Fundraiser for a worthy cause

A fundraiser drawing marathon to benefit war victims - May 19th 2007
User avatar
donnam
Sensei Crawler
Sensei Crawler
Posts: 305
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:10 pm
Location: Tucson

Post by donnam »

Enrico, great idea. As to publishing the book, you might want to check out Blurb.com. They publish books and we are using them this semester in school to publish our semester project (an illustrated book). The price starts at $19.00 for an 8x10 softcover and books are printed on demand as ordered. Their software is very simple and you can use photos from Flicker.

Just a thought in case you were not aware of them.
enrico
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1140
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Post by enrico »

Thanks for chiming in everybody ... it's good to hear your thoughts.

Jons- Yes, an actual auction could be fun too, we could work something like that in the San Francisco area ... the friends at Maverix Studios have had fundraisers before at their space. That could be an option ...

PeterPen- That's a great new word man ... :) fantatissimo ... it doesn't exist in italian ... but it should ...

Martha- indeed ... editing it will be the hard part ... there's a lot ot cover ... but I think it would be exciting ... and it seems like I have a publisher that might be interested in it ...

Andy- indeed ... a book would help all around ! :)

Karen and John - thanks, glad you're into it ! :)

donnam- I know of blurb yes, not a bad choice for selfpublishing ... but hopefully we can have a book rightfully published and distributed ... we'll see though ... good option to have down the road ...


I am thinking of trying to set up an FTP for sketches and photos submissions ... they should all be from the SketchCrawl 14 day ... so to really document that day ... all over the world ...
It'd be great to have an online form to fill out, to give sketchcrawl permission to print the images and such (that would streamline things) ...

Enrico
User avatar
Thorsten
Sensei Crawler
Sensei Crawler
Posts: 765
Joined: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:05 am
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Post by Thorsten »

enrico wrote:Thanks for chiming in everybody ... it's good to hear your thoughts.
PeterPen- That's a great new word man ... :) fantatissimo ... it doesn't exist in italian ... but it should ...
.. well, I was just inspired by Gipi's use of the word "PERFETTISSIMO" in this page here Enrico ;-)
User avatar
Ice-Cream Monster
Uber Crawler
Uber Crawler
Posts: 176
Joined: Mon Jul 31, 2006 11:59 pm
Location: Los Angeles, US

Post by Ice-Cream Monster »

I love the SketchCrawl for good cause idea a lot. A SketchCrawl book with collections of drawings from everyone all over the world is indeed a beautiful idea!! Have a nice symbolic meaning behind the action too. There are music CD out there, features collections of folk songs sing by regular people from different countries, and the profit of the CD goes to UNICEF. A SketchCrawl book would be neat ... it's like a celebration of cultures, arts and peace.

lulu.com is another popular on-line book publishing site also. I just publish my book with them. The quality is quite good. They charged $0.15 per color page. And they have ISBN program, so you can actually get an ISBN through lulu and then have the book automatically list in all the on-line book merchants database.
enrico
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1140
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Post by enrico »

Thanks for your comments and support !

Here's something I just posted on my blog ... things are taking shape ...

The 13th World Wide SketchCrawl is happening in just ten days! Are you ready? Come by the forums and check all the different places participating around the globe.
viewforum.php?f=28

But What I want to talk to you about is the following one: World Wide SketchCrawl 14.

As you might have heard by now, for this Crawl we are planning a special fundraiser for the organization Emergency. ( http://emergencyusa.org/ )
The date is set to May 19th 2007 and things are starting to really take shape for it. But we need your help to make this a truly amazing event. Here’s a couple of important things you can do to help.

We have Press Releases (a one pager and a slightly longer one) for download here:
http://enricocasarosa.com/sketchcrawl14/

And we are trying to send them all over the world; to reach all the media outlets, all the artists and all the sponsors we possibly can. If you can please take five minutes of your time to either post this on your blog, or send/email these press releases to local newspapers, art stores, websites, friends, to anyone who might be interested in participating in, covering and/or helping in any way this SketchCrawl, we can then hope to reach every corner of the world with this!
We’ve already received a small donation that is gonna enable us to produce a special SketchCrawl t-shirt, the proceeds of which will go to Emergency. We also just recently started talking to a few local and international Art Supply stores and a few contacts are starting to show promise. I’ll keep you posted on all that. Any suggestion or ideas on this front will be very welcome (email me at casarosa@gmail.com).
Other integral parts of the fundraiser will be:

-An art auction. We are gonna try and organize an auction here in San Francisco and we’re also considering an online auction (please email me if you have expertise in this field, we really can use the help with setting up an Ebay charity auction). All this is gonna give all artists around the world an added way of participating to the fundraiser: donating a piece of their art to the auction.

-A SketchCrawl book. We are gonna be producing a World Wide SketchCrawl book with the wonderful folks at Gingko Press. What does that mean? It means that we’ll be asking all of you, wherever you are to submit your best sketches and photos from the SketchCrawl to be included in the book! Naturally part of the proceeds will go to the benefit as well. More details on the book will follow.

One last thing, to clarify how we see the actual Sketching part of the fundraiser working. We are asking all you sketchers out there to find some sponsors: email your friends, uncles, co-workers, co-workers' uncles and ask them if they are willing to sponsor your drawing marathon! What does that mean? It means that for every drawing that you do on that day they can pledge a certain amount of money. They could pledge any amount per sketch, from one dollar to twenty, whatever they can. They can also just give you a straight out donation. We’ll design a pledging form in a few days that is gonna help you keep track of your sponsors. Each one of us, through each one of our drawings, will be raising important funds for this peaceful and worthy organization that is helping innocent victims of war in several conflict-thorn countries.

Thank you for your time.

Enrico
User avatar
justdarcy
Newbie Crawler
Newbie Crawler
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:16 am
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

Super Idea

Post by justdarcy »

Hi Enrico and all-

I just moved back to Ohio from NYC and I think it'd be great if I could host a group crawl here, and I'd be glad to get the word out about it locally- I'll send the info my friends in NYC too.

I was just hoping to get the donation sheets before I start drumming up interest so I can be ready to hand stuff out to people~

Also how will the donation collection work after all is said and done? Should I remind participants to mail checks somewhere? i could also collect stuff on site and send it off myself... same with the art for auction part, how would that work for us? Oh crap maybe I could even approach a galllery about holding a show or auction here or something so the ohio artists wont be competing in Cali with Cali artists, we could probably raise more money that way, or what do you think?

And mayhaps i could also invest in a few shirts to have for sale on the day... can you sell me a few wholesale or could we work out some arrangement about that?

This is gonna be great!
enrico
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1140
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Post by enrico »

Hey JustDarcy great to hear you like this idea.
Ok, as far as the "sponsoring form" I will get to it tonight!

Here's a few thoughts on donation collection.

As a sketchcrawler you will be responsible for gathering donations from your sponsors (or for having them send it). Donations should be made in the form of CHECK so that people will receive tax receipts. *
If you donate or get a donation in cash it'll still be fine but you or the sponsor won't be able to get a tax receipt.

All donations in the US will give you a tax writeoff. The form we'll ask people to fill will contain information such as name and address of your sponsors. Sponsors will get a receipt from Emergency USA.
All donations will be welcome and can be also made (from all over the world) with PAYPAL online! You will get an email receipt as well.

Outside the US unfortunately, while you'll still get a receipt, you will not be elegible for the tax write off (except for Italy where you can donate to the italian chapter of the non profit Emergency).

Auction wise - I hope that some auctions will be organized locally around the world . Here in San Francisco we are starting to plan an event on sunday the 20th of May (details are still taking shape), the day after the SketchCrawl.
So I would recommend to all of you wherever you are if you know of a local space that can host a little gallery show/auction please go ahead and start organizing it! We will cover the different auctions in the SketchCrawl book, so whatever you organize be sure to document! :)

As far as t-shirts, we are probably gonna be making the t-shirts with donation money. What that means is that I will probably be able to send you some shirts for the cost of shipping. Than the t-shirt income should be accounted for and of course donated.

So much to figure out !!! anyyyyway .. thanks for your help everybody!
This IS gonna be amazing !

E



*
Checks are better than cash because they provide auditable information that is preferable from the point of view of accuracy and transparency.Checks can be made payable to "Emergency,USA" , and sent to the official address:
Emergency,USA
10592 Perry Highway # 112
Wexford,PA 15090
User avatar
leeroy
Real Crawler
Real Crawler
Posts: 53
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 11:50 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Post by leeroy »

Wondering...
Should we allow sponsors to designate a maximum amount to their total donation?

My thinking is that people will have no idea just how much they're in for. They might be wondering, "Will this person do 5 sketches or will they do 20 sketches?" There could just be a blank where they write in a maximum amount, such as, "Maximum total donation $______".

So, for example, someone might select to donate $5 per sketch, with a maximum donation of $50 dollars (should be a multiple of their sponsorship amount). Or maybe someone selects $5/sketch, with a max of $100! Then the sketcher would be able to set 20 sketches as a goal, knowing that it will acheive a max donation of $100. Likewise, this option would enable someone who can't donate as much, the ability to still participate. For example, they could select $1/sketch and max of $10. Better than nothing and still motivating. If you get 10 sponsors like that, you can acheive a donation of $100 that way.

My thinking is that this is also more like a marathon, in that the maximum length of a marathon is fixed, and the sponsor donates accordingly. Likewise, this motivates the runner to complete as much of the course as possible.

I know you're probably in the process of drafting the form, if you haven't done so already, so I hope this isn't too late or doesn't throw a wrench in that process.
enrico
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1140
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Post by enrico »

You raise some good points Lee-Roy.

my first gut instinct would be to just have sponsor donate a flat amount ... what they can ... would that take away from the marathon feel?

Thinking about a second most marathon fundraisers actually have runners raise a certain amount of money. I wonder if we should set a goal for each one of us SketchCrawlers?
What if we set a 100 dollars goal for each one of us that participates? That is the amount that we should look to be sponsored for ...
Of course some of us could even be able to raise more money, some less ... but that $100 dollars from each one of us ... could really go a long way.

What do you guys think ?

I've been home with the Flu the last couple of days but I hope to get to the form asap ... maybe the form should be simple and just have boxes to fill in the sponsor's information and amount donated.
So to leave pretty open the manner in which one seeks sponsorship.

Enrico
User avatar
leeroy
Real Crawler
Real Crawler
Posts: 53
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 11:50 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Post by leeroy »

It's probably good to give people the option to donate a flat amount if they want, but I wouldn't want to get rid of the "marathon" thing altogether, because the whole point is the more sketches we do, the higher the donation.

How about this...

Option A: Pledge []$1, []$5, []$10, or []$20 per sketch, total donation not to exceed $_______ (optional).

Option B: Make a single donation of $________.

Option C: Combine Option A and Option B.


...I definitely would encourage people to do either A or C and offer B as an alternative, if they'd prefer to do that. Option A is a lot more fun. What do you think, Enrico and fellow SketchCrawlers? Enrico, please note, I definitely don't mean to be doing your job here with the form, but I thought it would be easier to explain the idea by writing it out that way. Of course, please format it however you think is best.

Cheers,
enrico
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1140
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Post by enrico »

Thanks for your input Lee-Roy ... I think giving all those options is just too complicated.
but it's been very helpful to think this through ...

I've thought this through a little more and chatted about it with Ronnie. I think it clearified our ideas on this. We don't think it's about how many drawings one makes that day, it's about participating in it.
Just like the marathon isn't about how fast you run it but the fact that you're running it.
The idea of "per drawing donations" is too complicated, what do you count a drawing exactly ? A page, a little doodle? Too tricky to exactly define and again not the important thing here at all.
The point is to raise money together by drawing for a whole day together. The simpler we can make it the better it is.

In an an AIDS run each participant is required to raise a certain amount of money to enter it. We should do the same.

So let's set a goal for ourselves! Each one of us will be responsible to raise $100 dollar for the SketchCrawl. (I am sure some of us will raise even more and some maybe might not be able to reach one hundred, but it's all good, let's just set our goal and aim for it)
So when you're asking your friends and family to give a little donation you can tell them you're gonna be drawing the whole day for it: your putting in the effort, hopefully they can put in a little check for a good cause ...
:)

Let me know what you think ...
I will try and make the form this weekend. Stay tuned!


Enrico
User avatar
leeroy
Real Crawler
Real Crawler
Posts: 53
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 11:50 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Post by leeroy »

I hear you, Enrico. Glad the input could help in soldifying some thoughts. To be honest, I'm really not familiar with marathon type fundraisers, so I was making some guesses/assumptions there. I can see how the option thing could seem too complicated to some, but it also seemed like it could be fun if it were well organized. The issue of what one defines as a drawing occurred to me as well and was another thing that lead to the idea of a maximum pledge — the "not to exceed" amount. But whatever. I know we are artists and too many rules can rub us the wrong way. I'm happy just sketching. If we can contribute to something bigger than that at the same time, no matter how we do it, it sounds good to me.
enrico
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1140
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Post by enrico »

Ok!! Here's the SketchCrawl sponsor form Ronnie and I just wrote up.
The idea is that it will help each one of us SketchCrawlers to get sponsors and it will keep our sponsors' information organized.
Check contributions made to Emergency USA will be the preferred type of donation. The SketchCrawler would be responsible to gather the donations and checks and send them together with a copy of this form to Emergency's address, which is on the form ...

let me know what you think and if we are forgetting anything ...


the file is here:
http://enricocasarosa.com/sketchcrawl14/sponsorform.pdf

let me know if you have any issues downloading it and printing it.

thanks everyone !

e
User avatar
leeroy
Real Crawler
Real Crawler
Posts: 53
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 11:50 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Post by leeroy »

Looks good! Just some minor edits to the text:

2006 should be 2007

Last line: "Your donation is a tax deductible, you will receive a receit from Emergency."
should read: "Your donation is tax deductible. You will receive a receipt from Emergency."

Also, maybe this last line should specify, "If you are in the United States or Italy, your donation is tax deductible."

Otherwise, looks good to me.

:D
enrico
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1140
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Post by enrico »

doh ! thanks for the edits Leeroy ... good catches ... will fix now ...

ok, should be fixed


e

Return to “14th World Wide SketchCrawl”