Fundraising Through Poker

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Fundraising Through Poker

It seems I have become charitable in a different way in the last 2 years. I was one of those little girls that knocked on the door with a box of candy many years back. I moved forward from this to supporting children by feeding them breakfast and working with many community organizations in Australia in even the smallest way. Take the Forty Hour Famine as an example; every year I fasted that I could until the doctor told me NO MORE. I was then ready to sponsor an overseas child in need but moved to donating via owned. This is one way of fundraising through poker – from my photo sales. My donations to date are as follows:

• 42,150 cups clean drinking water
• 144,595 grains rice for the hungry
• 31,063 words new books
• 99,914 seconds peacekeeping in troubled regions
• 81,965 milligrams teddy bear stuffing
• 33,090 milliseconds cancer research
• 551 ounces CO2 from the atmosphere
• 193 square inches blankets
• 479 calories food for animals in need
• 327 square feet the rainforest

Now that may not seem a lot but add up everyone else’s contributions and it is empowering! The same applies to fundraising through poker. I learnt early last year methods that could be used. Some methods worked successfully others didn’t. Banding together all poker players’ worldwide works wonders!

I was very pleased to have raised a massive amount of money via fundraising through poker for the victims of the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Disaster. In addition to raising funds I generated clothing, toiletries and other small items – sent from the community for the effected community. I did not do gathering alone but very much helped with the co-ordination through the VIC premier’s office; passing on messages via a MASSIVE Facebook group and cause. In the end I had to pass on the message to stop. Stopping 1 million people from sending what they could was alike sending myself to slaughter. Regardless it had to be done and I did it. The clothing donations were so plentiful there were too many, there were embers flying everywhere and well; embers and clothing piles don’t go together too well. I won’t encourage this amount of donations again while doing fundraising through poker.

I asked all members of the poker community to donate through the cause; spread the word to their friends and have them donate also and become a part of this fundraising through poker. The numbers, for Facebook causes we are huge. Most poker pro’s, poker affiliates and poker managers have 2000 friends. When you have you have a GREAT cause, they will invite and donate. Let me show you a figure (it’s rough). 2000 of my invited friends invite 1000 friends each to donate $1 to a Facebook driven cause. This equates to: $200,000.00 raised for a good and needy cause and a super fundraising through poker. If only each person did take that time. A domino effect continues in the online gaming industry and before you know it the figures hit $500,000. I believe this is what happened with the bushfire relief fund in VIC with some poker players donating 1 big blind which to them is peanuts but to the needy HUGE!

Anyway there’s 2 ways that you can do fundraising through poker:

1. Selling your pics on owned and encouraging all poker player friends to.

2. Inviting players to a cause and asking them to invite all of their poker playing friends. Each donating $1.

Other methods I have used include; using media resources, birthday wishes, online poker tournament setups, live poker tournament organization, asking players to vow to donate a % of their wins to your cause. There are MANY ways of fundraising through poker! We really are charitable!

I will cover these methods and exactly how to do fundraising through poker in a future post so stay tuned. I will tell you what tournaments are successful, how to advertise them and what to do to organize them. How to setup live poker tournaments, talking to the right people about donating some of their wins and how they can claim this back in tax and much; much more.

In the meantime, check out my birthday wish here:

Your gift now will help distribute relief supplies – including food, clean water, blankets, and tents to children and families impacted by the earthquake and aftershocks in Haiti. I wish this tragedy had never happened, seeing as though it has, please - give the gift of food, water, medication and medical supplies to these innocently struck people. For my birthday, I want to help the people of Haiti who have survived.

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/258126?m=7989e80b&ref=mf

Donate even $1, and we are on our way to helping the people of Haiti and at the same time making me a wonderfully happy birthday.