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Nominated Cause
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mom2angelThis is the official discussion thread for the cause Parents Against Tip-Overs. Its EIN is 87-3803234 and it's a public charity based in Eagan, MN. Research more info about the cause on GuideStar and Charity Navigator.
We increase the awareness and prevention of TV and furniture tip-over injuries and deaths.
Parents Against Tip-Overs (PAT) was formed in 2018 by a small group of bereaved parent advocates from across the country who all lost a child to a dresser tip-over. Our mission is simple, we want to see an end to furniture tip-overs like the ones that took the lives of our children and hundreds of others.
Since 2000, nearly 600 people, mostly children, have died because a piece of furniture, a television, or an appliance fell on them. An average of 20,000 people are rushed to the ER every year with injuries from tip-overs. That’s one person about every 45 minutes! A child dies about every 2 weeks from a tip-over. Countless others sustain minor injuries or near misses, any of which could have just as easily been catastrophic, had the circumstances (physics) been just slightly different.
Our advocacy has been incredibly successful and that success has come from speaking engagements at local and international safety conferences, relationship building with consumer advocacy groups, child safety groups, and healthcare providers including the AAP. We became involved with the ASTM voluntary standard committee for furniture safety, collaborate with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on their Anchor It! campaign, and engaged with and testified before the CPSC and bipartisan members of Congress, compelling them to pursue the creation of a mandatory furniture safety standard.
We championed the movement of the STURDY Act through Congress, bringing all stakeholders, including the very manufacturers whose products killed our kids, to the table to collaborate on the language of a bill that if passed, would create a mandatory safety and stability standard for dressers and other clothing storage furniture that addressed the real world reasons these tip-overs happen and would require stringent testing to ensure these types of furniture would not tip-over when a child tries to climb. President Biden signed the STURDY Act into law in December of 2023 and the very first Federal mandatory safety standard for dressers and other clothing storage furniture will be effective later this summer!
We’ve done all of this with just a small group of parents and out of our own pockets, many of us while working full-time jobs and caring for other young children. Yet despite our success, our work is far from done, so I am nominating PAT for Charitocracy.
We decided to make Parents Against Tip-Overs a 501C3 in late 2021 so that we could grow and establish programming and resources to continue to raise awareness about tip-overs. The donations PAT receives go towards developing resources to continue to better educate the public about tip-over awareness and prevention and allow us to continue to be the leading national resource on tip-overs. We also provide grief support to other tip-over parents, mentor those who want to become involved in advocacy, and remain involved and engaged with the CPSC and the ASTM safety standard committee. We’d love to have enough funds to be able to provide free anti-tip devices to families who can’t afford to buy them, develop webinars and other informational resources, and grow our website and social media presence to reach more parents, grandparents, and caregivers. The more people we reach, the more lives we can save!
Advocacy is not easy, especially when you are a bereaved parent, but we are passionate about our cause and driven by the simple desire to prevent anyone else from living with the pain and heartache that we do. We can’t do it without the financial support necessary to help us make our dream a reality and reach every household in the U.S. and inspire them to secure their furniture, TVs and appliances to the wall. You can help us save lives!
Thank you for considering voting for Parents Against Tip-Overs as the charity of the month!
Also read Charitocracy's blog post about Parents Against Tip-Overs!
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Comments
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jzp-charit...While I agree it is a worthy Cause, it will not get this month’s pot so I beseech folks voting here to rally behind “A Mother’s Rest” such that the current #1 gets bumped.