Pre-donations
Hello!
First of all, I want to direct bidders who haven't seen it over to the help_pakistan delicious account, where we're trying to bookmark all the offers that have been made and tag them according to offerer, type, and fandom(s) - made for ease of searching! And similarly, anyone who is offering: if you haven't yet done so, it would be very helpful if you could look over the tagging explanation post and then check your bookmark(s) (every offerer has their own tag labeled by:[insert your name] that you can search on the delicious) to make sure they're tagged properly, and if not, please comment on that post to let us know the problem. Thanks!
Secondly: as more and more news comes in from Pakistan, it's evident that not only is too little international aid being pledged towards the disaster, but also the money promised is not getting there fast enough. For any natural disaster, timeliness is obviously very important, but I think it's particularly significant in this situation given that the rains are continuing and the flooding is spreading rapidly.
Since the general consensus of the community seems to be that the ending date for bidding should not be changed, help_pk_mod has kindly allowed me to make a different suggestion to help get money there sooner: pre-donations.
Basically, we want to make it clear that if you donate money ahead of time, it can still be used towards whatever bids you've won after the auction closes. The confirmation process will be the same - just make sure you keep a copy of the confirmation email (or the screencap of the confirmation page) that your charity of choice gives you, and then after the auction closes you can send it either to the person who's offer you won, or to helppakistan.lj[at]gmail.com.
Obviously, the (reasonable!) worry that people have is that if they donate now, they don't know whether or not they'll actually win the bids they want, or if they are donating the right amount of money. If you donate less than the amount you've promised towards whichever bid(s) you win, that's fixed easily enough - just donate the surplus amount and send both confirmations together. However if you don't end up winning the bid(s) you want, or you donate more than you need to - well, there's nothing we can do about that except possibly let you use it towards (potential) further rounds. But know that it is going to any extremely worthy cause, and make sure that if you do pre-donate, you choose an amount that you are comfortable with taking the risk of not winning anything.
I'm sure this is all extremely obvious, but I just wanted to put that out there for anyone who hadn't considered it, or was worried that donations made before the bidding ends wouldn't count. I do ask that to make things easier for the mods, you only use donations that were made starting today - Monday, August 23, 2010 - rather than any you've made in the past. That way we'll be able to log them more easily along with all the other confirmations we'll be receiving next week.
Thanks all! I'm so impressed with all of you and the incredible response we've gotten, I can't even tell you. Happy offering, bidding, and donating!
First of all, I want to direct bidders who haven't seen it over to the help_pakistan delicious account, where we're trying to bookmark all the offers that have been made and tag them according to offerer, type, and fandom(s) - made for ease of searching! And similarly, anyone who is offering: if you haven't yet done so, it would be very helpful if you could look over the tagging explanation post and then check your bookmark(s) (every offerer has their own tag labeled by:[insert your name] that you can search on the delicious) to make sure they're tagged properly, and if not, please comment on that post to let us know the problem. Thanks!
Secondly: as more and more news comes in from Pakistan, it's evident that not only is too little international aid being pledged towards the disaster, but also the money promised is not getting there fast enough. For any natural disaster, timeliness is obviously very important, but I think it's particularly significant in this situation given that the rains are continuing and the flooding is spreading rapidly.
Since the general consensus of the community seems to be that the ending date for bidding should not be changed, help_pk_mod has kindly allowed me to make a different suggestion to help get money there sooner: pre-donations.
Basically, we want to make it clear that if you donate money ahead of time, it can still be used towards whatever bids you've won after the auction closes. The confirmation process will be the same - just make sure you keep a copy of the confirmation email (or the screencap of the confirmation page) that your charity of choice gives you, and then after the auction closes you can send it either to the person who's offer you won, or to helppakistan.lj[at]gmail.com.
Obviously, the (reasonable!) worry that people have is that if they donate now, they don't know whether or not they'll actually win the bids they want, or if they are donating the right amount of money. If you donate less than the amount you've promised towards whichever bid(s) you win, that's fixed easily enough - just donate the surplus amount and send both confirmations together. However if you don't end up winning the bid(s) you want, or you donate more than you need to - well, there's nothing we can do about that except possibly let you use it towards (potential) further rounds. But know that it is going to any extremely worthy cause, and make sure that if you do pre-donate, you choose an amount that you are comfortable with taking the risk of not winning anything.
I'm sure this is all extremely obvious, but I just wanted to put that out there for anyone who hadn't considered it, or was worried that donations made before the bidding ends wouldn't count. I do ask that to make things easier for the mods, you only use donations that were made starting today - Monday, August 23, 2010 - rather than any you've made in the past. That way we'll be able to log them more easily along with all the other confirmations we'll be receiving next week.
Thanks all! I'm so impressed with all of you and the incredible response we've gotten, I can't even tell you. Happy offering, bidding, and donating!