Important stuff in this issue Take the pre-conference Survey Policy highlight: Ensuring a great experience for all FUN-raising Hotel Info The Conference is coming! The Conference is coming! As winter fades to spring, our excitement is blooming, and we are busy ramping up preparations for the MTM-CNM Family Conference just a few months away. Here's the latest news from MTM-CNM Family Connection, Inc...

We want to hear from you! As we continue working on the design and logistics for the 2019 MTM-CNM Family Conference, we also want to learn more about our potential attendees and what issues matter to you so that we can provide the best possible experience.   We appreciate the great feedback we have received so far and are working to incorporate the needs that the community has expressed. If you have not yet done so, please take a moment to tell us about your interest in attending and what you would like to gain from the conference. The survey is open for all families, professionals, and community members. Click here to take the survey

Ensuring a great experience for all at the Conference

The MTM-CNM Family Conference is a unique experience and opportunity for our community, families, medical professionals, and pharma industry partners, to come together for a collaborative and inclusive weekend. It provides opportunities for learning, sharing, collaboration, and fun through a variety of structured and unstructured activities. Meaningful conversations happen not only in the formal learning and discussion sessions, but over meals, informal conversations, and hanging out at the hotel restaurant and lounge after hours too. Families and medical professionals alike often travel many miles and give up their own time to all come together for this life-changing experience.  Our MTM-CNM Family Connection team, comprised of all volunteers, carefully plans out every Conference to host a comprehensive event that aims to unite the MTM-CNM community. The brief few days at the MTM-CNM Family Conference may be the only opportunity some in our community have to interact with each other face-to-face. This is precious time and making the most of that time is of the utmost importance to us. As such, we will again include the following policy as part of conference registration for all attendees. We find it necessary to emphasize this particular policy, due to situations at our previous conferences where another organization – without our knowledge or involvement, and despite our requests to the contrary – arranged for private social events and other activities that took a select portion of our conference attendees away from the main gathering during the conference weekend. Those actions were counter to the intentions and mission of MTM-CNM Family Connection to bring the whole community together. The policy for the 2019 MTM-CNM Family Conference is:

The agenda of the MTM-CNM Family Conference includes a variety of structured and unstructured activities that are inclusive for all attendees, many of whom have gone through great lengths to attend the conference and meet with doctors, researchers, and families. No other individual, organization, company, or entity may create, organize, or otherwise arrange other activities targeting professional or family attendees of the Conference.

We welcome ideas from the whole community for activities and agenda items for the Conference, and enthusiastically encourage your participation in helping us to make this the best Conference yet! Please work with us if there is something you think would make a great addition to the weekend. If you have something in mind, or if there are any questions about the policy, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team directly at info@mtm-cnm.org or via the survey linked above.

FUN-Raising! We need YOU to help make the conference happen!

The MTM-CNM Family Conference is only made possible by the generosity of our donors, including corporate sponsors and grass-roots efforts of family fundraising. Big or small, all contributions are appreciated! Through active community fundraising we can cover the essential costs of the conference and hopefully offset some of the costs for families, as we have in the past. For example, we would like to keep registration costs as low as possible. So as an incentive, for every $500 a family raises for the conference, their registration fees will be discounted by $100.

One very simple way to fundraise for the conference is to join our Crowdrise team. Click  here to get started, then click the "Join" button.  You can create a new account instantly, simply by linking to your Facebook profile, or take a couple of extra seconds to enter an email and create a password. Then you customize and share your Crowdrise page with friends and family, and they can donate through your page.

For past conferences we’ve had families who have hosted fundraising sales through Pampered Chef (cookware), LuLaRoe (clothing), and Younique (make-up).  Some other successful fundraisers are "Wear Jeans Day" at work or school (everyone who wears jeans makes a donation, e.g. $5, to the cause), bake sales, yard sales, restaurant nights (a restaurant donates a portion of the day's sales to the charity) and so much more. Or perhaps consider a letter writing campaign to family and friends sharing how much the conference means to you.  Now, what fun and creative ideas do YOU have?? We'd love to hear them!! If you have a fundraising idea for the conference, please email us at info@mtm-cnm.org to let us know and partner with us to make it happen.

Announcing the 2019 Venue: Hilton St. Louis Airport

MTM-CNM Family Connection is thrilled to be partnering with the Hilton St. Louis Airport for this year's conference venue! We have secured a block of rooms at a special discounted rate of only $110/night (+tax). Book your hotel reservations easily online by clicking here to secure the conference rate. If you have special requests, such as a preference for a handicap accessible room, please make your reservation by calling our hotel contact Natalie directly at (314) 942-6970. The Conference rate is available from July 17th though July 22nd for those wishing to extend their stay a bit, and includes complimentary in-room Wifi and on-site parking.

Be sure to book your rooms asap to guarantee a spot in our block, which is being held until June 18th. After June 18th, reservations will be subject to space and/or rate availability at the hotel, which might sell out. Don't wait! Please note! In addition to hotel reservations via Hilton, all conference attendees will also need to complete conference registration via MTM-CNM Family Connection - the registration link will be coming soon, so stay tuned!

Hope to "See You In St. Lou"!

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