As of 5:44pm Eastern Time, 18 January 2008, we have raised for Defenders of Wildlife and other animal charities around the world a grand total of:
$5,032.75 US
Way to go, Smart Bitch Readers! And a big thank you to Nora Roberts, who is matching that total to $5,000.00, making the total raised in three days: $10,032.75.
And if you would like to contribute to the ferrets and other endangered wildlife, please feel free. You can also consider these Native American relief funds and charities, should you be interested in other giving opportunities:
Adopt A Native Elder – Charity Navigator Rating: Four Stars
First Nations Development Institute – Charity Navigator Rating: Three Stars
The Native American Heritage Association – Charity Navigator Rating: Four Stars
now THAT is frickin awesome.
In two days.
That so totally rocks!!! Woohooooo!!!! The Bitchery Rocks hard! And *bows* thank you so much Nora for taking on the match. You are THE AWESOME ONE. 🙂
spaminator: program64 – Now why does that sound like s/f story somewhere??
Wow! Amazing! Go ahead Bitchery!
And a HUGE thank you to Nora whose classiness knows no bounds.
I’m very pleased to have been a part of this. Thank you, Ms Roberts.
Oh, gosh that sounded wrong. Thank everyone all around.
This is amazing, and so satisfying.
Let’s here it for the ferrets (and other wildlife creatures)!
Smart bitches are also generous bitches.
Thanks to everyone who played a part.
Woohoo!
Nora, thank you for putting up the challenge. Thanks to the “bitches” for dealing with the organisation aspects of it all.
And to all that answered the call?
WELL DONE!!!!!!
*take your bows now*:-)
Sarah,
Thanks for including the Charity Navigator ratings. Too many people don’t know how useful that is in deciding where to put your contributions to do the most good.
Kudos to you for posting, for all the SBs who contributed, and to Nora Roberts for sparking our generosity with her own. WTG!!!
(sorry-no spell-check on my I-Phone)
Yay! The Bitchery does rule. This is wonderful. In just two days. Wow.
That’s amazing, it really is. Huge round of applause to everyone who participated, and special kudos to Nora, Sarah, and Candy. Celebratory ferretsicles* for everyone!
*No ferrets were harmed in the making of these sicles.
Wonderful news! I hope the ferret-adoption people will name the next couple of kits Robert and Nora in her honor.
Is anyone doing anything for endangered vampires? Protecting them from staking, burning, and being featured in really bad romance novels?
Wow. Oh wow.
This is amazing, yet not at all surprising to me. Romance authors and readers are some of the most generous people I’ve ever met. Why can’t this be the type of thing that we are known for rather than the derogatory stereotypes?
Seriously, Romance readers have big hearts. Off the top of my head, I can name several acts of generosity by members of the Romance community.
RWA and its annual Literacy booksigning at Nationals. Last year, nearly $57,000 was raised in the space of a few hours.
Brenda Novak’s On-Line Auction for Diabetes Research.
Cynthia Reese’s donating part of her royalties from “The Baby Wait” to organizationa that benefit Chinese orphanages.
Now, I’m going to show my Suzanne Brockmann fangirl credentials.
Suz donated ALL of the proceeds from her last book, “All Through the Night” to MassEquality, an organization that is working to support gay marriage rights. The amount totalled over $250,000.
And Suz’s readers have been in involved in the following:
Spearheading events to sign-up bone marrow donors. The last figure I heard was that there were over 40,000 new registrants as a result of this effort.
Supporting the troops in a myriad of forms including the efforts of the owner of baked goods supplier, Mucky’s Morsels. Alyson organized the raising of ~$2800 this year and then did all the shopping, baking and packing to send something like 70+ boxes of goodies to Iraq for Christmas.
A few other readers coordinated efforts to provide Christmas presents to a group of 60 vets in a VA Medical Center. The gifts included home-made fleece blankets. This effort went from the “Wouldn’t it be great if we could ..?” stage to successful execution in just over two weeks and involved people from all over the U.S. and Canada.
Another Suz reader organized an on-line auction to support the VALOUR-IT project (= voice activated laptops for our injured troops)and raised over $600 which was enough to buy one computer.
I’m sure there are MANY other examples out there. It would be interesting to see just how long a list of examples we could come up with. Then the next time some journalist is looking for a Valentine’s Day story and turns to Romance novelists, we can skip the heart-shaped bed and feather boa garbage and talk about stuff that matters.
Another round of applause to Nora for making the suggestion and providing the match and to the Bitchery for pulling it off … in THREE days.
Chryssa
for49—yes, romance writers and readers believe in doing for others and to the tune of way more than $49.
Bravo, Chryssa! Excellent idea!
And I’m sure all those instances you listed are barely the tip of the proverbial iceberg—lets hear it for more examples, ladies!
After Hurricane Katrina Nora’s chosen charity was Habitat for Humaity. The ADWOFF community raised over $20.000. Nora more than (way more than) matched that.
Jill
Try spell check , Jill. Ack !
Well, I happen to know of a fellow author who is also a registered nurse, who donated a lot of her time to helping Katrina refugees. And also in the cash-poor/hands-on category, I have an interview for a job with an animal charity in the UK next week.
I did run a campaign to raise money for a cat charity over Christmas, but people don’t care about cats, so it raised about three dollars.
I’m sure there are MANY other examples out there. It would be interesting to see just how long a list of examples we could come up with.
Lori Foster & Dianne Castell’s yearly reader/writer event… raffles, author critiques, etc to raise money for a battered women’s shelter. Plus, there’s always a ‘Support our Troops’ collection.
Lora Leigh’s reader/writer weekend~the first one was last year. A portion of the book sale proceeds was donated. There were raffles to raise money as well. All the money raised went to the local school system~ annual book budget in that county is like $500. Yeah, $500. The event raised somewhere between $3000 – $4000… I can’t remember the exact figures or even exact details, but it was a decent chunk of change that got donated.
JC Wilder is a certified first responder and after Katrina hit, she collected food, money, clothes, etc and hit the road. Spent a long time down there just helping where she could.
It would be nice if the media would focus on some of the good things that happen with the community, instead of just harping on some seriously wrong stereotypes.
Thank you for listing the Native American charities as well. While I like ferrets as much as the next girl, donating to a human charity seems like a better idea. Being a human myself, next paycheck I will send money to at least one of the above charities and acknowledge the Smart Bitches. The non-charitable phone company got my paycheck this time.
my word george43, yes I’m going to be that old this year. Scary how accurate this turns out to be.
An author friend of mine lost her house in the floods following Katrina, and authors from her publishing house (a very tiny epub) coordinated an eBay auction. Other authors heard about it and joined in. The donated items ended up raising over $800 for her, which was more than enough to pay for the travel expenses, hotel, and food for her family to reach a relative in New England. (can’t remember which state now!)
Come to think of it, what about Changeling Press’s Save The Quiet Kitty fund? It was set up to help out one of their authors who had medical bills, and has been ticking over since.
Thank you, SBs, and thank you, Nora.
When we ask ourselves, “WWND?”, the answer is, “Act with class and generosity.”
Gads, that is so cool. And you know, every time I come across a post elsewhere bitching about how mean everyone over here is, this is going to be my response.
Over 10 grand, half from Nora—you know, the meanie who expects not to have her work plagiarized and sticks up for the underdog.
Seriously—you gals and guys can’t be beat with a stick. I already know how generous people in the community can be, but this is so tres coolios.
http://blackfootedferret.org/kitTally.htm WOOT! Oochie-coochie alert! Ferret kit pics!
hours78: how long it took us to raise the ten grand for the ferrets
Awwwwwwwwwwww! I want one! Those are so damn adorable it hurts. HURTS I TELL YOU!
Do you think a ferret would get along with my cat and German Shepherd? I mean, this apartment can hold lots more pets, right? I should get a pair of ferrets so they’re not lonely.
No! Must… resist… must… not… get… another… pet…
Here you go, Amelia:
http://icanhascheezburger.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/funny-pictures-cat-stops-dog-hallway.jpg
To Amelia: domestic ferrets make good pets, but they are not for everyone – and I would definitely not start keeping them where are already dogs and cats in the house. If they didn’t get on, it could be quite a hard situation to handle. Also, many people dislike their smell, which is distinctive (remember, this species is not wholly unrelated to the skunk…)
A domesticated strain of the European Polecat (Mustela putorius) has existed for at least 3000 years or so, but they have generally been kept more as working animals than companions, so they can still be a bit wild – and they are very fierce carnivores.
I have known, and liked, pet ferrets, but I have not kept them myself, and I should say that anyone proposing to do so needs to be well prepared.
I definitely second AgTigress’s advice. I have one pet ferret, two big dogs and three cats, and lemme tell you, life in this circus ain’t easy.
Thing is, when you see them at the pet store, or in pictures like those? They are little sleepy bundles of cuteness. When they grow up a bit, they are like kittens on crack—for their entire life span. Which, since they are not “in the wild” is closer to ten than to two “winters.”
(couldn’t resist)
‘Kittens on crack’! Love it!
🙂
I’m puzzled about the $0.75. Odd, that.
not just awesome, better than great, extraawesome