On establishing a leukemia fund

[AnHai Doan <anhai@cs.washington.edu>]

Dear friends,

I am very busy at the moment, so please forgive me for this quick writing
in English. 

I support the idea of establishing a leukemia fund. The fund could be used
not only for the Phuong Lien case, but for other leukemia cases from
Vietnam as well.

Several months ago, I talked with Dr. Judith Ladinsky, chairman of the US
Committee for Scientific Cooperation with Vietnam, about establishing
a general VNSA fund, which would help finance various VNSA-supported
activities and services. I was thinking at the time about hardware
equipments for supporting VNSA and other related mailing lists,
scholarship fund for students in Vietnam, book and equipment support for
folks in Vietnam, and charity activities, such as these leukemia cases,
among other things.

Dr. Ladinsky supported the idea and express her willingness to help us. 
She said she could help setting up one such fund account at the US
Committee, at no cost to us. The account will be established under the
VNSA name, and handled by one or two people we choose. We have complete
control over the account and how the money is spent for charity purposes.

Since the Committee is a NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION, money contributed to the
account is TAX DEDUCTABLE. You write a check to the account, you will
receive a receipt which you can use to deduct the paid amount from your
taxable income. This is a big advantage of establishing an account with a
non-profit organization. Besides, you may not know that together with ba'c
Diem Quynh, the US Committee, and especially Dr.  Ladinsky, is also an
active participant in helping the little girl Thuy Linh getting treatment
in the US.

So what I suggest is that, barring any really better alternative, we
should ask Dr. Ladinsky to help in setting up one such account
at the US Committee as the leukemia fund. If the general opinion
seems to agree on this, we can ask ba'c Diem Quynh or someone else to
talk with Dr. Ladinsky about setting up the account. Dr. Ladinsky is in
Vietnam at the moment, but we can talk with Ms. Nancy Volk, her contact in
the US. 

Other things we need to do (independent of where and how we want
the fund to be established):

1) We need to choose one or two persons who will handle the fund and
give periodic accounts on VNSA about how the money is spent.

2) We need to make a pledge list, in which each of us pledges how much
money we would contribute to the fund once it has been set up. This is
a necessary technique which is commonly employed at fund raising
activities, and is completely in line with the Vietnamese proverb
"DDe^? la^u c..t tra^u ho'a bu`n". We need someone to 
organize this pledge activity, I suggest Anh Hai-Tri Le or Ba'c
Diem Quynh. Those of us who want to contribute can then pledge
publicly or privately (to the chosen organizer) how much we would like to
contribute. Those who want to contribute anonymously 
need to send private mail to the organizer and say so.

Above are my suggestions regarding this leukemia fund idea.
Please let us hear your opinion and suggestions.

Best regards, AnHai.