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Author Topic: tl;dr Worldbuilders for Heifer - Donate, Win Stuff  (Read 519 times)

Acacea

tl;dr Worldbuilders for Heifer - Donate, Win Stuff
« on: December 14, 2014, 02:17:35 pm »

YAILWAP

Hey people, thought I would toss a thread here in case any books and game lovers want to throw some change into the hat. Tomorrow is the last day of the Worldbuilders fundraiser for Heifer International, and while every year has gotten more attention and numbers, there's still a lot of people who haven't even heard of it, who are exactly the kinds of people who'd be interested in it. I'll treat this like a standard confidence game* and appeal to generosity, first.

Pat Rothfuss, the author of the as-yet-unfinished Kingkiller Chronicles, started Worldbuilders several years back because he had all this new income and influence and thought he could do something. Why he picked Heifer International as the charity of choice, among other things, is covered in the How We Got Started.

Or you could skip the FAQs and check out a video of Pat getting all broken up at his kid beating him to the punch when he tries to be all parently . Should also be mentioned that while the usual face of donations is buying cows, goats, and baby chicks (hi redundancy, haven't seen you since five minutes ago!), it also goes towards things like irrigation pumps, biogas stoves, and training animal health workers, 'cause you know, vets. There's a whole lot more training than milking goats... that said, it's not a fight about which charity is best, or putting one over the other, nor an invite to a debate on the effectiveness of any particular organization (as ever feel free to PM or catch me on IRC for debate, har!)  - ultimately this is the one they picked, and you can win cool stuff ;)

So to continue on in the vein of a sales pitch, to appeal to the shiny-loving right after the save-the-world, it boils down to donating $20  gets you two chances to win in a giant lottery. $50 gets you 5. Etc. You might win a paperback from an author you never heard of, try it out, and discover someone new or find you don't care for it. You could also win, say, a copy of every book published by a particular publisher in the last year. There's pretty much a ton of geekery and swag and games thrown in, as well. The lottery library gives kind of an idea of what all has been donated by different authors, publishers, and fans, but it's kind of hard to get the picture unless you see things like videos of the staff learning to use a forklift to unload a truck full of boxes of donated games, heh. It should also be noted that you don't burn all your chances when you win. Technically if you donated $200, you could win 20 times, even if it is extremely unlikely.

If you'd like to participate but would rather a direct exchange than a lottery, The Tinker's Packs has a lot of things for sale, and all of the money goes to Worldbuilders. There are also a few auctions with time remaining on them, though a whole lot more have already gone.

If nothing else, all the donations this year have brought us things like Neil Gaiman reading Jabberwocky and Strong Bad Writes a Kids' Book as stretch goals.

The direct link for donations is here , make sure your contact information is correct so if you win something, it goes to the right place... because of the massive amounts of donators, there's no email going out to individual winners except in cases where you win something very rare or niche-specific, in which case Pat or someone from the Worldbuilders staff will contact you to be sure you want it and make sure shipping is correct, because nobody wants some one-of-two-hundred ARC signed by some famous author to sit outside in the snow while you're on vacation.

A couple things on that page that could use clarifying even if you've done it before - there are a few new options this year, because it kind of started out as mostly books and author things, and this year there are So. Many. Games. Because not everyone is into board and card games, and also because there are enough OF them to allow you to specify, you can opt to only be in the lottery for books, only for games, or be in for both.

The other question is "Do you want to be included in the drawing for the items mentioned in Patrick Rothfuss's Three Threes blog?" This is basically something that he kinda toyed with last year because the fundraising reach has grown pretty far out from his own fanbase, so things specific to his setting or ...self would not be cool to a lot of people. The things mentioned are a set of his world's currency, stealth copies of his related novella that just came out recently, and a gold favor ring, which has kinda become a tradition of sorts, I guess. The ring is the favor, for whomever physically possesses it. It has his name on it, a nod to some court customs in his setting. You can keep the ring, or you can trade it someday for a favor. Pasta. Move your couch. Put your name in one of his novels.

Now that I think of it, you should also opt-out of further communications by unchecking the opt-in check box if you do not want to be contacted by Heifer in the future. If you don't want their brochures and reminders in the mail religiously, they might as well save the paper, ha.

As a note from me, the time between the fundraiser ending and when possible packages arrive is a few months, so it's best to chalk it up to a good deed done or something and move on rather than frantically checking the mail, or something. You can watch them on facebook if you want the occasional update from staff about their gazillion packages they have to send out. I usually win something or another, but then, no one else in my family has, so... if you really need to know the odds, try checking the little widget at the top right corner of the blogs to see your chances.

If you made it this far, wow! Such dedication. So many cookies! Too bad they are only virtual.

*Psst, not really a con. Not pocketing anything and running for the hills. Just in case. Maybe next time.

 
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