Charity: Final 2005 donation (in Public Record)

In this auction the final bids were:

1. jayuu: $26, 33
2. freed: $25, 33
3. Matrim: $20, 30

Thank you to everyone who bid!

As of now, Charity has $33,914,705 to sell. Jayuu has committed to buying the first 33 million ($26 * 33 = $858), and has the option to buy the rest at the same price ($26 * 0.914705 = $23.78). If he declines, it goes to freed ($25 * 0.914705 = $22.87). Jayuu has already CMed me to say he'll be online again at the end of the week at which time we can make the transfer. (hopefully we can do it sooner so the donation actually happens in 2005)

In addition to the money I have on hand, I also have one remaining equipped character Funsize that I cannot retire due to items in rentals. In a separate thread I'd like to reach community consensus on what to do with that characters and equipment.

Payment Sent (ID #78D42683486038323)

I've made payment for the 33M. Please send the cash to Imp when you've confirmed.

I'd also like to thank Charity for the work done in raising money for a worthy cause. I salute you!

I confirm receipt of jayuu's money for 33 million CB$ and am discussing transfer options with G Beee, who's been helping out with the charity effort.

Since jayuu declined to buy the remaining $914,705, that amount goes to freed at a rate of $25/mill. Until I finish talking with G Bee, I'm not sure exactly how much freed will get.

Money sent to jayuu's "Imp" character. Thank you for bidding jayuu!

CM sent to freed. Waiting for his response.

To offset the xfr fee I've sent Charity $165k from my admin character.

G Beee (Admin_Beee) 85.210.43.85 Charity (ChildsPlay2005) $165000 -- see /bboard..001eHy 10:12 AM EST

Great, thank you G Beee

Freed gets $914,705. At $25/mill it comes to $22.87.

I also recently got another $46,720. If freed wants this little bit extra (he's not obligated), it would be a total of $24.04. If freed doesn't want that extra 46k, I'll keep it as part of funsize and we can figure out what to do with it later.

Via CM, freed offered to call it an even $25. Thanks freed!

I confirm receipt of freed's $25 via paypal
Transaction ID: 0N5836031E046910W

Total amount bought by freed was $961,225 for $25 which works out to $26/million.

I want to give a big thank you to jayuu and freed for their generosity!

There's one last item of business before I donate this money. We have to choose what Carnageblender logo to use. We generated enough cash that we get to be on this page so we need to tell them what logo to use.

I was kind of thinking of the CB head with the words "Carnage Blender" on the right side. I thought that image was on the community CB banners page but I was wrong. :-(

Please feel free to comment in this thread or the related please post links to your favorite CB logo thread as I would like community input on this.

(Just be quick please. I want to finish up here as soon as possible)

In the interest of getting this done. I think I will submit one of the following two logos. I also play to use the charity userid number in the referral link.

We raised $893 for children's hospitals! You guys are awesome!


Web Accept Payment Sent (ID # 6XK53668MS8552429)

Name:
Child's Play Charity (Penny Arcade Cartoons) (The recipient of this payment is Verified)

Email:
childsplaycharity@penny-arcade.com

Total Amount:
-$893.00 USD

Item Amount:
$893.00 USD

Shipping:
$0.00 USD

Handling:
$0.00 USD

Quantity:
1

Item Title:
Childs+Play+Charity

Date:
Dec. 29, 2005

Time:
23:19:02 EST

Status:
Completed

Shipping Address:
No Address Provided

Business Contact Information
Customer Service URL: http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
Customer Service Email: childsplaycharity@penny-arcade.com

Funding Type:
PayPal Funds

Funding Source:
$893.00 USD - PayPal Account

I just received the following email and wanted to share it with everyone.

To: Sukotto
From: klindsay@penny-arcade.com
Subject: Notification of Payment Received

Dear Sukotto and everyone at Carnage Blender,


Thank you very much for your donation to Child's Play. Every contribution counts, offering a little fun to children in hospitals across the world. When gamers give back, we are making a difference.

Regards,

Kristin Lindsay
Penny Arcade, Inc.
Child's Play & Events Coordinator

The following people donated cash, items, and characters. I'd like to thank each one of you for your generous donations.

'G'
[MP] Money Pig
[SS]Twin-Red
Adrian Exodus
Austinator
BarzooMonkey
Burning Darkness
Chocolate Thunder
G Beee
General Xiaz
Gilgamesh2090
InSaNiE
Johnnywas
Jonathan
Karmic Mishap
MaL the Manic Mage
Mansonfreek
maulaxe
novice
Peter back home
QBRanger
Rathershady
Shade
Shadowsparkle
Xiaz
tasuki
TheNewKid
TMDoc
UltimaSpock
Untouchable
Will [Retired]
Zachar!a Andrew Pa!n


I cannot figure out how to get the names of former owners of characters. Unfortunately, I didn't write down their names and they've already fallen off the bottom of my chatmail :-(

So thanks to the previous owners of
Gotmilk
Funsize


Last, but certainly not least. I'd like to especially thank G Beee and Shade for their ongoing help behind the scenes. They took care of character transfers, fixed screwed up forum threads, and even covered some of the larger transfer fees. Thank you so much for your extra help guys. I really appreciate it.


On a final note. I'd like to share some lessons learned for anyone else who wishes to try something like this in the future.

** Timing **
Start early. I emailed the Penny-Arcade guys to make sure Child's Play was going to go forward this year. Their spokes-people said it was, but I waited until the official start date before starting our effort. That was a mistake. I should have started as soon as I had their confirmation and aimed to finish by mid December. That would have given me a few extra weeks to tie up loose ends instead of scrambling to get things done just before new years.

Personal issues in real life came into play as well which made it very difficult to keep on top of the charity drive. since there was not enough time buffer, I didn't have any cushion to make things easier. That caused me to drop the ball slightly when finishing up a couple of sales and also broke the rhythm of asking for more donations and selling off the incoming items.

On the other hand, it's possible the holiday spirit prompted the impressive US$ bids for the CB$. :-) It was very challenging to get everything done working between Christmas and New Years so this is something to seriously consider the next time around.

** Selling items and characters **
Don't waste your time putting together interesting FS threads. I wrote up cute spiels for my sales including topical in jokes, pop culture references, and jokes. I felt that users did not respond well to this type of selling and writing those up was a complete waste of time. The best selling technique seems to be slotting a large number of items into a single thread. Not only does it allow people to view everything you have for sale all at once, the various bids keep your thread near the top of the forum giving you spillover advertising for less popular items.

Another surprising thing about both FS threads and auctions was people's lack of desire for mid-range items. Come on guys, Not everyone can get an ELB right off the bat. What's wrong with a nice compound bow? You're not ALL single FB mages are you? How about some armor? That BoM isn't going to impact your pr that much. sheesh.

Nobody really wanted to buy a powerful character. So much for that theory.
Perhaps this is due to the 5-char limit and the fact that new characters earn xp really fast? I don't know. CB2 doesn't seem to inspire people to make a lot of farms. *shrug*. Anyway, characters don't get you much money when you sell them (if you even can sell them).

Speaking of character donations... Think twice about accepting donations of characters who have items in rentals. You can't retire the char. Also, you don't want to strip it because then it's score will drop and lose what little value it may have. (On a side note, I wonder what happens when the char you use for renting items drops so far in score that the system tries to auto-retire it. Immovable object/unstoppable force?)

** Community spirit **
My impression of our community is that people want a fire-and-forget charity. "Here's something for the kids... now lets get back to discussing the game." that is, I didn't get the feeling that people cared very much beyond the initial gift. Don't get me wrong... I'm tremendously grateful for all the donations. I suppose I was just expecting a stronger feeling of community spirit and a sense of coming together to help. I ended up feeling that, although people cared, the caring was soon overcome by day-to-day game issues.

** Converting CB$ to US$ **
Finally, I wish I have handled the final sale a little differently. Unfortunately, I'm not totally sure how to make it better. I was impressed and gratified by the generous bidding on the pool of funds, though I may have just lucked out. Next year might not be as easy and we should think now about how to make it better for next time.


(This concludes the Charity effort for the time being. I plan to log into the Charity account often enough to keep it active, but that's it for now.)


I'd like to thank everyone, one last time, for all the donations, assistance, and moral support. Together we managed to raise almost 900 dollars for children's hospitals around the world. That will buy a lot of game cartridges, leap pads, and a ton of other stuff for the kids. I'm deeply grateful to each and every one of you for your support.

Thank you.

There was one name you missed from the list. One name who played a bigger part than anyone else and whom without none of this would have happened.

Thanks to Sukotto (aka Charity) for the hard work and effort in pulling this all together. Well done !

and me! you missed me!

Sorry sacredsamurai your RoE added a lot to the final total.
I'm not sure how you dropped off the list.

Sorry if I missed anyone else :-(