thoughts and prayers to help them through this difficult time, several people have inquired if there is anything else they can do to help, so that got me thinking. I've been spending a lot of time with Bill lately and he's been incredibly resilient and taking on everything that is coming at him, one day at a time. I’ve yet to hear him complain and he’s leaning on his signature “I got this” determination to keep doing everything like he always has. But with more difficult days ahead, I told him there are so many people that want to help him, but he said, “I’m too proud and stubborn to accept a gofundme campaign, at least not yet.”

So I’m setting up this campaign on Fundly instead. This isn’t about the money. It’s about doing Bill a huge favor to take weight off his back and help ease his mind. I asked Bill, if he had a magic wand and could make some things happen around the house to ease his mind and help give him space and comfort to get through the next few months, which will include challenging chemo and radiation treatments, what would he do? He said he'd like to see the window replacement project for his home get finished out. He was personally doing the work when he got sick and the project stalled out, which has been stressing him out. He continues to chip away at window projects day-by-day, but needs to avoid ladders and prolonged exertion, so it's slow going. I’m raising money to find a contractor to come in, and as quickly as possible, completely finish the project.

Kaari also mentioned that Bill has been working to finish out a room in his basement where he can nurture his creativity and love for photography. He’s already started that project as well, but there is still a lot of work to do. With many months of being constrained to the house ahead of him, the goal for this project is to create a bit of a sanctuary where Bill can escape throughout the day to be distracted and find peace. It’s really a very simple project, some basic wood shelves, timber constructed desk, some new lights…super basic.

As many of you know, Bill is a jack of all trades and would rather do all of this work himself as it irks him to pay people to do things he believes he can do just as well. But things are different this time around and my goal is bringing together our amazing community to hire professional help and knock these projects out in January so by the time Bill starts his therapy, he’ll have a bit less to worry about. Think of it as bush-league effort to create a small-home makeover to bring Bill some unexpected joy.

The goal is raising $7,500. If we can pull it off, we’d like to schedule work to take place over a few days and will pay a premium to find a contractor that can put a good size crew on this work. As best as we can, we’re going to try to find a way to get Bill out of the house while the work is being done, which will be good for Bill and the people doing the work!

In addition to the tenuous economic climate, I realize this is a terrible time of year to be shaking a tin cup, so please do not feel any obligation to donate. Also, please share this page with friends of the Roberts and hopefully we can get to the $7,500 goal and get work knocked out before the end of January. I wish you all and your families a safe, happy, and healthy Holiday. God bless.

Gabe