| |
The CMTA currently has more than 15,000 patients and families, supportive friends, and medical professionals in its database.
Our mission is to generate the resources to find a cure, to create awareness, and to improve the quality of life for those affected by Charcot-Marie-Tooth. Our vision is a world without CMT!
Gifts to the CMTA go either to client services (operations) or to research. Gifts to client services make the day-to-day function of the organization possible, as well as funding such patient services as our newsletter, our 800 question-and-answer line, our website, and our patient-family conferences on CMT. Simply put, there would be no one to answer the phone and offer help to CMT patients were it not for operations funding. The Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association is proud that the percent of its total support and revenue spent on administration and fundraising expenses has always fallen well below the 25 percent allowed by the government.
Gifts to research, on the other hand, are restricted in use and are only available to fund our research grants, fellowships, and the North American Database on CMT. Begun in 1995, our grant and fellowship programs, have distributed over $2 million to study such topics as pregnancy and CMT, the genetic causes of various forms of CMT and orthotics and their value to CMT patients. (See Research History for a complete breakdown of each grant awarded to date.) Also, since its inception, the North American CMT Database has been funded by the Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association, and we will continue our commitment to the database when it is incorporated into the Centers of Excellence the CMTA is establishing in 2009.
To demonstrate the strength of our commitment to research, on September 1, 2005, the Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association ended its practice of deducting administrative expenses from donations made to research. That means 100 percent of every dollar you donate to research will be deposited directly in the CMTA Research Fund and will be used solely to fund research approved by the CMTA Medical Advisory Board.
That commitment continues, and in 2008, we implemented our Strategy to Accelerate Research (STAR), an aggressive and focused inititive that is expected to develop effective therapies for the three most common forms of CMT within three years and to be able to reverse symptoms for some forms within ten years. |
