Silver Jubilee: Celebrating 25 Years — HelpSaveLife
How a seventy-dollar gift among friends grew into 25 years of HelpSaveLife: 1,756 families helped, more than two million dollars given, and how to join in or donate.
It started with $70.
25 years, 1,756 families and more than two million dollars later, a circle of friends is still lending a hand to mend a life.
Lend a hand to mend a life
In November 2001, a few friends heard about a young woman in Kottayam, Kerala, who needed care after a kidney transplant. They pooled what they could spare. It came to seventy dollars.
Nobody in that group thought they were starting anything. There was no office, no staff and no plan. There was only a feeling most of us know: someone is in real trouble, I cannot fix it alone, and I cannot look away either. So each of them gave a little, and the little added up.
A few weeks later came a mother of three with heart disease. That request raised $90. The third raised $110. Word travelled the way it does among friends, one phone call and one email at a time, and the circle grew.
Behind every request since then there has been a face. A daily-wage labourer whose income stopped the day the diagnosis came. A nursing student one fee payment away from leaving college. A family whose home was taken by a flood or a landslide. More than a quarter of all requests come from homes that live on a daily wage, and nearly one in four involves cancer.
What has not changed is how it works. HelpSaveLife is still run entirely by volunteers. Every request is still brought forward by a member who knows the family or has seen their situation in person. Hospital bills, fee receipts and bank confirmations are still collected for each one. And the money still goes where it was meant to go.
What has changed is how many of us there are. That handful of friends is now a community of more than 1,500 members across 33 U.S. states and beyond, and together we have raised over $2.05 million. It did not come from a few large cheques. It came from thousands of small ones, given month after month by people who simply kept showing up.
This is the story of those 25 years. It belongs to everyone who ever gave ten dollars and wondered whether it mattered. It did.
Request #1 · November 2001: $70. For a young kidney-transplant patient in Kottayam, Kerala. The first entry in a ledger that now holds 1,756 supported requests.
Our mission is to extend direct, compassionate financial relief to people in genuine need, irrespective of race, religion, gender or nationality.
What a quarter century of small gifts adds up to
$70 → $2M: From seventy dollars to two million
First request, 2001 → total raised by 2026. The first request raised $70. The first eight years together raised about $59,000. Today the total stands at $2.05 million across 1,756 supported requests, and 2024 alone raised more than three times what those first eight years did combined.
$10: The power of ten dollars
The most common gift in our history. Members have made more than 40,000 individual gifts to requests. Four in ten were exactly $10, and half were $10 or less. Gifts of $25 and under have quietly added up to over $350,000. Nobody had to be wealthy for this to work.
24: No family is helped by one person
Members, on average, behind every request. More than 1,300 people have given through HelpSaveLife, and a typical request is carried by two dozen of them. 83 members have each supported over 100 different families, and 5 have each supported more than 1,000.
0%: Every dollar given goes to someone in need
Of donations, in effect, spent on running costs. There are no salaries and no office. Since 2009, running costs (web hosting, state filings, bank charges, postage) have totalled about $6,600, roughly a third of a cent per donated dollar. Bank interest earned over the same years also came to about $6,600. The interest has paid the bills, so members' gifts have gone, in effect, entirely to those in need.
3×: When crisis came, the community tripled its giving
Growth in giving, 2019 to 2021. Annual giving went from $75,000 in 2019 to $231,000 in 2021 as COVID-19 swept through Kerala. One relief fund alone sent direct support to 54 families. After the 2018 floods, another reached 28 families who had lost homes and livelihoods.
How 25 years unfolded
- 2001: A small group of friends answers its first request in November: $70 for a kidney-transplant patient in Kottayam. Two more requests follow before the year ends.
- 2004–05: Members begin keeping their own HelpSaveLife accounts, depositing in advance and pledging to requests as they open. The first 39 member accounts are on the books by the end of 2004.
- 2009: An eight-year-old boy in New Jersey suffers a traumatic brain injury. 275 people give $72,850, still the largest outpouring for one request. Yearly giving passes $100,000 for the first time.
- 2011: The 10th anniversary is covered by Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi, two of Kerala's leading newspapers.
- 2012: Sponsor A Student begins, pairing members with students for the length of their studies.
- 2014: Monthly default contributions launch: members choose an amount that goes automatically to every regular request. The first house-construction request is funded.
- 2018: Kerala's worst floods in a century. Members raise a dedicated relief fund and send help directly to 28 affected families.
- 2020–21: COVID-19. Giving more than doubles in 2020 and sets a record in 2021, with 189 requests supported in a single year.
- 2026: Total giving crosses $2 million. A new website launches in November, the month HelpSaveLife turns 25.
Things we never set out to measure
Read through 25 years of requests, pledges and payment records and some habits of this community come into view. A few of them surprised us.
- 2× (December giving): Members give more than twice as much in December as in an average month. Close to a fifth of everything ever deposited arrived in the last month of a year.
- Sunday (Favourite day to give): More pledges are made on Sunday than on any other day of the week: about one in every six.
- 12 (There from the start): 12 members who were giving in 2005 or earlier gave again in 2026, and 56 members have given in 10 or more separate years.
- ~80 (Kindness passed on): About 80 requests reached us through a former beneficiary: someone who had been helped, pointing to the next family in need.
- 117 (Members who vouched): Every request is brought forward by a member. 117 different members have done so, and one has stood behind 238 families.
- $329K (Employer matching): 322 gifts arrived through workplace matching programs. Members' employers have quietly become some of our largest supporters.
- 134 (Student sponsorships): Since 2012, 74 members have sponsored students, giving $161,000. 68 sponsorships are active today, and nursing is the course named most often.
- 30 days (Typical time to fund): Since 2023 the median request stays open for 30 days before it is funded and closed. And 42 requests went live within a day of being submitted.
- 644 (Thank-you letters): Letters of thanks from 472 families sit in our files, alongside more than 14,000 bills, receipts and confirmations kept for accountability.
For much of my education, you have supported me financially, helping me progress well in my studies. With all my heart, I wish you the very best.
Come and be part of us
On any given day there are families waiting. Whoever you are and wherever you are reading this, there is a place for you here. Join us as a member, or give to an open request today. Ten dollars is how most of this was built.
To every donor, volunteer and supporter: thank you for 25 years.
Figures are drawn from HelpSaveLife's records as of November 6, 2026. Bank-ledger figures (donations received, running costs, interest earned) begin in 2009. Counts based on request descriptions are approximate.