We have a lot of new members all the time so I decided to create a thread to explain our Haven Foundation Fundraiser. Since everyone who visits the site can read this forum, it might help to answer standard questions about what we're doing.
The Past
TheDarkTower.com was launched on May 19th, 2007. Early in 2008 when we began thinking of how to celebrate our year on the internet the idea to try and "give back" to Stephen King through his cause rose to the top at once.
So we launched an idea to raise as much money as possible for The Haven Foundation. Stephen King started the charity to help freelance artists like Frank Muller who suffered a terrible accident and could no longer perform recorded books. Frank was perhaps the best in the business in my personal opinion. Raising money for this cause is very near and dear to me because I am a huge fan of recorded books and freelance artists as a whole. I'm sure I speak for the entire staff when I say raising money for this cause is something that makes a person feel real good.
TheDarkTower.com donates 100% of the money we collect to Haven including things like shipping costs and Paypal fees.
Last year, we began set our goal at $1000.00 to start and smashed it early on. Our total donation of behalf of this site was $3307.00...a number that made this community stand up and cheer when the cashiers check was mailed out and received by The Haven Foundation. There is a list of everyone that contributed on our home page--some very big names there and we're getting them all back (plus a few more) this year.
We had games, auctions, merchandise and our climactic Giveaway at the end where everyone who participated had a chance at some great collectibles. You can see video of the drawings and what prizes were given away here.
It was a wonderful experience and we're already in full swing this year.
The Present:
As you can see by our donation bar on our main forum page, we are already knee deep in our goal for this year. We would like to go bigger and better (like we know we can) so the goal is set at $5000.00 and it would be phenomenal if our community could come up with it over the next five months.
Fundraiser ends 5/19/09
So here is a very quick link list to all the things we have going on for our Fund Raiser this year. This post will be updated as things progress.
For those who are already participating you may find information about how to find out how many entries you have here.
- Donations--please see this link to make a paypal, check or money order donation
- A mere $10.00 donation gets you an entry into our main giveaway and grand prize drawing
- Every $10.00 after that is an entry in to the main giveaway
- Only one entry per member for the Grand Prize drawing
- !!Coming Soon!!--our list of 25 highly collectible items for the big Giveaway--we'll be paryting with more video's and an even cooler set up.
- Auctions--watch our banner and this forum for auctions on great collectibles at very reasonable prices
- Members who donated the items get sale equivalent in entries
- Buyer will receive one entry per auction purchase
- The DT.com Store--Very good deals on original fan art and TDT.com merchandise. 100% of the very reasonable mark up goes to The Haven Foundation
- All kinds of fun games so everyone has a chance at a giveaway entry. Totally free to join and enjoy
The staff at TheDarkTower.com believes the best thing we can do as a community is motivate eachother to give back to those in need. As a group, we can make wonderful things happen.
The Future
TheDarkTower.com will be holding this fundraiser annually for as long as it exists. I believe it gives a half year (roughly) to be purpose driven towards a goal and that makes our community even more unified, more popular and stronger everytime we reach for what else we can do.
Hopefully this helps, I'm on vacation and had meant to do it for a while