First a very happy and successful new year to all of you on all your endeavors, but especially your efforts to get fluoride out of your community, state and country.

The FAN team is extremely grateful to all of you who donated so generously to fund our efforts in 2016. It was especially heartening to see again many of the same names that appear each year.  Your loyalty to our efforts is truly touching. A special thank you to our three super-angels who livened things up with your challenge pledges.

Our final total at midnight EST was $132,238 from 530 donors. We ended up on a positive note with the last two days providing record daily total (Dec 30) and number of donors (Dec 31) for the month.

Congratulations to Susan Nichols who came closest to guessing our final total: she was just $200 away with an estimated total of $132,438 from an estimated 506 donors. Thank you to all of you who participated in this competition and hopefully it added a little more interest to the last few days of our fundraising campaign.

Despite all of the generous and heartwarming efforts I am sad to report that we fell far short of both of our goals ($200,000 from 1500 donors). This means that we will be looking for extra funding from Foundations. If anyone has suggestions on this front we would be delighted to hear from you.

Again thank you all for your support and for all you are doing to end fluoridation.

One last request. We heard a few weeks ago that one of our great fluoridation fighters in Australia – Ailsa Boyden – has been diagnosed with a serious cancer. This means that she has had to end her activities on the fluoridation front. It would be very nice if you were to write to her care of Merilyn Haines (mehaines@bigpond.com), who heads up FAN Australia, thanking Ailsa for her tireless efforts and indomitable spirit. It was back in 2003 (I believe) when I first asked Ailsa if she would kindly set up the Australian Fluoride Information Network so that she could keep all the fluoridation fighters in Australia up to speed with the latest fluoridation developments and information. She did this for many years and her effort was a huge benefit to all fluoridation fighters in Australia and beyond. So please join me in giving Ailsa a big cyber hug

Paul Connett, PhD
Co-ordinator of the 2015 Fundraising campaign

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