A Team Social Site & RFR Chairperson Joins SL!

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I realize it's been a few days since I've posted, but I've been recovering from a root canal and some severe tooth pain, so I hope you will forgive me!

I have three big updates that I want to share with everyone so far regarding our progress for this year's Ride for Roswell. First and foremost, we've already broken last year's fundraising total. We made $700 last year in Second Life, and this year we're already up to $762.80. We've raised a total of L$129,174 so far (valued at $462.80 US), as well as a US $300 cash donation directly to the Institute via their website. This is great news, but we have a lot further to go to reach this year's goal of US$5,000, so don't go anywhere just yet!

Secondly, this year's RideConnect site, which is much like Facebook or Twitter, except for the Ride for Roswell, is now up and running. I would like to invite everyone to please, join us there so that we can discuss the many issues and ideas about how to improve the RFR's virtual fundraising. You can join our team's chat page and help us not only with financial resources, but with your time and effort. We are still looking for others to help us solicit business participation in-world so that we can get the word out as much as possible.

And last, but not least, Mr. Terry Bourgeois, who is the Chairperson for the Ride for Roswell, has officially joined Second Life and is working with us on our efforts. The RFR Board will be meeting next week to consider our request for more acknowledgement of what we are doing, so that we can improve transparency even further for our donors. Terry is very excited, but he's a bit new to Second Life, so I'm not going to give out his SL name yet. I don't want him to get swamped, after all!

I want to thank everyone for their continued support and motivation for this very important cause. We're working hard and continuing to do what we can to increase awareness and raise funds for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and it is so touching to know that we have so many supporters out there, working with us to accomplish this year's goals. You are the reason we are going to beat cancer some day. It is your help that will make it possible.

Thank you,

Aaron

Double Donations Until March 31st!

I was just advised late last night (which is why I waited until this morning to post) that, due to the very generous consideration of Dick and Pat Fors, regular donors to the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, any donation made to the Institute via their website between now and the 31st of March of this year will be doubled. DOUBLED! That could end up being a huge amount of money.

Because of this, Shujin has decided as our team leader (and I endorse this decision as Team Technical Lead) that we're going to be withdrawing the funds from the charity account and paying them to the Ride for Roswell twice - once about two weeks before the end of the deadline (to give processing time) - and again after our concluding radio event. I am really looking forward to seeing just what we can do with things so far.

We are officially 13 days into fundraising, and we've made some amazing progress already. Thanks to some very adorable fundraising ideas from End of Cycle for Sarcoma team member CrystalMendrillia Lunasea in Second Life, we have total L$ donations currently amounting to L$78.871, as well as cash donations of US$300. This does not include proceeds that we had prior to January 5th, nor does it include ongoing proceeds from our charitable item sales (the Fujin dress and the accompanying shoes).

The current L$ balance on our charity account (as of this writing) is L$80,067. In addition to the US$300 that was donated directly to the R4R, and at current Lindex exchange rates (as of this morning), we have made a grand total of $586.86. I would say that's a pretty impressive total, for a two-week period. While I certainly hope we're able to maintain this throughout the fundraising period, we can't do it without your help.

So if you are an SL land owner, please contact me about receiving a donation box. Remember, we now have the ability to have you place a box without it being owned by the charity account (though this privilege is reserved for well-respected SL businesses and establishments only). Thank you again for keeping in the details with us, and helping us beat cancer!

Increased Flexibility

As most of our existing SL partners are aware, we originally planned on keeping all donation boxes owned by our donor account - EndOfCycleForSarcoma Davidov - to make sure that there was no fraud or hijacking of boxes and donations from people.

After reviewing the situation in further detail, we've decided that, in some special cases, we are willing to give donation boxes which auto-pay the charity's account upon receiving L$ to certain business locations which are considered "upstanding citizens," whose length of time in Second Life and their reputation are beyond reproach, as determined by the SL community at large.

It is with this announcement that I am pleased to announce our first sponsor of this type, Java Island. I would like to put a special thanks to Ina Pidgeon, one of the owners over there, who took the time and interest to review all our materials, and is contributing a great deal by helping us increase our flexibility while maintaining the security and trust of our donors throughout this year's fundraising operations.

I'd also like to take a second to thank Indianna Tizzy of the Cloud Nine Ballroom as well. She has done an absolutely amazing job in generating donations at her location, as evidenced by the almost constant stream of L$ coming from the ballroom's single donation box. She is a brilliant, invigorated woman whose recent personal experience with cancer has truly dedicated her to our cause, and I'm tremendously honored to have her as a part of the End of Cycle for Sarcoma team.

I continue to solicit daily to find other SL business partners to work with us. I currently have messages out with such locations as Phat Cat's Lounge, Bare Rose, Kayliwulf Kingdom and Sweethearts Jazz, and I hope to be providing more great news about our work here in the coming days. Thank you everyone for your continued support of our efforts!

Transparency Concerns

So I spent the greater majority of the night before last (Thursday) speaking with a very gracious land owner who runs one of the largest, busiest clubs in Second Life. She was very receptive to my information about EOCFS, and the R4R, despite how busy she was. We talked about it for quite a long time, but in the end, she decided that she could not help us. Why? Because there's no way to be absolutely, 152% sure, that every dime in L$ donations will end up with the charity.

Shujin and I have worked very hard to make sure that we provide as much transparency as we can, but we've decided to take it a few steps further. We need the Roswell Park Cancer Institute to be more involved than they already are, and Shujin is going to be speaking with their senior management as soon as possible to help us in getting an official mandate authorizing our activities. Perhaps we could even get them to take over the EndOfCycleForSarcoma account, with Linden Labs' approval, so that the funds are going directly to them. I will keep everyone appraised of any developments on that front.

I've also sent another email message to Pete Linden, asking him how we might assure the most transparency for our donors. Publicly posting account transaction histories is great, and we can verify our past participation from the three previous years, but unfortunately, that still may not be enough. I understand how many scammers there are in Second Life, and it pains me that, as Ms. Aimee Weber once said, "in order to do philanthropy in SL, you have to do pro-active damage control." It's sort of annoying that the environment in SL is so pessimistic and filled with scams that we have to do this, but the cause is worth it, and I'm willing to fight for it to the bitter end.

Please, my friends and readers, if anyone has any thoughts or ideas for how we might better serve to gain transparency and assure donors that myself and Shujin are not scalping off the top of the donation pile, I would really appreciate your feedback. Please contact me at aaron@angiosarcoma.org so we can work together to make this happen!

A Letter to SL Property Owners

The link below is to a letter that I wrote as a follow-up to property owners who I speak with in Second Life regarding the Ride for Roswell. I'm providing it here in hopes it will inspire some who visit to join our battle against cancer, or at the very least, inspire others to seek partners to help us in this fight.

The Letter

Thank you,
Aaron

Initial Problems Solved!

You know, for someone who works in an industry where the ability to communicate clearly is so important, you think I would do it better. However, once we started placing our donation boxes in more than one region, I realized that part of the scripting wasn't displaying the floating text as I wanted it to. After discussing it with the scripter, I realized I hadn't described what was supposed to be happening properly.

So, thanks to our wonderful scripter, VJ, who got the matter taken care of in less than two hours, and the boxes now work properly. We have...*does the math in his head*...six or so out now, and I've begun the process of approaching business owners personally to ask them for space. I've already hit some big names, such as the Cherry Hill Mall, BareRose, Vista Animations and several others. We'll see how things progress from this point.

I've sent out a message to our team to let them know it's time to start seeking out partners, and I also compiled a notecard full of information for land owners to verify both the charity and our team. I also decided that, once a month, we will post the charity account's transaction history directly on our website, so that we can offer everyone complete transparency in verifying where their guests' funds are going when paid into the box.

Beyond that, we don't have too much to report yet...though, our first full day of fundraising already has us at L$8,000. That may seem like a small start, but, we have a long time to go between now and May 21, which is the formal date for our closing event.

I can't wait to see what else comes up between now and then. Can you? :)

Here We Go!

It's January 5th and, thankfully, as we expected, the Roswell Park Cancer Institute's pages for registration for the Ride for Roswell have been opened. Shujin was so kind to register our team as one of the first on opening day, and with our web-based donations page now up and running, we were able to finalize the scripting for our donation boxes, and we've officially opened up the donating season for the 2010 Ride for Roswell!

I would like to give special thanks to a couple folks who helped us with this very wonderful unveiling:

1. Cheeyote Cheetah, a wonderful DJ over at The Feline Conspiracy, who did us the honor of being our on-air talent for the opening "ceremony," as it were, despite mic problems on her end. We love you, Chee, and thank you!

2. JackTheJackal Silverfall who, in his excitement to be our very first donor for the season, made a point to donate before I even had a chance to get the donation box set up at TFC. As a result, I had to send him the donation back so it could be sent again. But, Jack is officially first, and is helping us greatly with this project, including getting us some air time on Justice Radio.

So now we're ready to get things really going. We're going to be out soliciting like mad to get folks in on this event. If anyone's interested in helping us solicit businesses to accept a donation box, please get in touch with me or Shujin so that we can get you into the group.

Thank you so much everyone for your continued help and participation in this amazing event. We really, really appreciate it!