Facebook Credits Participates In Its First-Ever, Large Scale Charitable Campaign
Newswise — The final remarkable lineup of actors, musicians, athletes and journalists participating in the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) primetime roadblock television fundraising event (September 10, 2010, at 8PM EST & PST / 7PM CT) concludes with the following supporters that who have now joined: Marcia Cross, Tim Daly, Idris Elba, Jennifer Grey, Mark Harmon, Vanessa Hudgens, Thomas Jane, Kathryn Joosten, Jaime King, Diane Lane, Jason and Brandi Maxiell, Dylan McDermott, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Shaun Robinson, Ryan Seacrest, Kyra Sedgwick, Brenda Song, and Nia Vardalos.
The Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) telecast will raise funds that will accelerate innovative cancer research. The live, one-hour fundraising event will be simulcast commercial-free on ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Bio, Current TV, Discovery Health, E!, G4, HBO, HBO Latino, MLB Network, mun2, Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, The Style Network, TV One and VH1 and hosted by network news anchors Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams. The broadcast will air in 195 countries, as well as on the Armed Forces Network.
As part of the campaign, viewers will also be able to make donations easily using Facebook Credits, Facebook’s virtual currency. People who would like to donate with Facebook Credits can go to Stand Up To Cancer's Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/su2c, where they can also share news of their donation with their friends. The SU2C broadcast, as well as the pre-show and extended play, will also be streamed live on the SU2C Facebook Page.
This marks the first time Facebook has leveraged credits for a large-scale charity effort. Facebook Credits are an easy and convenient way for people to buy digital goods in more than 150 popular social games and applications offered by independent developers on Facebook. Facebook Credits enable people to buy and spend a virtual currency across all applications that accept Credits.
Previously announced participants in the September 10th special include: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tatyana Ali, Dave Annable, Christina Applegate, David Archuleta, Lance Armstrong, Elizabeth Banks, Kathy Bates, David Boreanaz, Sir Richard Branson, Abigail Breslin, Michael Chiklis, George Clooney, Cindy Crawford, Baron Davis, Emily Deschanel, Fran Drescher, Elizabeth Edwards, Donald Faison, Sally Field, Derek Fisher, Bill Hader, Michael C. Hall, Dorothy Hamill, Tony Hawk, Anne Heche, Jon Heder, Marg Helgenberger, Cheryl Hines, Randy Jackson, Ken Jeong, Rashida Jones, George Karl, Minka Kelly, Dr. Jon LaPook, Laura Linney, Zachary Levi, Ray Liotta, Rob Lowe, Seth MacFarlane, Marlee Matlin, Shareen Mitchell, Mandy Moore, Olivia Munn, Lisa Niemi, Apolo Anton Ohno, Kelly Osbourne, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jim Parsons, Matt Passmore, Aubrey Plaza, Dr. Ana Maria Polo, Yarel Ramos, Naya Rivera, Robin Roberts, Seth Rogen, The Simpsons, Will Smith, Eric Stonestreet, Marcia Strassman, Alison Sweeney, Maura Tierney, Sam Trammell, Gabrielle Union, Sofia Vassilieva, Sofia Vergara, Denzel Washington, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Reese Witherspoon, Aaron Yoo, Renée Zellweger and Ethan Zohn.
Musical guests scheduled to perform include: Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Neil Diamond, The Edge, Delta Goodrem, Herbie Hancock, Kris Kristofferson, Lady Antebellum, Leona Lewis, Orianthi and Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson of Heart. These artists join previously announced performers including Natasha Bedingfield, Martina McBride, Aaron Neville, Dave Stewart and Stevie Wonder.
Cat Deeley of FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance will host the pre-show promotion to kick off the evening as the celebrity phone bank opens at 7:30 PM EST / 4:30 PM PST. A 30-minute online “after hours” extended play featuring jams with musical guests Fitz and the Tantrums, Orianthi, Natasha Bedingfield and Heart will conclude the night’s events. The pre-show promotion and extended play will be featured on numerous online portals and destination sites (which will all also stream the one-hour special online) including: ABC, ABC News, AOL, Bing, CBS, CBS News, Crackle, Discovery Health, E! Online, FOX, G4, Hulu, Livestream, MLB Network, MSN, mun2, NBC, Style Network, TV Guide, TV One, Ustream, VEVO, VH1, Wonderwall.MSN.com, omg.yahoo.com and YouTube.
In addition, Stand Up To Cancer has once again joined forces with eBay Giving Works to offer incredible charity auction experience packages in film, television, music, Broadway and sports that will raise funds for innovative cancer research. Big ticket auctions currently up for bid include The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn set visit, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark opening night package with Bono & The Edge, flight with Richard Branson, shooting hoops with NBA Star and more. The Stand Up To Cancer eBay Charity Auction opened September 7, 2010 at 7pm EST and will come to a close on September 17, 2010 at 7pm EST. Bidders can find an array of exciting auction packages and items to bid on with 100% of the proceeds going directly to Stand Up To Cancer. To bid visit www.ebay.com/standuptocancer
The broadcast is dedicated to the 12 million U.S. cancer survivors, illustrating how groundbreaking research can change the tide in the fight against the disease. Updates will be provided on the work of the five Stand Up To Cancer Dream Teams, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, will report on other new medical developments.
SU2C’s star-studded television special builds continuing public support and donations for cutting-edge cancer research that translates at a rapid pace from the laboratory to treatments and technologies benefitting patients. One-hundred percent of all donations received from the public will go directly to cancer research. Viewers will have the ability to donate via a dedicated phone line, the web, or through text.
The 2008 telecast helped raise over $100 million. To date, five multi-disciplinary “Dream Teams” of researchers from more than 50 institutions, as well as 13 young innovative scientists who are undertaking high-risk yet potentially high-reward projects have received SU2C funding. SU2C brings together these scientists from different disciplines across various institutions to work collaboratively, rather than competitively, at a critical time in the field of cancer research. The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which consists of more than 32,000 scientists engaged in the fight against cancer, is Stand Up To Cancer’s sole scientific partner. The AACR, the oldest and largest scientific organization in the world focusing on every aspect of high-quality, innovative cancer research from the bench to the bedside, is responsible for administering and managing the grants, and providing scientific oversight in conjunction with the SU2C Scientific Advisory Committee, led by Nobel Laureate Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D., institute professor at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
About the Stand Up To Cancer InitiativeStand Up To Cancer (SU2C) – a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization – raises funds to hasten the pace of groundbreaking translational research that can get new therapies to patients quickly and save lives. In the fall of 2007, a group of women who have been profoundly affected by cancer began working together to marshal the resources of the media and entertainment industries in the fight against it.
Stand Up To Cancer will return to primetime TV on September 10, 2010, at 8PM EST & PST / 7PM CT. The one-hour fundraising event will be simulcast live and commercial-free on ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Bio, Current TV, Discovery Health, E!, G4, HBO, HBO Latino, MLB Network, mun2, Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, The Style Network, TV One and VH1.
The SU2C founding members include Laura Ziskin, executive producer of the Sept. 5, 2008 broadcast and the upcoming one, who is a cancer survivor; Sherry Lansing, chairperson of the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Board of Directors and founder of the Sherry Lansing Foundation; EIF President and CEO Lisa Paulsen; Katie Couric; EIF Senior Vice President Kathleen Lobb; Rusty Robertson and Sue Schwartz of the Robertson Schwartz Agency; nonprofit executive Ellen Ziffren; and Noreen Fraser, founder of the Noreen Fraser Foundation (NFF) and a cancer survivor. SU2C was formally launched on May 27, 2008.
Major League Baseball was the founding donor to contribute to Stand Up To Cancer. Other major SU2C supporters include Sidney Kimmel, the country’s largest individual supporter of cancer research; Amgen, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, The Gateway for Cancer Research Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Wallis Annenberg & The Annenberg Foundation, Alliance for Global Good, Milken Family Foundation, Philips Electronics, Steve Tisch, The Island Def Jam Music Group, Comcast and many others. SU2C major media partners include AOL, Bonnier Corporation, Condé Nast Media Group, Costco Connections, eBay Inc., Facebook, Hearst Corporation, iTunes, MySpace, Rodale, Inc., Los Angeles Times, Martha Stewart Living, Meredith Corporation, Time Inc., Twitter, VEVO and YouTube.
About the Entertainment Industry FoundationStand Up To Cancer is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that serves as the collective philanthropy for the television and film businesses. EIF has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to support programs addressing critical health, education and social issues.