I started the Sharon Antcliff Foundation in June of this year. Our mission is to raise funds and awareness for young-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and the families and individuals dealing with it. In a short time the idea has morphed into a multi-level attack on the disease and the lack of education surrounding it. We now have our www.safwarriors.org campaign, the www.abuck.org campaign, and we recently started our full-throttle awareness movement at www.stealingthefuture.org.

We’ve accomplished quite a bit in a short time, and I’m proud of what we’ve done. Many of you reading this have played a huge part in enabling us to get this far, and I want you to know that I am forever thankful for you and your contributions.

My plan was to have a small fund-raiser or two, raise enough money to market our cause, then go after grants and major gifts to keep us growing. What I’ve found over the last 90 days or so is that it sadly does not work that way. I was speaking to a member of our board recently, and he verified what I had been finding through my research: Corporations, potential major donors, and the Government all want to see one, major thing before they’ll consider funding your non-profit: Sustainability. If a non-profit can’t keep it’s doors open, cover their basic needs, and be otherwise self-sufficient, nobody is going to hand it a large sum of money. They want to see that a non-profit can pay it’s basic bills, print marketing materials, pay deposits on venues for fund-raisers, and use those basic funds to grow. Once they see that the non-profit can live without a major gift, they are more apt to consider giving them one.

Here's one thing we've learned since we started SAF in June: In general, people don't "get" young-onset Alzheimer's. With the exception of a short story here, or a quick write-up there, you don't hear about young-onset in your daily life. Even the Alzheimer's Association, for all the great work they do, has admitted to me that they don't do enough for the young onset patients. They have to spend their money where it will have the biggest impact, which for them, means working primarily with those dealing with traditional Alzheimer's.

The fact is, with only 500,000 people in the US believed to be dealing with YOAD (many of those being undiagnosed cases), it's too small a sampling for it to warrant any sort of major media coverage, or public service announcements. That lack of information leads to what I will politely refer to as "ignorance."

Just yesterday, a friend of mine, and a supporter of SAF, posted a link to this story on his Facebook page. The video is a moving two minutes that takes a look inside the disease, as a man of only 52 talks about losing his abilities, losing his career and friends, and trying to focus on the time he has left with his young children. The clip then shows a classic YOAD moment, as the subject, while trying to explain some of what he deals with, simply stops talking, physically unable to finish his sentence.

Shortly after the clip was posted, somebody commented with a joke about not remembering the person who posted the clip. As Alzheimer's jokes go, I've heard better. But the disrespect shown by making that weak attempt at a joke just made me realize that her thoughts were likely those of a large percentage of our population. She likely was just trying to be funny, and I get that. But had she known more about the disease, had she seen it at some point in her life, or had she taken the time to think before she spoke, I'd like to think she would have avoided that comment. Had that story been about a man with Cancer, would she have made a joke about him losing his hair from the chemo?

And so, after a long night of thought, planning, wondering, and hoping, I've decided that I'll make this announcement today.