Donation Protocol

Dr. Emil Chynn donates one LASEK each and every year to a worthy charity, and has raised $100,000 over the years for various charities in this fashion, including organizations as varied as the Dartmouth Club of NY, the Mt. Sinai Medical Student Free Community Health Clinic, V-Day (prevent violence against women), Pups for Peace (train bomb sniffing dogs to work in Israel), and Haitian Hurricane Relief.

Using this donated LASEK from Dr. Emil Chynn, recipient charities use this in fundraising, in a silent auction or raffle. For example, the Mt. Sinai medical students set up a website to sell raffle tickets, and sold 500 $20 chances to get a FREE LASEK from Dr. Chynn in 1 week!

Emil Chynn cares.

That’s why he became a doctor: to help others and serve his community.

As New York’s “Most Ethical” Laser Vision Correction Center (CBS News TV, 11/23/04), Park Avenue LASEK is committed to helping the community by donating to charities such as yours!

Over the past decade, we have a dozen LASEKs for various charities, including the Dartmouth Club of New York, Cordozo Law School, Mt. Sinai Medical School, Pups for Peace (which trains bomb-sniffing dogs in Israel), Our Lady of Pompeii (Dr. Chynn’s church), and V-Day (preventing violence against women).

We have raised over $200,000 in total for these charities!  Each charity raises between $4,000 – $10,000 per donated LASEK (the regular retail price/value for this donated LASEK is $4,000).  The better job that your charity does of promoting this valuable auction/raffle item, the higher you will be on this range!

Understand that potential donors need to be psychologically prepared to bid or purchase raffle ticketson the free LASEK (unlike other donation items).  This is because it is a surgical procedure (not dinner for 4).  This means that they will need sufficient ways to “qualify” us as a top-notch center, and Dr. Chynn as a world-class surgeon.  Otherwise they will not be comfortable/confident enough to bid/buy raffle tickets.

How do people want to qualify us?  Simple—by learning about us, going to our website, calling and speaking to our knowledgeable staff—most of whom have had LASEK themselves—and even coming in for a Free Consultation.  All you have to do is enable this natural information-gathering process.

Every corporation that donates to charities wants the positive PR that comes from being altruistic (and deserves this).  They are weighing the costs of donating and balancing it with the positive reputational benefit.

Therefore, if your charity is unwilling to do all of the work selling tickets/finding auction bidders, or to thank us publically, we cannot work with you, as it must be a “two-way street” in terms of us helping each other.

The donation is for 1 person (2 eyes) for regular definition LASEK, which is safer than LASIK because it’s non-cutting.  The regular price we charge for this procedure is $4,000.  If they want any upgrades to this basic Silver Package, the winner has to pay for those themselves.  But these are all optional.  With our Silver Package the patient will see like they do now in glasses or contacts (as the prescription is as accurate as glasses and contacts, +/- 0.25, like -3.00 or -3.25 or -2.75, with no more accurate prescription possible).

Hi-Def Laser Vision Correction involves a CustomVue WaveFront treatment, which is 25x more accurate than glasses or contacts.  With Hi-Def SafeSightTM we customize the prescription for each patient (e.g., we would treat a -3.38, for example, not round the prescription to -3.25 or -3.50.  Thus they see sharper than they did in contacts or glasses.  This option costs another $1,000, which the winner would pay (but still save $4,000).

Please note that it costs us $1,000 cash to perform your free donated LASEK procedure, as VISX (our laser company) charges us a royalty fee of $450 per eye ($900 total), plus there are other hard costs (disposable sterile supplies, medicines, etc.).  So the “best case scenario” for us (that the patient decides to upgrade to Gold and pays $1,000) puts us just back to “even.”  It’s impossible for us to “make money” on this.

We are not going to receive any of the money raised from the auction—it all goes to your charity.  But you MUST raise at least $4,000 (the regular retail price of the item) or the donated LASEK would “cheapen” our product to the public, which we are not willing to do. 

We will work with your marketing team to build a compelling, exciting, unique, coherent, and congruent message.  This is the only way that works, as the public must perceive some connection between us.

For example, we donated a free LASEK to a medical.  Their message included a testimonial in English and Russian that they put on their homepage, with a link to our homepage, so interested visitors could contact us (by email or phone), qualify us, and then purchase raffle tickets on their website, using a credit card.  Their goal was to sell 500 raffle tickets at $20 each, so that once all tickets were sold, they would raise $10,000.