Kickstarter for Mullen's Applesauce

From their website:

• Kickstarter is full of projects, big and small, that are brought to life through the direct support of people like you. Since our launch in 2009, 5 million people have pledged $843 million, funding 50,000 creative projects. Thousands of creative projects are raising funds on Kickstarter right now.

In essence, it's "crowd fundraising" for projects that otherwise wouldn't always attract big money investors. And now, one of our own has a project going:

• My name is Jim Mullen. On October 16th, 1996, my life changed in a major way. I was a Chicago police officer in the Rogers Park neighborhood and one night, I was shot in the cheek and spine while on duty. I was instantly paralyzed and dependent on a respirator to breath. In that moment my life changed forever. I was in the ICU at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for 2 months, and spent 4 months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago before returning home and bound to a wheelchair. My new reality inspired a passion in me for proving to everyone that life is what you make out of it. Ever since that day, I've remembered that life is precious and dreams are worth chasing.
  
  I was having a medical scan of my heart one day at Northwestern Hospital, what I refer to as one of my regular “tune-ups,” when the lady doing the scan told me about her barbecue sauce company. Growing up, my mother, Audre’s, apple sauce was a hit with everyone. And because of her, I know what good, home cooked food tastes like. She was a self-taught chef, and we used to tease her about how her apple sauce was so good that she should bottle it. Even when I was just a kid, I used to joke around and say, “It’s like apple pie without the crust!”
  
  Later that evening when I came home after my medical scan, I decided I would follow my dream and start my own food company. After all, my mother made the best apple sauce in the world, and I wanted to share my mom’s apple sauce with the world by getting it on the shelf of the grocery store, HAPPY FOODS, where she use to take me when I was little. All I have wanted to do is to make her happy, and this is my way of sharing a piece of her with others. When life gives you apples, make Apple Sauce.

In short, Jim needs $25,000 by 01 December. The website says he's raised about 20% of that in 3 days. We're betting he can reach that goal with days to spare if our readers chip in. You can sponsor as little as a buck, but really - we get 15,000 hits a day here. Even if it's only 7,500 people visiting twice and they each kick in $2, Jim's at 80% of his needed capital. We're dropping a bit more than the minimum and we'd ask you to think about it, too.

Head over there and help one of our own trying to make his dream happen.