Twitter has been essential to the Frozen Pea Fund success. It started with a photo and now the FPF has succeeded in raising over $30,000 for cancer research. Connie and Susan each had the honor of being mentioned with Keith Burtis on the front page of The Buffalo News.

Last December, Virginia resident Susan Reynolds underwent a needle biopsy to determine whether she had breast cancer.

To ease the pain and swelling afterward, Reynolds initially put an ice pack on her chest. But she didn’t like the feel of the ice pack, so she replaced it with a pack of frozen peas.

Reynolds wrote about this on her blog and included a picture of the pack of peas peeking out from her top. She also sent out tweets about the peas.

This started a wave of tweets about the peas, and scores of pea-themed photos ended up on Twitter and Flickr, the photo- sharing site.

You can read the full story here. As a side note, we would wish Keith heartfelt congratulations on his new position as Best Buy’s Community Manager!

It’s October 3rd here - pushing the 4th - and that means we’re already a few days into National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

That’s right.  There’s something going on in the United States other than the Presidential election or the Financial Crisis.  Every day, there are women waking up to find out that they have been diagnosed with Breast Cancer.  Every day, there are women waking up to put in another day of fighting against the disease that is trying to defeat them.  Every day, there are women not waking up - because they didn’t win the fight in time.

But we can do something every day too - we can get one step closer to finding cures for the different kinds of Breast Cancer that threaten our sisters, daughters, mothers, friends, wives and selves.

It doesn’t take a lot.  Just a few moments of your time donated to one of the many, many organizations banding together to fight this horrible cancer.  Just the change in your pocket, the price of a latte unbought, the price of a couple of packages of frozen peas.  Take a second and find your “inner peas” again.  When you do? Click on the link on the right and do your small bit today to help out.  After all - today IS every day.

Thanks!!

Connie Reece, founder of the Frozen Pea Fund, will be joining the Austin Twitter/Tech community to save lives by donating blood on Thursday, July 3, at the Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas. Connie had the idea to do a blood drive in association with the Frozen Pea Fund, and Michelle Greer and David Neff stepped up to help organize the Austin event.

The idea is to gather with some friends from your favorite social network — Twitter, Plurk, Ning, Facebook, for example — at your local blood donation center and give a few pints for a good cause. It’s especially timely this Thursday, which is the day before a major summer holiday, when the blood banks need extra inventory.

Choose a sign-up time for the Austin blood drive here. And if you organize a drive in another location, please let us know in the comments below.

For the friends of the Frozen Pea Fund, a bag of frozen peas symbolizes pain relief. Cancer often inflicts other kinds of pain: emotional devastation and the inability to cope with things that once seemed simple; debilitating fatigue that results in isolation; or the financial burden of lost income coupled with out-of-pocket expenses of treatments not covered by insurance, or the fact that even co-pays on medications can add up to a staggering amount.

Last week we learned of a cancer patient who lost his home in a fire. The family stored what few possessions they had managed to salvage in the car and headed to Houston for a scheduled treatment at MD Anderson. While staying at a hotel, they endured yet another loss: someone broke into their car and stole the rest of their belongings.

Dr. Michelle Calabretta of MD Anderson started a fund to help the family purchase some basic necessities. “He is a lovely man whom we all adore,” she said, “and my coworkers are trying to raise some money to help him rebuild. You can imagine how hard it is to deal with cancer when you have all of your comforts, but now this man truly needs our help. If you are moved to help this man and his family, please consider donating whatever you can manage. We will pool all the funds and get a Visa gift card that they can spend on whatever they need.”

PLEASE NOTE: Today is the last day you can contribute through this ChipIn widget. I encourage all of the people who have helped the Frozen Pea Fund to give what you’re able today–even $5 (the cost of two bags of frozen peas) can make a powerful statement to this family, and the entire cancer community, that we care and want to help.

UPDATE: The original ChipIn widget has been closed in order to purchase a Visa gift card for the patient today. A new ChipIn widget will be open until May 25 for additional donations. It’s not too late — please chip in a few dollars to help this family in need.

At BloggerSocial08 Scott Monty had the idea of auctioning off the absent Joe Jaffe’s name tag to benefit the Frozen Pea Fund. After a spirited bidding war, Geoff Livingston (The Buzz Bin) wound up with the coveted badge, and we received a very generous contribution of $500.

To keep the fun — and the good work — going, Geoff decided to pass the distinct honor of being Joe Jaffe for a day to anyone willing to contribute $25 to FPF. The effort has gone international, with its own Flickr group: I am Joseph Jaffe.

Recent Jaffe poseurs (and fund contributors — thank you!) include Sean Howard (who kept his clothes on for a change), Cam Beck, Paul McEnany, and Katie Chatfield.

Joe has been a great sport and joined in the traveling joke about his name badge (see photo above with instigator Geoff). Thank you all for your kindness and your spirit of keeping the fun in fundraising.

One day you’re talking with your daughter about what colleges she’d like to attend and the next day you’re praying you’ll be alive to see her graduate, go off to college, get married and have babies. … This wasn’t part of the plan. – Tricia

Cancer is never part of the plan. It strikes unexpectedly, and it does not just strike an individual. Cancer affects an entire family — even an entire community, to varying degrees.

This past week many in our online community were saddened to hear that Tricia, the sister of Todd Andrlik (@ToddAnd on Twitter), was scheduled for a bilateral mastectomy on Saturday. Her story bears a striking resemblance to Susan Reynolds’s case: discovery of a suspected cyst, immediate diagnosis of invasive lobular carcinoma, and surgery just nine days later.

Tricia’s surgery went well, and the news is hopeful. Pathology reports will give clearer answers, but the surgeon appeared confident that the cancer had not spread to other parts of her body. However, she faces months of treatment — months when she will be unable to go back to work and her family will be faced with some staggering expenses. Even with insurance, out-of-pocket expenses for a cancer patient can be quite high.

To help his sister, Todd created a beautiful website — and he created a way for you to help Tricia and the Frozen Pea Fund at the same time. It’s also a way to promote your business or to pay tribute to a friend or loved one who has fought cancer.

Go to the Pixel Page on the 4tricia.com blog. Buy a block of pixels and upload your image or logo. You can even add a tagline and a link to your website. A 10 x 10 pixel square is $1. The most common selection is a 50 x 50 pixel square, about the size of an online avatar, and it’s yours for $25.

Tricia and her family have graciously offered to donate 25 percent of the proceeds to the Frozen Pea Fund. In fact, we have already received our first donation from them!

We want to thank Tricia and her family, and especially Todd, for including the Frozen Pea Fund. And we extend our thoughts and prayers for a quick recovery for Tricia.

How about you? Would you please support Tricia by leaving a comment for her on 4tricia.com and by purchasing a pixel? It’s a great cause, and an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of a family in our extended community.

Please spread the word about the pixel project on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. And feel free to blog about the effort on behalf of Tricia, or email the link to a friend. Thanks in advance for your help.

– Connie

Just a note to let you know that our Donation Widget is temporarily disabled. We are making some web site changes as we transition into being an independent nonprofit organization. Exciting things are happening but they’re not quite ready to announce yet — we’ll be updating you soon.

In the meantime, here are some suggestions for ways to commemorate Frozen Pea Friday besides monetary contributions:

1. Mike Gunderloy (@MikeG1) is donating platelets to his local Red Cross today. This is an excellent suggestion for any day of the week, but it’s especially meaningful to those of us at Frozen Pea Fund because chemo patients often need blood or platelets. Check out this post by Kate, who is battling pancreatic cancer and just received two units of blood and additional platelets.

2. Blog about the Frozen Pea Fund or tell your friends about it. Our donation widget is down temporarily, but we’re not going anywhere.

3. Change your avatar on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking site to a peavatar. Don’t know what that is? Check out the Frozen Pea Friday group on Flickr. And if you haven’t uploaded your peavatar to Flickr, please do so.

4. Add your name to the Frappr map for the Frozen Pea Fund.

5. Check out SharingHope.tv, a new video project by the American Cancer Society that allows people to share their cancer stories in their own way. Here’s what Susan Reynolds had to say about SharingHope.

– Connie Reece

While Susan Reynolds was in Austin, a bunch of Twitter folks got together at Waterloo Ice House on Saturday night for dinner. Bryan Person and family were also visiting from the Boston area. It was a lovely evening, and the group — 16 adults and 4 kids — enjoyed eating outdoors by the playground.

Attending were @susanreynolds; @condopro (Susan’s husband, Bill); @BryanPerson and his wife, Stella, and their children; @conniereece; @khaynes (who volunteered to coordinate the event); @RichardatDell; @karasoluri; @taxtweet; @mikeneumann; @LaniAR and husband @agentgenius; @daveiam (David Neff of the American Cancer Society); @aruni and family; and @thomsinger dropped by on his way to a family gathering.

The video is Susan and Mike posing with the infamous Lady Thunder, who just had her 9,000-mile mani-pedi and looked absolutely stunning that evening.

Check these Flickr photo sets for more tweet-up fun:

Kim Haynes

Mike Neumann

Lani Anglin-Rosales

Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece (or Laverne and Shirley as they referred to themselves after viewing this video) finally got to meet in person this week when Susan and her husband, Bill, flew to Austin for meetings. Frozen Pea Friday #10 marked a milestone: incorporation and trademark papers have been filed. When completed, the Frozen Pea Fund will be a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation.

There will be a lot more to report in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. For now, Susan and Connie want to thank you for supporting those who, like Susan, are battling breast cancer, and for your support of cancer research and awareness through the Frozen Pea Fund.

I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for their program, For Immediate Release. As a fan of this popular podcast, I was happy to have the opportunity to talk to them in person, especially when the topic was one of my favorite projects, the Frozen Pea Fund.

The interview is about 30 minutes. Click to listen: FIR interview: Connie Reece, Frozen Pea Fund