Children’s Week Child’s Play Charity Auction Wrap-up

I’ve probably gone on over and over again about how extremely grateful and overwhelmed with everyone opening up an giving to this wonderful cause.
A little 0ver three weeks ago I sat in Hooter’s drinking a beer and eating my wings whild giving status and play by plays of the latest games and happenings to everyone over Twitter.  (Yes, I tweet A LOT i know..)   but then a thought struck me.  (No not that kinda of thought, though that happens often enough.)
I wonder if I could get the manager to donate a T-Shirt for charity and then auction it off for Child’s Play.  Simple enough right?  So off goes the tweet..

Well, let me tell you by the time I got the post up announcing the Children’s Week Child’s Play Auction that Monday, people were lining up!  Can you believe that?  Not even a few 2 days and we already had a ton of people asking, “How can I help?”

Realizing that this was growing much bigger than my lil ‘ol t-shirt, I started sending more tweets. Asking people if they’d mind helping to promote it. Again,the response was overwhelming.  Everyone started doing posts and next thing you know. WHAM! WoW Insider picks it up and runs with it.

Literally overnight, I’m getting flooded with “What can I do?”, “How can I help?” requests.  I’ll be honest with you, I was intimidated.

Then came the surprises.  The flood of items being donated by all the sponsors.  I couldn’t believe it.  Cadistra of Wow, Eh? with a specially created print, The WoW Insider Show and Rawrcast giving away “Special Guest Host” spots.  T-Shirts, Gift Certificates, Play Cards, Loot Cards, it just kept coming and coming.

Now I’m even more scared. I mean, all these people are expecting this stuff to sell and I’m just a lil blogger thinking I’d just try to help out Child’s Play a lil bit.

I guess, people might want to know my story. So I told them how Child’s Play helped my family through a scary time by showing us that laughter can really be stronger than fear.

And more people responded.  CBS gave us 25 GameSpot Subscriptions valued at $999!!!!  Yes, I nearly fainted. (Thaks Nibuca for arranging that!)

Well, up goes the auctions.  I’m literally shaking that we’ll be lucky to make $500.  People are asking me what’s my goal for the event. Goal? Are you kidding? I’m not even sure we’ll get $500 and your asking me my goal?

Well after the first day, we had almost doubled what I thought we would do and I thought. Hmm.. maybe we could make $1,000.  Woudn’t that be sweet, be able to give Child’s Play $1,000 from us WoW Players, Bloggers, and Podcasters?

So we went past the $1,000 mark so I add another $500 and say let’s shoot for $1,500.. You guessed it.  That fell.  Again the generosity was overwhelming!

Finally, I said let’s see how far we can push this.  Everyone just bid, give whatever your heart tells you to.  And you did!

You all gave!  As I write this I’m sitting here with my mouth open in all.  Here is what all of you have been able to do so far for Child’s Play.

Cash Donations: $369.25

Donations from Auction: $2,131.75

TOTAL DONATIONS COMMITTED TO CHILD’S PLAY: $2,500

That’s 5 times my initial thought! FIVE TIMES!!!

Well, I’m busy sending out emails, items and getting the buyers and donators together. But before I go I wanted to make sure and say Thank you! Thank you all for your kind hearts, generous donations of effort, time, gifts, and donations!

Thank you for participating and being patient with this lil Dorf Hunter setting up a small time auction that you all turned into big time results.

I’ve been asked to keep the donation button live for the remainder of this week and will do so.

I’ll also make sure to give another thank you post officially recognizing all of our sponsors, matrons and patrons (those that gave cash donations).

I’ll keep all of the buyer’s identities private unless you give me permission.
Thank you all again.

My sincere gratitude,

Brigwyn