The Sword and Laser discussion

Every year Patrick Rothfuss's Worldbuilders Charity (https://worldbuilders.org) does a big end of year fundraiser (https://worldbuilders.org/faq/end-of-...) where you have a chance to win a bunch of books, games, and other stuff.

We are once again doing a Sword & Laser Group for 2021.

The fundraiser will take place from November 30th to December 14th.

Here is Pat's kickoff blog post: https://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2021...

Here is the 2021 Campaign page:

Here's a link to our team https://fundraise.worldbuilders.org/s...

For the last two years our goal has been to raise $1000, and both years we've blown that out of the water (in part due to matching funds), but we've combined to raise over $11,000 so far.

They are currently offering matching up to first $100k (currently around over 40k and rising quick)

If you're not familiar with how the lottery bit works, it's pretty simple; for every $10 you donate to our worldbuilders (that includes donations through the S&L page) you get entered into the lottery.

They haven't posted the stuff this year, but it's typically a bunch of books and games plus a chance to win a kick-ass gaming table too.


They are also doing Auctions (https://www.biddingforgood.com/auctio...). Those won't associate you with the S&L team, but it's another way to donate and one that guarantees you a prize (assuming you win of course). Right now there doesn't appear to be too many auctions up, but I think they add some as it goes on.

Thanks for setting this up again!

Sheila Jean wrote: "Thanks for setting this up again!"

Ditto

You're welcome. Thanks again for participating!

I totally spaced on including this in the December newsletter, so now I'm not sure how much word will get out in time.

The last 2 years I think I was able to setup the team page ahead of time, so I could include info in the newsletter but not this year. I probably should have just made this thread ahead of time since I'm able to change the vanity url to be the new campaign each year.

Also, Tom & Veronica said they were good with us doing this again, but I haven't heard back from them on promoting it on the Twitter account and/or the next podcast yet. I'm also not sure if the next podcast will be out prior to the end. It probably will be, since it runs for 2 weeks.

I spammed the discord server right after making this thread, but I didn't get any kind of feedback there.

In the last 2 years we averaged roughly 28 donations, and right now we're only at 8. But it's only the second day. So hopefully we can reach those other 20 or so people before the campaign ends.

We have however already exceeded our goal, and with the match, we're more than double. So that's really great. I debated raising the goal to $2000 this year, but I kind of prefer to aim low and overshoot rather than trying to push for more.

When you remove the matching (which isn't always active) we've averaged about 3000 the last 2 years. We had more donated in 2019, but less match so our total last year was slightly higher.

I'm debating if I should send a quick Group message here on Goodreads too. I don't want to spam people with messages or make anyone feel like they are being asked to donate. I just want to remind people who are already inclined to donate that the campaign is going on and we have a team again.

Rob wrote: "...I spammed the discord server right after making this thread, but I didn't get any kind of feedback there...."

This is how I knew it was active. I'm more likely to post here than there, but I scroll through some of the channels and have the notifications on.

I've joined several discord servers that overuse notifications such that I've either had to quit them or mute them which is effectively the same thing.

So I always try to limit it to 1 notification/month. There are a few times when I'll do more than that (like March Madness) but for some people even 1 notification/month is 1 too many so it's hard to get the right balance no matter what.

I'm the opposite though. As discord has become more active, I've posted here less.

My main issue is I'm always on discord, but between the awful goodreads phone app and now the changes to the email notifications I find it a lot harder to keep up with things here.

But we have something like 850 discord members and nearly 23k members on goodreads, so I feel like I have a better chance of reaching more people here (although I suspect if I could properly compare user activity it's probably similar in both places and likely some of the same people driving conversations in both places).

We've only had 20 views on this thread so far. Last year was about 75 and in 2019 it was 130 so I think traffic and/or interest has gone down.

Either way I consider this year a success and it's only day 2!

Hopefully we can reach a few others who are interested.

Thanks to the 14 who already donated. We have blown past our goal (especially with all the match). So now we're just trying to as Veronica put it on twitter:

kick everyone's butts... for CHARITY!

In particular I always want to do better than /r/fantasy even though I think they are much larger than we are.

We are up to 23 donations for a total of $4,860

That means with about 5 days left and we're only $140 short of our $5k stretch goal (and $705 behind /r/fantasy).

Thanks to the 25 people who donated (and a good amount of match) we've now exceeded our stretch goal of $5000!


I'm once again blown away by everyone's generosity. As we enter the final few days of the fundraiser our last stretch goal would be to exceed last year's donations of $5,746 and/or 30 donors....

That means another 6 people and another $622. Even if we've reached our peak for the year thank you all again!

With just about 1 day left we matched our donor count (30) but exceeded our donation amount: $5,886. Not sure if we can make it to $6000, but right now they seem to still be doing matching, so we'd really only need another $57 (I think).

Either way I appreciate all the support big and small this year.

Oh and if you haven't heard Patrick Rothfuss is going to read the prologue to The Doors of Stone on his twitch channel: https://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2021...

Thanks to 34 donors, we've had our best year yet. Not only did we break our previous high of 30 donors, but we also broke our previous donation amount by just over $450 for a grand total of $6,203!

Thanks again to everyone who donated to our team.

Rob, good work managing the S&L campaign and thanks for your efforts.

Thanks. I wish I had some clout to promote things better. I think a few of the teams were doing final day pushes for donations (certainly Patrick Rothfuss was), but I'm pretty happy with how well our team did with just my occasional updates here and on discord.

We finished 9th on the leaderboard (albeit pretty far behind the top groups) but only like $300 behind /r/fantasy

Oddly enough despite the campaign ending some teams are still getting in money and that money still appears to be getting matched.

Not sure what's going on there.

Then again I had someone donate over $300 to our 2020 team page sometime last week, and I'm not sure how that works.

I guess even after a campaign "ends" you can still keep donating to it.

Not sure if that person will be included in the drawing for the prizes though.

Thanks again for organizing the team, Rob. Great to see our participation grow!

Sheila Jean wrote: "Thanks again for organizing the team, Rob. Great to see our participation grow!"

agreed!