Match It For Pratchett

Wear the Lilac - Over $500 Raised So Far

Auronsgirl's fantastic lilac pins have raised over $500 so far. I imagine that this has involved a lot of work creating the pins, especially as its five times her original target.

Well done Auronsgirl.

Remember, Wear the Lilac day is May 25th so if you want one you need to get your order in pronto. On the subject of speed, you have less than 48 hours to order a Match It For Pratchett T-shirt before I take the current design offline.

Dine with Terry Pratchett

A message from the Alzheimer’s Research Trust:

Calling all fans of Terry Pratchett and Raj Persaud!

On 1st May the Alzheimer’s Research Trust will be hosting an exclusive dinner at a private venue in London. The format of the evening is a dinner hosted by consultant psychiatrist, broadcaster and author of various popular publications on psychiatry, Dr Raj Persaud, with acclaimed author Terry Pratchett OBE as guest of honour. Mr Pratchett and Dr Persaud will spend time with our guests talking about their involvement with the Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

Places are strictly limited and seats will be allocated to the highest bidder with monies raised going to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust to support further research into Alzheimer’s and related forms of dementia.

If you would like to join Alzheimer’s Research Trust for this wonderful and unique evening, please register your pledge with us as soon as possible. You can do so by email to terrypratchettdinner@alzheimers-research.org.uk or by letter to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, The Stables, Station Road, Great Shelford, Cambridge, CB22 5LR or fax to 01223 843325. We need to hear from you by 3pm on 21st April. Successful bidders will be notified by close of business on 24th April.

Seat allocation will operate on a closed-bid basis. In the event of several bids of equal amount being received, where it is not possible to distinguish which bid was made first, invitees will be chosen by process of random selection.

T-Shirt News

This is the last week that the current Match It For Pratchett t-shirts will be available.

Terry's agent, Colin Smythe requested that anything we do doesn't involve Discworld characters. Though the request wasn't specially directed at the T-shirt I feel uncomfortable about the current design. I plan to replace the design with one that is more abstract and less Discworld specific. In the meantime, I've removed the link from the front page but I've left the Cafepress shop running for the time being. If anyone has been thinking about buying a shirt but hasn't yet, you have until next Monday. So get your wallet out now.

So far, we have sold over 170 T-shirts raising $1,700 for the Alzheimer's Research Trust. This is a fantastic amount, and even better, we qualify for a volume bonus worth an additional $321.41. Meaning that in total over $2000 ( £1000 ) will be going to help fund scientific research into Alzheimer's.

Because of how CafePress operate their returns and refunds policy, I do not have access to the money yet. Once I do, I will update the accounts and send the money directly to the trust.

Hello Again

I'm sorry things have been very quiet around here for the last two or three weeks. A close family member is seriously ill, leaving me with little time for anything except work. Things have now stabilised and I hope to posting regularly once again. Many thanks to Pat and Fran for holding the fort.

Accounts

Summary of Accounts as of 28/3/2008 at 10:44

Donations via MatchItForPratchett.org: $6838.32

T-Shirt sales (Completed and Pending): $1215.01

Costs (Paypal Charges): $-304.58

Total Raised via MatchItForPratchett.org: $7748.75

On the 25/3/08 $6,464.10 was sent to the Alzheimer's Research Trusts' Paypal account. The Trust have confirmed receipt of £3070.52 on the 27/3/08

I will be doing these accounts less often in the coming few weeks. The Paypal donation button now goes directly to the Alzheimer's Research Trust and bulk of the money from the old Donation Jar has been sent to the Trust. The last few Paypal transfers are still filtering through as sometimes they take a week to clear. I will send the remaining balance once I happy everything has come through and I expect it to be around $200. The money from the T-shirts will take longer to come from Cafe Press (about 60 days). My plans are to do monthly accounts and send everything I have received straight to the Trust.

100 Orders = $1205.01 for the Alzheimer's Research Trust

I've just checked the Cafe Press shop and since I first designed the T-shirt two weeks ago, it has been ordered 100 different times. Some orders were for multiple T-shirts giving us a total of 121 shirts sold, raising a grand total of $1215.01. Thank you everyone who has brought one (or more).

When you receive your T-shirt, why not send us a photo of you, your pet or your beeblebear wearing it. Put the photo on FlickR and send us the link via the comments. If you have a science fiction / fantasy society, role-playing club or maybe a book group you wish to promote, then let us know as well and we will give you, your photo and your group a big plug.

The money from the T-shirts will not reach me for about 60 days because of Cafe Press's 30 day guaranteed refund policy. Once I get it, I will send it straight on to the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

Sheffield SF

A brief note from Fran

The Sheffield SF Group has formally adopted Match It For Pratchett as a charity [ campaign they support ]

If there are any fan groups out there who are raising money for Alzheimer's, don't forget to lets us know. We will do all we can to give you publicity.

UPDATE: I've had a note from Rebecca at the Alzheimer's Research Trust warning us to be careful of using the word charity. The UK's Charity Commision is very hot on ensuring only registered charities describe themselves as charity.

So just to be clear, Match It For Pratchett is a grass roots campaign raising money for the Alzheimer's Research Trust in the UK and other Alzheimer's charities around the world.

Eastercon Generosity

The good folks at Eastercon have excelled themselves in their generosity. The collection bucket raised £2100. The David Stewart Auction raise £370 by selling off various books, and the Fan Funds auction raised £50 from a copy of Good Omens signed by both authors.

A big thanks to eveyone at Eastercon who donated, to Fran and everyone else who gave time, books and enthusiasm in raising such a big total.

Paypal & Donation Jar

Thanks to advice from Sue and Lee, I've tweaked the donation button so that it once again prompts you about how much you want to donate.

I've had confirmation from Rebecca of the Alzheimer's Research Trust that the bulk of the money ( $6464 ) has been transferred to the Alzheimer's paypal account ( Paypal Unique Transaction ID #8KA746512R368904G ). They can't access it yet because their bank account details are still being confirmed.

On other Paypal news, it appears I am a suspected money launder because of the sudden influx of money into my long dormant account. This means jumping through a few hoops and providing some documentation in order to show that I'm a real human being. One thing they have been repeatedly asking for is a "Subordination letter from the parent organization". I've explained that there is no parent organization but they don't seem interested. Does anyone know what they actually want?

Donation Jar Change Over

Up until now the Donation Jar has paid into my Paypal account and I've been tracking the donations. Given the amount of money coming via the Donation Jar (thank you everyone) Rebecca from the Alzheimer's Research Trust and I felt it would be better if it went straight into their account. As of 8pm this is now the case but there is a slight problem.

The Donation Jar was a feature provided Typepad (the blogging software that runs this site). It sent the donated money into the Paypal account linked to the email address set up in my Typepad profile. Which turns out to be the one, single email address you can associate with an account. So if I switch the email address to point to the Alzheimer's Research Trust for the Donation Jar, all messages from Typepad to myself would be sent to the Trust including anything from my other blogs.

Obviously not a viable option and a bit of an oversight by Typepad. If you let people have multiple blogs on one account, its not a great leap to assume that each blog will want to use a different email address. This is not a disaster as I've set up a Paypal donation button to do the job instead. This does go straight to the Alzheimer's Research Trust. The only drawback to this solution is that the amount of the donation is fixed at $20 where as the old Donation Jar allowed the donor to choose the amount. On the plus side, it now clearly states that the money is going to the Alzheimer's Research Trust before you complete your donation.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get some time to rework the HTML to make it look better and also make two Match It For Pratchett donation buttons. One going to the regular Trust donation page and a quick $20 Paypal donation button. Up until then please use the direct donation link or the Paypal button on the right.