If you're in any of my other social networks online, I know I've been talking about this constantly for the past couple days, so I apologize in advance for the redundancy of this email!

Here's the heart of the matter: I'm writing to let you all know that my sister, Rachel, is raising funds for the American Cancer Society. Being pathetically broke at the moment, I was only able to make the minimum donation of $5 at her fundraising page: http://bit.ly/ebHjd

However, I have been able to donate a little bit of my time and my share of voice online. I've posted on my blog, spread the word on Twitter and Facebook, etc. In about 12 hours, I helped Rachel meet her initial goal of $200!

But two thoughts came to my mind: Is $200 enough for cancer research? And if I could get my friends online to donate that much in 12 hours, how much more could be raised in a couple days? I figured that if only 10 percent of my online friends donated $5 each, we'd have a figure closer to a grand...

So, I encouraged Rachel to raise her fundraising goal to $1,000 - the trouble is, tomorrow at 5 p.m. East Coast time is the deadline for making donations! Right now, Rachel's got $260 present and accounted for; we still need to get $740 into the account by tomorrow afternoon.

If you have five bucks or more to donate, please go to http://bit.ly/ebHjd and give as generously as you like. If you don't have five bucks to your name, PLEASE spread the word! Blog, tweet, or post that link and let people know to make even a small donation as soon as possible.

If you're interested, I've also been posting on my blog about the theory behind converting social capital to IRL help for charities. Take a look! http://jolieodell.wordpress.com

I wish you all a happy rest-of-the-day and send you my hugs and a hi five, with advance thanks for all your support and help!