The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The world's oldest hockey stick will be used to promote charitable giving through a new website called fanscharity.com. fanscharity.com launches with the display of the stick at Wayne Gretzky's Restaurant in Toronto on January 01, 2004. fanscharity.com encourages donors to give to one of four charitable causes by letting them publicly dedicate their donation on an Internet website. The charitable causes supported by fanscharity.com include cancer research, heart & stroke research, wildlife preservation, and children & world peace. See 'Donated' P.# Con't from P.# The organization is currently coordinating with well known charitable foundations in the health research and wildlife sectors to establish a direct channel for the donated funds. These partner-charities will receive 100% of the donations made through fanscharity.com. The children and world peace initiative is an educational program being developed to teach school children about the social benefits of charitable giving. "With the largest transfer of wealth from one generation to another coming in the next several decades, it's important that school age children have an appreciation of how their future inheritance can improve the state of our world", says Gord Sharpe founder of fanscharity.com. Donors who visit fanscharity.com can download a donation form (also available at Wayne Gretzky's Restaurant) and then complete the form with their own personal message of congratulations, remembrance or greeting. They send the completed form, a 4x6 photo and their donation to fanscharity.com by postal mail. The organization then digitizes the document and photo and places it in their Internet archive. Later in 2004 donors will be able to complete the process online using a secure server. "After CNN and Canada NewsWire covered the 2001 eBay.ca auction of the World's Oldest Hockey Stick (www.worldsoldesthockeystick.com), there was tremendous interest in using the stick as a promotional tool for major corporations," said Mr. Sharpe. He then met with corporate executives from Canadian Tire, Labatt Breweries, Nike and the NHL Alumni to develop his concept of fanscharity.com. "With the collective brain trust of these marketing experts, it became apparent that the stick could be used to raise money for charitable purposes." The eventual sale of the hockey stick will fund the operation of the organization, allowing all donated funds to be directed to the donor's chosen cause. The website can be found at www.fanscharity.com.
