What a random number, right? Well, that’s the final total for #SMSG12!!! See?
Heh. The $0.33 comes from a time when I noticed the numbers – and thought charity: water displayed cents, so I donated $3.33 off the cuff to be cute. Et voilà.
I cannot thank you all enough for your generosity and support. So many people helped spread the word, with hundreds of retweets on twitter, numerous people who were willing to blog about it when I asked, or let me take over their blogs to spread the word. I know many of us gave more than we planned. A special shout out to Kindle Gal, and Romance Man who helped a lot. Joey W. Hill’s generous donation made me cry when I got the notification… and an anonymous donor whose giving almost made me faint.
I got a little discouraged at times, and extended Social Media for Social good so much longer than I ever expected to, and I promise you all. Never again. Promise. Never. But I want to say a very heartfelt thank you to everyone who was so positive about it, and encouraging.
And thanks to everyone in general for putting up with me. I totally understand the fear of people thinking you’re spammy, and the desperate need to make sure people who hadn’t heard about SMSG before do. (And yes, that happened.) So authors, you have my sympathy.
I can’t believe the results – I was going for a long shot with my goal of $10,000. I hoped it might happen – thought there might be a chance, but didn’t expect it. In fact, for a long time I thought we might not even make $5,000 in contributions. Near the end I amended my goal to $7,500, and look at how much more we went beyond that!
You all ROCK! <3
We brought one hundred and twenty seven people sustainable clean water! (Most likely – the numbers depend on the specific region, but $65/person is the average.) In 18 months we’ll be provided GPS coordinates and reports, and we can follow along the actual ground work to see how the project is going. Isn’t that amazing?
And a big thank you to all the people who offered prizes to help drive up comments and awareness. They are: R.E. Butler, Lauren Dane, Leslie Dicken, Cecilia Grant, Lynn Raye Harris, Kim in Hawaii, the International Heat authors et al, Samantha Hunter, Crystal Jordan, Yvonne Lindsey, Sarah Mayberry, Erica Ridley, Sandra Schwab, Shiloh Walker. All winners have been drawn via the rafflecopter widget, and notified. If you’re curious, you can also check out the list of awesome donors here.
I’m so glad we’re done with this – and that there are so many amazing, generous, lovely, caring people in the Romance Community. You all did good!
… I’ll see you next year. 😉