[Edit: This is the Worldbuilders Fundraiser for 2010. The current Worldbuilders for 2013 is here.]

What’s that you say? You’d like to make the world a better place while simultaneously winning fabulous prizes?

Well today is your lucky day.

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. All over the world Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

(Are you ready? I’m so ready. Let’s do it.)

This year we’ve got a couple different options for donating.

Option 1: The Lottery.

This is the option most people will want. It’s simple. You hop directly over to the page I’ve set up at Team Heifer, and donate.

When you donate using my page at team Heifer, two things happen.

1. Worldbuilders will match 50% of your donation. That means your ten-dollar donation becomes fifteen dollars. If you donate two goats, it becomes three goats. And so on.

2. You’ll be entered in the lottery.

After the fundraiser is over on December 13th, we’ll have a random drawing for all the swag that’s been donated over the last couple months. More than a thousand books, comics, DVD’s and assorted cool miscellany.

[Edit: The end of the fundraiser is now noon on Dec 17th (12:00 PM, pacific standard time.) If you want to know why, you can read the explanation here.]

For every 10 bucks you donate, your name will get entered into the drawing once. If you donate thirty bucks, your name goes in three times. Think of it as buying tickets, if you like.

We’ve had *way* too many books donated for me to post them all up at once. So I’ll be putting up a new blog full of donated books pretty much every day or two, just to keep people from being overwhelmed with all the awesome.

Make sure to check back often to see the new cool.

More Signed Books [Posted Nov 16th]

Books from Del Rey and Spectra [Posted Nov 18th]

A Plenitude of Signed Books [Posted Nov 24]

Books from DAW [Posted Nov 27th]

Still more Signed Books [Posted Nov 29th]

Yet even still more signed books [Posted Dec 5th]

Webcomic Deliciousness [Posted Dec 7th]

Books from DAW and Penguin [Posted Dec 14th]

A touching story and a gift from Gaiman. [Posted Dec 15th]

Books and an Interview with Jerry Holkins from Penny Arcade [Posted Dec 16th]

Last year, readers and geeks of all creeds and nations donated over 125,000 dollars to Heifer International on our team page. With help from a few sponsors, Worldbuilders matched 50% of that, bringing our total for the year to over 190,000 dollars.

Personally, I think we can do even better this year.

Nov 13th – Worldbuilders begins.

Nov 17th – $10,000 raised.

Nov 23rd – $25,000 raised.

Dec 1st – $50,000 raised.

Dec 9th – $100,000 raised.

Dec 14th – $128,926 raised. (Last Year’s Total Beaten! Woo!)

Dec 16th – $150,000 raised.

.

Our last goal, the goal that I really don’t know if we’ll be able to meet, is going to be 166,700 dollars.

Again, it’s a rather odd number. But if we raise that much it means that after Worldbuilders makes its matching donation, we will have raised a quarter million dollars this year.

I don’t know if we’ll be able to make it. But I’m excited to try…

[Edit – The donation thermometer doesn’t work any more, but in the end we raised more than $192,000. It was awesome….]

You can use this link to check out the Team Heifer page and make a donation.

Option 2: The Sure Thing.

Or, as I like to think of it, the Christmas Present Option.

For those of you who aren’t interested in the lottery, I have some stuff you can just buy. All the proceeds go to Heifer International.

Here’s a link to our new store. Lovingly named The Tinker’s Packs.

Worldbuilders T-shirts. [ Posted Nov 22nd ]

Option 3: Auctions.

Last year we did a few auctions and they seemed to work out pretty well. So this year we’re continuing in that fine tradition, auctioning off some of the rarer and more specialized services people have donated.

We’ve got industry professionals willing to read your fledgling manuscript and give you feedback. We’ve got a limited edition Stardust ARC signed by Neil Gaiman and a copy of The Gathering Storm signed by Brandon Sanderson and the production team at Tor. We’ve got rare manuscripts, computer software, a signed Brett Favre Jersey, and much more. Stay tuned for details.

You can see all current Worldbuilders auctions here.

A Plea For Sanity

Lastly, I’d like to ask everyone to please read the instructions/directions carefully before they donate.

I know you’re excited. I’m excited too. We’re going to raise some money, make the world a better place, and end up with big warm fuzzy feelings.

But here’s the problem. If you’re *too* excited, you’ll end up clicking buttons all higgledy-piggledy, forgetting vital steps and leaving things out. (Especially when buying things with Paypal) Then you’ll send me an e-mail that says something like: “I’m sorry, but I forgot to include my shipping address/t-shirt size/signing instructions. Could you please fix it for me?”

I know I’m bound to get one or two e-mails like this. No biggie. But each one is like a cold drop of water eroding my warm fuzzy feeling. If I get, say, a hundred, I’ll have no warm fuzzy left at all. I’ll be left with nothing but a cold prickly feeling.

You don’t want to give me a cold prickly, do you?

I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure that you’ll read the instructions carefully.

FAQ.

Have questions? Most of them are probably answered over in the FAQ. (Even if your question isn’t answered, I talk about Batman a bit, so it won’t be a complete waste of your time.)

Lastly, just in case you missed it, here’s one more link to our Team Heifer donation page.

Let’s do this thing.

pat