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NARFE Reaches $12 Million Alzheimer’s Fundraising Goal!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jessica Klement
November 22, 2016 703-838-7760
  jklement@narfe.org

Alexandria, VA – Cumulative NARFE-member donations to the Association’s NARFE-Alzheimer’s Research Fund have topped $12 million, NARFE National President Richard G. Thissen announced November 22. “I appreciate the efforts of all NARFE members who helped us reach this goal,” Thissen said. “Our members’ continued generosity shows our dedication to help all Americans and the world fight this terrible disease.”

Since NARFE took on Alzheimer’s as a national project in 1985, members have raised money through setting progressively higher cumulative fundraising goals. The total represents thousands of individual member donations and proceeds from hundreds of small fundraising efforts.

“All of our members know someone who has had Alzheimer’s – a family member, friend or acquaintance – and many of our members have been Alzheimer’s caregivers,” said Thissen. “They know first-hand the toll Alzheimer’s takes and how important it is to find a cure. We are proud to help fund vital research that will lead to a world without Alzheimer’s.”

Through a partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association in Chicago, IL, 100 percent of NARFE-member donations go to Alzheimer’s research. The NARFE-Alzheimer’s National Committee, made up of members from NARFE’s 10 regions, meet each year and, with the help of experts from the Alzheimer’s Association, select the research projects to fund. NARFE has funded 71 projects since 1985. By virtue of its contributions to Alzheimer’s research, NARFE is a member of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Zenith Society, which represents the Alzheimer’s Association’s “highest and most involved” level of donors.

“NARFE member efforts to raise funds for research aimed at bringing an end to the devastation of Alzheimer’s disease demonstrate the spirit of public service and altruism that federal employees and retirees so often show throughout their careers – something too often ignored by unknowing people, pundits and politicians,” Thissen added.

The donation program is strictly voluntary on the part of NARFE members. The “$12 million in 2016” goal was set at NARFE’s 2014 National Convention. Confident that the goal would be reached this year, members attending the NARFE National Convention in August 2016 set a new goal of reaching a cumulative total of $13 million in 2018.

Separately, NARFE members who formed teams to participate in local Alzheimer’s walks contributed an additional $41,000 to the Alzheimer’s Association this year, Thissen noted.

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The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), one of America’s oldest and largest associations, was founded in 1921 with the mission of protecting the earned rights and benefits of America’s active and retired federal workers. The largest federal employee/retiree organization, NARFE represents the retirement interests of nearly five million current and future federal annuitants, spouses and survivors.