Our birthday party is over and I'm overwhelmed by the result. Initially, I had my reservations about us being able to reach our goal, and never had I expected you to be this generous! On the fourth day we had already collected $3350 and the school-o-meter turned into an explode-o-meter :). Read on for more information about the donations and about the next steps.
To give you an impression of the gifts, I've prepared a little histogram:
As you can see, the majority of the people donated between 10 and 50 dollars (the absolute peak being on $10) and we had two extremely generous sponsors: one for $250 and one for $500!
As someone observed, receiving 204 donations means that about 3% of our readers participated and I think that's a great result. I suspect that some people are already donating to other causes and others may not be in a position to give away their money. That's fine!
If you look at the number of donations per day you'll see them dropping off until yesterday. Apparently some people realised this was their last chance to give :)
Too much money! Oh no!
As we overshot our goal of $3350 for the classroom by almost $800, we can add additional educational products to our gift. I'm suggesting the following:
- 40 x 100 hot meals for children. I'm guessing that there will be about 20 kids in the classroom and that they'll have 200 schooldays per year. Offering them a hot meal every day is an excellent encouragement for their parents to send them to school. 40 meals cost 40 * $11.64 = $465.60, so we still have some money left.
- 2 x 12 textbooks = 2 * $ 58.20 = $116.40 .
- Two goats, one alpaca, and three animal care kits = 2* $45,56 + $ 38.80 + 3* $ 27.10 = $211.22. Yeah yeah, I'm a sucker for animals :)
This totals to $793.22 (I used an exchange rate of 1 GBP = USD 1.92). I'll leave a bit of space for exchange rate differences. If there's any money left, I'll give it to the Blender Foundation.
How about it?
And now?
Here's what's going to happen now:
- I have transferred the money to my personal bank account. I'll now have to wait until it arrives before - I can spend it with my creditcard (my creditcard isn't really a 'credit' card).
- Once the money is in, I'll place the order at the Oxfam website.
- I'll publish the receipt of the order here, as 'proof' of the purchase.
- Enjoy the good feeling!
I expect you'll see the receipt here next week. Until then, thanks again for your generosity and enthusiasm!
Bart
29 Comments
By the 7th day the mircale was complete... can I get an amen in the house!!!
I'd also encourage you to go to either World Vision or Compassion to sponsor a child (better yet, multiple children) to make a difference directly into a family's life.
God Bless
This is really great. Sadly i couldn't donate as i didn't have a card or a bank account.
The Blender community is the greatest one i know =D
God bless! =D
I know I´ve said this before, but maybe the greatest feature of our beloved full-featured Blender is its community.
Cheers!
Two goats? An alpaca?!?
I thought meals had already been suggested ;-)
Leo
Wow thats great! Blender comocunity ROCKS! I could'nt donate anything either, but im very plesed to hear that so many super blender-heads did it! Congratulatons!
this community is great!!
keep up the great work, peace.
Thats great!
How about adopting a child? Financial adoption of course. Maybe we can adopt one with the blender community and call her suzanne ;-) Its less than $30.
A great fundraising and it's amazing how fast it has been reached.
It would be cool to have someone making photo's of this results, like maybe photo's of the building of that school, from the class and kids or something. Is there someone of that foundation giving updates on the subject? just curious. :)
Washington said:can I get an amen in the house!!!
I will say AMEN! Bart may I say that you have some great humanitarian ideas under your belt and it is even greater that the readers from Blendernation had pulled together to see your vision fullfilled. Personally I couldn't donate as my first son was delivered yesterday (' hooray I'm a Dad!') and second lack of funds. But I have been watching the support given by this community on a day to day basis, as most of you were, and all I could say is thank you to all those generous readers who have it with in themselves to be able to releave the suffering of others. If the orange project wasn't big enough to show how great the community is then this truely would have to prove it. Congratulations to everyone who was fortunate enough to contribute and congrtulations to Bart for having a dream the could be shared by the community for the benefit of those less fortunate. I hope they will offer photos of the project once it is finished. I want to see those happy smiling faces!!
We still could name the alpaca Suzanne...
Hip Hip...Hurray
Hip Hip...Hurray!
Wow, I'm impressed by the success!
I totally agree with the choice of additional gifts you plan to add.
(The alpaca one rocks!)
If I understand the FAQs at Oxfam correctly, they will send a certificate for the gifts. May be we can have a "Blender Community" put on it:
"If however you are a group or school or company and have done some fundraising, we will send you out a certificate too, which can be displayed in a prominent place as a reminder of what you have helped to achieve."
Next year we should convince Oxfam to offer *Blender* classrooms as gifts! ;o)
I mean, Blender within this worldwide community is useful in teaching and learning Art, Architecture, Biology, Broadcasting, Chemistry, Computer Science, Design, Geometry, etc. (lol- I'd bet Python could even make a plane mesh into a spreadsheet hack.) This app leads everywhere!
Seriously though, this community has been a huge help to me, a 2D refugee. I'm grateful for the generosity at BN. Thank you!
Hey bart thanks for trying to make it transparent. Though we all trust you even then these 'proof' steps go a long way re-enforcing it. I will donate later when I am needed and I am in position to do so. :)
Hooray for the kids! :)
I agree with JD-Multi. It'd be nice to see a picture of the kids enjoying their new classroom.
(: Congratulations grafixsuz on your new little one! :)
Wahoo! Good stuff Blender Community!
And yes a very BIG AMEN And a Cheers God!
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
Why is there a picture of the Blender 2.0 guide on this page??
@roofoofighter: ack! A case of a duplicate image! It's fixed. Thanks!
Yes, a very big Amen!
One of the goats needs to be named Suzanne!
Jogai:
If that happens and a child gets named after the mesh->monkey I don't know what I would do :)
Hay well done!
great achievement :) i'm sure those kids will really like those gifts :)
Well done once again :)
Dave
http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?p=450
I'm kinda in debt right now - due to school and stuff - but I'll be glad to help with stuff like this ASAP
It looks like those two graphs are identical !??
Very cool that we made it :-))
well done bart.
Wow, great!
The Blender community is the greatest!
Well I'm still seeing a duplicated image, but.. oh well. that was 10 dollars well spent, and the next time the Christmas season is coming around, I'll think more about doing something like this again.
I've updated the graphs. Sorry about the mixup!
Mm, too bad there wasn't a Gnu gift option; oh well the llama is almost as cool.
BTW, off topic but speaking of llamas you guys might want to check out the LMA at the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/etree
36109 freely/legitimately downloadable concert recordings by 2247 bands and counting!