Hey there everybody – long time no blog.
This year has been… a year. It feels like it has stretched on forever. Endless and interminable. Like I’ve been living Zeno’s year.
In other ways the time has blurred by. I feel like I’ve spent the whole year running from emergency to emergency, trying to put out fires. And now, after all of it… the fires are kinda still there? They’re not worse for the most part, which is nice, I suppose. But it feels like I should have more to show for this than singed hands and a collection of not-as-bad-as-it-might-otherwise-be crises smouldering sullenly around me.
It’s kinda like treading water, except with all that burning talk in the previous paragraph that analogy doesn’t work, does it? I’m mixing a metaphor really badly. Maybe I’m treading fire instead.
Anyway. What I really mean to say here is that I feel bad that I’ve been… away. Absent for a longish while. I haven’t streamed as much on twitch. Haven’t gone to as many conventions or signings. Haven’t completed a lot of projects I was hoping to finish and share with y’all. Haven’t finished any of the blogs I’ve started. Hell, I haven’t hardly been tweeting this year.
But time and tide wait of no man. And whether I lost this year to fire or water, whether it was fast or slow – It’s November now, and that means Worldbuilders is nigh upon us.
I feel unprepared, and overwhelmed, and… oddly grateful.
Here’s the thing. There’s a lot of stuff in the world I can’t fix right now. A lot of stuff in my life I can’t make better, try as I might.
But I can do some charity. I can feed some hungry kids.
You guys want to come along with me and make the world a better place?
* * *
This year the Worldbuilders fundraiser will run from December 3rd to the 17th.
If you’ve been around for Worldbuilders before, there will be a lot familiar there. We have thousands of prizes, fabulous auctions, videos about goats… I’ll be livestreaming and hosting discussion panels with other cool geeks and luminaries. We will have surprises and spectacles galore…
Before the madness sets in, before it all starts, I want to make sure you know how much you all mean to me. So many of you show up for this every year, and that is one of the few constant and unswerving joys in my life. One of the few things that never fails to warm my bitter old heart.
You are my people. Cut from a similar cloth and yearning to do something good in the world. You don’t know how much that means to me.
(Just remembered this picture someone made for me, based off a blog I wrote.)
Now to be clear, this blog isn’t the announcement of the beginning of the fundraiser. It’s just a heads-up. I’m letting you know you should brace for impact.
The fundraiser is only two weeks long now where we used to run it for an entire MONTH. That means once it starts, it’s going to come on hard and fast. If you miss even a couple days, you’ll miss a lot.
If you’re excited about what’s coming up, and you’d like to lend a hand or to start preparing for the coming storm, we have a couple ideas:
- Wanna help us spread the word?
This is always a challenge for us. How do we get more eyes on the coolness that is Worldbuilders?
We’ve got two ways you can help:
1. Bring a Friend.
This is the simplest thing we’re going to ask people to do. Not just bump things around on social media or share links. (Though that *is* a lovely help.)
This year, we’re asking those of you who already love Worldbuilders to recruit one person and bring them into the fold. Like a cult.
Nope. Wait. I’ve just been told we’re not going with that. Not like a cult. Our branding people are 100% not cool with me comparing our charity fundraiser to a cult.
Mabye we’re more like a secret new Hogwarts house? No… they’re saying no. Copyright issue there. Maybe a gang? They’re there scowling at me now. How about a club? A cool club that you love and you want to share with other large-hearted people who enjoy winning cool prizes and making the world a better place?
So yeah. I mention that we’d like to bring more people into the fold now, so you can start to think about who your best target might be. So you can study them. Track their movements. Make a list of their weaknes…
Nope. Wait. Again. They’re shaking their heads very firmly. Not that.
Just give it a bit of a think. Odds are, I’m guessing you know someone out there who would love the chance to do some good in the world while also having the chance to win cool books and games.
And if you happen to know a *bunch of people…
2. Plan your own page.
This year, we’re letting people create their own fundraiser pages as part of the main Worldbuilders Event.
This means you can create a place to rally a group of people around. You can make a page for your book club, your church, your local co-op or Comic Book store. You can make a page and tell your family that for Christmas, you’d like a donation there instead of a gift. You can make a page and tell your friends if they manage to raise $300 (enough for clean water for an entire village) you’ll *finally* run that Call of Cuthulu game they’ve been bugging you about for years.
You can do anything you want with your team page, really. We’ll be throwing the doors open for you to create them on the first day of the fundraiser.
But you can start your planning now….
- Want to Leverage your donation?
Every year we get some folks who donate large chunks of money, but don’t care about winning prizes. Sometimes they’ve approached us directly and asked if we wanted to use their money for matching donations to encourage other people to donate.
It’s a great strategy. So this year we’re inviting people to do that if they’d like to. To effectively come in as sponsors to the charity in the same way a publisher or a game company would.
But before I give you the contact e-mail, I have to explain something.
Many of you may remember Thera from Last year’s fundraiser. She’s the one that rallied my own people against me and pushed for this abomination as a stretch goal:
See, Thera is a big fan of John Mulaney, which is right and good, as the man is brilliant.
Anyway, I mention all of this as context so you understand why she chose this particular e-mail as the way to contact us at our very professional charity if you’d like to offer up some matching money:
So… yeah. There you go.
- Help us take some money off our corporate overlords?
Guess what? Turns out a lot of big businesses offer corporate matching money if their employees donate to official, federally recognized charities.
A charity like, just to pick a name off the top of my head, Worldbuilders.
Mastercard, for example. Offers a *double* match. So if one of their employees makes a $100 donation, Mastercard kicks in $200 of its own making it $300 total.
I’d like to compile a list of businesses that offer matching deals like that. I’m guessing a lot of you work for places that would gladly back your charity play and you don’t even know it.
So. If you work somewhere that offers something similar, and they recognize Worldbuilders as valid recipient, can you mention it in the comments below? We’ll dig through our records too, and start a compiling a running list here at the bottom of this blog?
What’s more, if you check and discover your company needs something from Worldbuilders to get officially recognized, ping us at the address above and we’ll jump whatever hoops they require so we can get hold of that sweet, sweet corporate honey.
That’s all for now. Thanks for sticking with me to the end of the blog, and until the end of the year.
I’m looking forward to surprising you over the next couple weeks.
pat