Hello everyone and Happy New Year!
We’ve been quite proud of how well we’ve set up efficient budgeting with our research partners for this important study. Lundquist and our bloodwork providers are giving us strong discounts along with Keto Mojo and GB HealthWatch completely contributing their products and services.
Unfortunately, there’s one area of cost we don’t have much control over: travel and lodging.
Rising Costs for Travel, Participants
At the time we were building our projected expenses, it seemed likely we could negotiate packages between plane, car service, and hotel coming in around $250 combined per person, per trip. And to be fair, that was pretty realistic in December 2020 when travel industries were struggling, which was when we published this video.
However, the IRB process didn’t happen in short time as we’d hoped. We weren’t fully approved until August of 2021 when I announced the study launch. Unsurprisingly, as travel across the nation has resumed in those nine months, prices for all these travel services have increased, which is where we are now.
There have been a handful of other expenses that were unanticipated. One of our bloodwork partners has required us to set up a specialized account for clinical trials that involves greater expense. Another overseas bloodwork partner needs samples shipped as frozen throughout the trip, which costs quite a bit. And we did add a $50 meal voucher per trip for participants as recommended strongly by our research partners to accommodate their stay.
All together, we believe we’ll need to raise an additional $97,000.
OwnYourLabs.com Contribution
The good news is that our other venture, OwnYourLabs.com, has been accumulating proceeds throughout 2021 to contribute directly to the Citizen Science Foundation. I’m pleased to announce this totals $51,000, thus cutting the amount we need to raise to $46,000.
(And also, props to each and every one of you who bought your labs through OwnYourLabs.com as all of them contributed directly to this study!)
How You Can Help
There are three primary ways you can show your support:
- Contribute directly to the Citizen Science Foundation. Again, we are a fully qualified, 501(c)(3) Public Charity. Naturally, this is the easiest and most direct way to help. The contribution is generally tax deductible – please talk to your tax preparer for more details. It’s worth noting we have a 0% admin overhead, save third party services (such as credit card processing).
- Order your private bloodwork through OwnYourLabs.com. Proceeds are continuing to accumulate for further funding directly to the CSF to support this study. Moreover, if you opt in, you can further help citizen science by volunteering your anonymized data for a discount (see site for details).
- Share, retweet, repost – spread the word! Obviously, the more you can help us let others know about this important cause, the better. 🙂