Suggestion - Charity Drive For Christmas

With Christmas coming up, and us being a fandom inextricably linked to children's playthings, and the additional fact that we are privileged enough to be able to afford thus hobby to whatever extent, why don't we start a member initiated drive in aid of a charitable foundation for Christmas, for those less fortunate than us?

There's many ways we could accomplish this, including direct donations, raffle, members donating proceeds from sales of unwanted items, just to name a few possibilities. Another option would be to suggest something like for the month of November, ask anyone using the Sales forum to donate 5% of their total to the cause (optional of course for them), and ask the buyer to do the same. Offer board perks for a small fee for a time, like a special member rank to show you helped. Just throwing out ideas here, obviously not all will be viable.

I'm sure we could establish a reasonable target to aim for, and find a charity that we can agree on for receiving the proceeds.

PayPal has a very dim view of allowing charitable causes, so if we did this, we'd probably have to set up a special bank account. That's easy to do. For instance, off the top of my head, I live within ten minutes of Griffin and Deacon (just using you guys as an example). It'd be easy for the three of us to open a special account to hold collected funds, and have it set up so that while there were 3 signatories, at least two signatures are necessary to access the account, to protect everyone from the potential for fraud, and to provide community assurance of the safety of the funds.

I don't know what a reasonable goal would be, or even if there's enough interest to even try it, but surely it's worth examining, for us to come together as a community and help make the holiday season better for people less fortunate than ourselves.

Any and all comments are welcomed.

I think that's a great idea Cat.... I'd be happy to donate a couple of bucks towards giving underprivileged kids a better Xmas.

I hope this gets off the ground :)

Count me in Cat
Great thought and I am overdue to do a good deed

I'm in. I think that most people here would be keen. We just have to decide what would be the best 'bang for our bucks' so to speak.

Count me in

Another possibility is to make a pledge tied in with your acquisitions.

EG for the month of November, I pledge to give the following for every item I purchase in that month in the following amounts:

For everything Deluxe size or below: $1

Kre-O or Bot Shot: 25cents

Voyager or above: $2.

Masterpiece/G1/Titan Class: $5.

Then at the end of the month, check that month's Acquisitions (ideally tally it up as you go along too), and work out what you owe.

''Let's see. In November I bought two MPs, 1 G1 fig, 4 Deluxes, 1 Voyager, 2 Kre-O sets, and 2 Bot Shots.

That makes my tally $22.''

Just an idea of a way to incorporate our donation with our collecting. It's not difficult to put aside a dollar here and there, if you used something like my above example.

count me in :)

Sounds good to me. I'd definitely contribute. The only potential issue I could see is disagreement in regards to the charity we pick. Inevitably, every charity will have people that don't like it, which may discourage contribution. I hope I'm wrong though.:) Perhaps 2-3 charities instead of one?

But otherwise, a fantastic idea.

I'm in, a charity to do with kids would be the go, camp quality comes to mind.

This thread is one which is close to my heart.

Last Christmas I spent time in the Royal Childrens Hospital in Brisbane with my very sick 9 month old including Christmas Day in the Intensive Care Unit. I am well aware of what it is like for families spending time in hospital through that time of year. One of the things which made a big difference to us was a visit from Santa and and gift that he brought for my little princess.

This year personally I will be taking a wad of Transformers to the RCH in Brisbane. I see this as a way to do my bit for little ones and also share the joy of Transformers to the next generation.

With the local Big W (and I am guessing all of them will) doing RID Prime Commanders for $5.00 this is a cheap way to do a nice thing for some kids and parents who could really do with a ray of sunshine.

To put this in perspective the RCH accepts patients from Brisbane and anyone North of Brisbane whose local Hospital does not have the specific facilities to deal with your childs needs.

Here is a link to the Working wonders charity information for toy donations.

https://www.workingwonders.com.au/do...s-and-services

If anyone on the Gold Coast would like to take part, I visit the Hospital on a monthly basis with my little one and can deliver it to the hospital. :)