You might have caught yourself thinking, “I want to give back to my community,” especially if chronic illness or isolation has left you feeling helpless. Maybe you have firsthand experience with how the symptoms of thyroid disorders make it almost impossible to be productive, or a misdiagnosed spinal leak kept you homebound for years while physicians routinely dismissed your concerns.

You may be at a point in your life where you're seeking a greater purpose, and you are currently searching for it.

You deserve the chance to make a difference after spending years being told your symptoms are your fault or there’s no hope. However, contributing to worthwhile causes in traditional ways, like donating blood or spending time volunteering at events, can feel impossible when you can barely get yourself out of bed. The good news is that there are many ways to help today, even if your physical health isn’t where you want it to be. For example, sending small financial contributions to worthwhile causes or spreading awareness about issues like the impact of thyroid disorders on productivity counts as giving back.

Our patient-led social enterprise offers exactly that: an opportunity to join a cause that is making change at the grassroots level globally. You can support causes like spreading awareness about health issues such as thyroid disorders and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks, for millions of people, by helping fund education and advocacy, and receive updates on the progress we are making as we network with clinicians around the world.

Taking action by contributing financially or offering other forms of support helps to make a difference. For example, consider thyroid disorders, which the American Thyroid Association estimates over 20 million Americans are suffering from. About 60% of people with thyroid dysfunction haven’t been diagnosed. Many of them are women who suffer symptoms like fatigue, depression, and brain fog, as they struggle silently at work and in other aspects of their lives.

Undiagnosed thyroid issues cost U.S. businesses over $50 billion annually in lost productivity. Patients often still struggle with symptoms that prevent them from working full-time even after being diagnosed and treated, partly because many endocrinologists typically prescribe levothyroxine as a standard treatment for all thyroid-related issues.

Research shows treated thyroid patients are more likely to seek long-term sick leave and make disability claims than their healthy peers even disability claims than healthy peers. When you invest even a little in raising awareness or education about thyroid health, you’re giving back by helping reduce the hidden burden thyroid dysfunction puts on coworkers, families, communities, and the healthcare system.

You help take back the power from medical bias when you contribute to our program. You’re telling the medical community that “people’s health matters!” and becoming part of a growing patient-led movement.

I Want to Give Back to My Community: Understanding the Opportunity

Saying “I want to give back to my community” is a call to action. For those seeking a cause greater than themselves, becoming part of a mission and witnessing measurable results is a fantastic way to contribute. By making monthly contributions, you become a member and see your funds put to work as we drive change. That’s enough to help build social ROI that has a significant impact in the real world.

Social return on investment is a framework for measuring the impact of your contributions. Every contribution helps to create real social value, such as better patient guides, more community workshops, and ultimately healthier people, putting the power back in the hands of the people and of the patients in declaring that we will not stand for the medical system to overlook common health problems simply because US healthcare sees these conditions as not profitable enough.

Contributing to our for-profit social enterprise is one way to give back. The funds provided by contributors like you are used to expand education on healthcare gaps, such as thyroid disorders and cerebrospinal leaks. This means your $5 or $10 contribution can help us with tasks ranging from publishing a new easy-to-read patient guide on iodine sensitivity to talking with a lead in a hospital system who works in community education about the impact of excess iodine on thyroid health. As a grassroots movement, every drop counts to create a bigger splash.

As a for-profit enterprise, we have more flexibility than a non-profit. We can effectively communicate the value of improving care to underserved groups by pitching return-on-investment stories to decision-makers. This approach means that we are reinforcing that people with chronic health conditions matter. We have seen the type of clinicians that approach us with language regarding “awareness” or the “vulnerable” when they see a patient-led enterprise and assume we are a non-profit.

In one instance, a neurologist contacted Marion Davis, the founder of medicalofficemarketing.com and a patient advocate, and canceled a call he had initially requested with her to “help the underserved.” After reading content created by her, he realized she was a patient who was also highly informed about spinal CSF leaks. There is fear among many US clinicians, who are accustomed to maintaining power rather than approaching with curiosity, due to a reluctance to have their expertise questioned.

We have seen them enter spaces with vulnerable people without plans to improve their knowledge, and they actively communicate plans to extract money from people in a vulnerable state, such as charging cash bribes for patients in the emergency room to complete an epidural blood patch rather than upskilling and offering services in private practice after putting in the work. That’s why we operate as a for-profit. We don’t just raise awareness passively; we actively make change by holding physicians to a high standard and empowering other patients to do the same, to expect more.

For-profit social enterprises are gaining increasing popularity in the US as people become tired of the lack of real-world impact of many non-profits. Having worked with clients in non-profit and for-profit organizations, we’ve seen decision-makers often ignore pitch decks that focus on people helped rather than financial potential.

Finance-focused decision-makers do not like the idea of interacting with a black hole, such as money constantly going towards awareness of hypothyroidism. They prefer to see tangible results, such as the financial ROI, when investing in programs that offer measurable improvements in hypothyroid patient outcomes and employee well-being data.

Here are just a few concrete ways your contribution helps:

Patient guides: With your help, we partner with clinicians to make materials and courses available on our site that explain thyroid and spinal leak issues in plain language, as well as offer continuing education material for clinicians.
Community education: Your support enables us to reach hospital programs through networking and establishing contacts within hospital systems. This raises awareness of our programs before we finalize contracts and secure hospital buy-ins to bring thyroid awareness and iodine education to local communities, particularly those that are less familiar with these conditions.
Workplace wellness: We utilize contributions to engage HR departments in promoting the value of expanding thyroid and women’s health seminars in the workplace, thereby helping more employers reduce sick leave requests and enhance employee well-being.
Faster growth: Every dollar speeds up the development of resources and the outreach to more crucial contacts. That means more articles, webinars, community partnerships, and conversations with decision-makers to reach people who need this information now.

Contributing doesn’t have to be a lump sum. Think of it like joining a large crowd, all pushing in one direction. You give what you can, and we leverage it with grant partnerships and volunteer effort to achieve a social return many times that.

How Can I Contribute to My Community? Small Actions, Big Difference

Some ways you can help, in addition to contributing financially, include:

Learn and share: Educate yourself on issues you’re passionate about, like thyroid health and iodine. Take our self-paced course “Are You Consuming Too Much Iodine?” It’s an easy way to gain more awareness, and the purchase itself helps fund outreach efforts. Once you learn something new, share it on social media or with support groups. Teaching someone else what you know is a powerful form of giving back.
Spread awareness: Follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter. When you “like,” share, or forward a post about thyroid health or spinal CSF leaks, you help expand our reach. You’re using your voice to give back.
Take action at home: Talk to neighbors or family about what you’ve learned. Start a small online discussion or support group about thyroid issues. You can also sign petitions or write letters. Take actions that demonstrate to organizations that there is community interest in these topics.
Join a virtual event: You can attend our future webinars with live discussions on health conditions. Engaging with experts and asking questions is a great way to give back. It helps us plan future education based on real community needs.

Remember: “Giving back” doesn’t only mean contributing financially or marching in parades. It means finding your own way to contribute. Maybe that’s $20 for our iodine course this month, or perhaps it's for tweeting about thyroid awareness and the U-curve of iodine's benefits on World Thyroid Day. Every bit adds up.

How Can I Give Back in My Community? Social Return on Your Effort

When you give to a cause like ours, the “return” comes in stories, not increased stock prices. That’s the essence of Social ROI (Social Return on Investment). Organizations try to quantify how our efforts improve lives and communities. Your contribution helps create healthier patients, reduces the need for sick time among employees, and enables more knowledgeable doctors to provide comprehensive care for these often-misunderstood conditions.

Think about the value of one more person avoiding years of misdiagnosis? You become part of the ripple effect, even with a small financial contribution. For example, our work might help one woman learn that her chronic fatigue is due to iodine excess, causing hypothyroidism. Instead of simply being prescribed levothyroxine as a standard treatment for thyroid dysfunction, she gets comprehensive treatment that includes a full blood panel and dietary modifications with guidance from an informed, registered dietitian. She starts feeling much better after simple modifications to her diet to reduce iodine excess and returns to work, saving her company thousands in sick pay while restoring her own quality of life.

Your financial contribution makes that happen by helping us weed through the countless US dietitians who push back against change and try to assert power over patient-led campaigns to find those clinicians who are curious enough about change and passionate enough about patient health to invest in using our services to improve the quality of care at their clinic.

The amount of grassroots support we have provides something called social proof. Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. Essentially, it's the idea that if others are doing something, it must be the right thing to do, especially in situations of uncertainty. This can manifest in various ways, from following trends to relying on reviews when making purchasing decisions.

While many dietitians may tell us there is no need for iodine-informed thyroid support that focused on diet and many endocrinologists may tell us that levothyroxine works well as a one-size-fits-all approach and that there is no need to improve hypothyroidism management, we have the data from research studies and from patient surveys and searches that show that patients are desperately searching for help in diagnosis, for information on why they suddenly developed hypothyroidism, and for non-medication alternatives due to not improving on levothyroxine or experiencing horrific and expensive side effects.

Thyroid disorders affect over 40 million people in the U.S., and women are 5–8 times more likely than men to develop them. Untreated thyroid problems drain families and communities emotionally while putting financial burdens on companies and systems. You’re effectively investing in millions of lives when you pitch in.

For example, our team’s analysis of research studies found that silent thyroid disorders cost companies over $50 billion a year in lost productivity. If better education and early detection, funded by community support, cut that waste by even 1%, that’s half a billion dollars saved, and countless stress-filled workdays prevented. Your dollars buy improved community health and hope.

Example of Giving Back to the Community: Your Role in Action

What does giving back actually look like? Here’s a scenario: Say you or a friend struggles with brain fog at work, but can’t figure out what’s wrong, and the endocrinologist hasn’t been much help.

You learn from our newsletter that excess dietary iodine can cause thyroid dysfunction (our course covers this as well), which leads to symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, and sensitivity to cold. You share this tip with that friend, and they use the information to advocate for themselves. Now, your simple act of sharing has helped speed up someone else’s potential diagnosis. That’s giving back in a meaningful way.

Every time someone enrolls in our iodine course, they contribute to a snowball effect where we are gaining momentum and responding to patient needs, from talking to clinicians worldwide to having these international clinicians help inform practices back here in the US as we gain traction.

Giving Back Under Changing Funding Climate

You might wonder: Why a for-profit social enterprise? Why become a contributor to a company instead of donating to charity? Part of the answer is a broader shift in how social causes get funded. Under the recent Trump administration, federal agencies quietly signaled they’d blacklist certain words in grant applications, words like “advocacy,” “disability,” “community equity,” and even “women.”

Grants that mention these terms, even in relevant medical research, could be rejected before review. Meanwhile, many health issues that impact underserved groups have lost federal support.

This change in attitudes toward social spending has forced many patient groups to adapt. Instead of relying on National Institute of Health (NIH) or National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, they turned to corporate sponsors and private social impact investors. Companies now often set up for-profit “grants” or investments in social enterprises, prioritizing metrics like social ROI instead of tax-deductibility. This is why organizations like ours exist; we’re structured to align with that new funding reality.

For contributors, this means your support has more leverage at our company. Because we’re a social enterprise, not a nonprofit charity, we aim to demonstrate measurable impact. Every volunteer hour and dollar we gather is tracked to show outcomes. You help build that track record of “social return” by chipping in, which in turn attracts even more funding from companies and foundations that now prefer this model.

We turned a trap into an advantage. Words like “equity” and “activism” might make some grant reviewers uneasy, but they won’t stop you from helping here. You validate the need for equity in healthcare when you give. You also help demonstrate to large investors and employers that investing in thyroid and spinal health education yields social and financial benefits. That’s how community contributions can shift policy, by making it clear there’s public demand and impact for these issues. There is a market demand, and we are the market demanding better care.

Be Part of the Change

There’s a reason you’re reading this: you care. You want to help. Here’s a summary of how you can act now to give back to your community’s health:

Contribute financially: Visit our Join the Mission page and add your contribution. Any amount helps us produce more guides and outreach. Remember, your support is an investment in public health, not a tax break, but the social return is enormous.
Enroll in our course: Our webinar “Are You Consuming Too Much Iodine?” is available for $20. It’s a great way to learn and fund the cause. Plus, you’ll gain knowledge to help yourself and others.
Subscribe to updates: Sign up for our email newsletter. It’s free, and you’ll get insider news on how the community is making progress. You can do this now on the Subscribe pages. Every subscriber on our list strengthens our voice with partners and funders.
Share on social media: Like or repost our blog articles on thyroid health, spinal leaks, and giving back. For example, you could share “The Hidden Costs of Mismanaged Thyroid Disease” on social media sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. The more you raise awareness, the greater the social impact we all have.

Social ROI is real. Every dollar you contribute or every new subscriber you help acquire gets converted into a measurable impact. You’ll get regular updates showing exactly how your support is used, and each milestone we celebrate is partly yours to claim.

You don’t have to try to move mountains on your own. You’re not alone. We believe in putting patients first, and change happens when patients like you step up. By giving in a way that fits your situation, whether through money, spreading knowledge, or just staying informed, you are indeed giving back to your community.

Ready to join our cause? Check out our Join the Mission page to learn more about how to contribute financially, and sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop. Thank you for caring. Together, we can change the future of underserved health issues like thyroid and spinal leak care and give hope to everyone who has ever felt alone while seeking quality care.