Meet the Mills Family
The Mills are a family of 6 - Courtney, Jay, Andi (9 months), Emmie (4), Cruz (6), and Ali (10). Emmie’s diagnosis journey began when she was two years old. We began to realize she was going backwards with her speech and easily noticed a weight and hunger issue. Luckily, we started with Kennedy Krieger and they were the best and lead us exactly where we needed to be to find her diagnoses.
We decided to start a fundraiser on the way home from the foundation conference that we attended in Philadelphia. We talked on the way home about Tim Ogden’s speech on how the foundation funds most research for BBS. We came to the conclusion that us just sending in a donation wouldn’t be enough and we wanted to do more for families and our daughter who’s fighting BBS.
The theme of our event changed about 10 times as we talked. We jumped around for awhile and weighed different ideas, and tried to think of one that would give us the best outcome. Jay, is a car guy and has built many cars and has been to many car shows, so he kind of had an idea of how car shows worked. With a car show it gave us the option to blend all of the other themes we thought of into one. Like t-shirt sales, silent auction, ice cream sales, food sales and a raffle. Plus, Emmie loves loud cars.
The hardest part about starting the fundraiser was the fear of failure. To quote Courtney, “what if we do all this and no one shows.” That was the hardest to push through. We came to the conclusion of go big or go home and just hope. The unexpected was the out pour of help offered from friends, family and the community once we posted the event. That’s what made it a lot easier and a great event.
Our advice for others considering raising funds for the BBS Foundation would be to advertise, advertise, advertise. The feeling you get when it’s all said and done will make all the doubt and stress well worth it.