Welcome to the Gifts Given 2012 Charity Drive! Functioning on the heels of the highly successful 2011 effort, this year the focus has shifted from accepting and reselling donations of cards on eBay to the sale of CommanderCast-themed t-shirts and sweaters. This has resulted in some significant shifts in the way the process works, so if you’re interested in participating please read everything below carefully.
WHAT’S THE PLAN?
I will be selling CommanderCast clothing from my home, collecting payment, and donating all the profits to charity. Unlike the previous fundraiser, I will not be accepting material donations from the audience; instead, this time we will be functioning on a cash basis. However, donations are now also purchasing you a very pleasant CommanderCast shirt or sweater, so you have something to show to all your friends and make them super-jelly.
All profits generated by sales will be going directly to charity, but there will be no tax reciepts issued. “Why not, Andy?”
I am not a registered charity, and because the charity I am planning to donate to is not a Canadian one, things are complicated. I cannot issue tax receipts, so think of this as a ‘pay what you want’ for a t-shirt, with any money over the initial $15 buy-in going directly to charity. If you find this objectionable, then please don’t participate in the fundraiser.
COSTS
Shirts: $15 CDN, with both regular and v-necks, mens and ladies’ sizes available, colour(s) of your choice. For details, see below.
Sweaters: $25 CDN non-zip, and $30 zip-up, colour(s) of your choice. For details, see below.
All payment will be done through PayPal.
There will be no refunds. Not that I expect these shirts to ‘fail’ or something, but more because I can almost guarantee it won’t be worth the cost for you to mail the shirt back to me and have me go back to the producer. These shirts are being made to order.
TIMELINE
Because I don’t secretly own a T-Shirt producing facility, everything is going to take place in a defined timeline. Here’s how it goes down:
Ordering: Orders are open from September 3rd, 2012 until September 30th, 2012. For details on ordering, see below. Once the ordering window is closed, I will be accepting payments.
Payment: Payment for orders will be collected from October 1st, 2012 until October 14, 2012. Payments will be accepted via Paypal in a two-week window. You will be sending in funds for your apparrel, shipping, and donation. If all payments are collected before this deadline, shirts will be pushed to manufacture early. After the payment window closes, I will be ordering the shirts and having them produced, then shipping them immediately.
Shipping: I’ll push the shirts to production on October 15th, 2012 and they will begin shipping as soon as they are done. Shirts will be shipped daily in the maximum number volunteer staff can reasonably push out; there will be a massive surge of shirts shipped on the weekend of October 19th, where the volunteer levels will be highest.
If you miss out on your chance to order, you’ll simply be out of luck. Repeatedly producing new batches of shirts will take a lot of time, effort, and reduce the savings by producing at bulk, meaning less money is passed on to the fundraiser. I plan to produce everything in one batch and begin shipping immediately.
ORDERING
“Andy, what are my options?”
Well, there’s a LOT of them. We have men’s T-shirts and V-necks, ladies T-shirts and V-necks, and both zip-up and pull-over hoodies. You’ll be able to order in any of those formats in whatever colour you choose. For colour options, click on the link below the shirt style you’re interested in purchasing. IMPORTANT: The CommanderCast logo on the shirt will be white no matter what colour you choose for your apparel, so keep that in mind!
I know you want to look as awesome as these stock models.
Order Format
Here’s how to place an order and get a payment quote. All you need to do is copy and paste the little thingy below, fill it out as I did in the example, and e-mail it to CommanderCast@gmail.com with the subject line “ORDER FORM”. The subject line is important because I will be prioritizing these emails above others, so using this subject line will get you prompt service.
———————————
Name:
Shipping Address:
Items Ordered:
<quantity> / <clothing type> / <size> /<colour>
———————————
So, for example:
After I get this, I will send you a pricing quote ASAP. This is what you will be expected to pay when it’s time to submit payment and get your merchandise.
PAYMENT
Once all orders have been collected and the deadline passes, I will be sending everyone who ordered an e-mail with instructions on how to make payment, including extra payment for charitable donations/raffle tickets.
SHIPPING
All items will be shipping directly from CommanderCast Worldwide Headquarters (Andy’s apartment), packaged lovingly by Andy and his elite team of volunteers (his wife and a ghost). Clothing will be mailed in standard parcel to you in brown packaging paper, sealed up. If you want to make a different shipping arrangement, contact me and I can see what it will cost (options like express shipping, different containers, and so on).
If you are the winner of a Super Secret Mystery Prize and it changes your shipping cost, I’ll cover the difference, so don’t worry about that. Speaking of which…
SUPER SECRET MYSTERY PRIZES
As always, you know I like to spice things up with Super Secret Mystery Prizes. This fundraiser, I will be doing a raffle.
RAFFLE
Given the ‘pay what you want’ structure of the fundraiser, I think it helps to be incentivized to pay a little more into the charitable donation. For each clothing item you purchase, you will be getting one ticket into the raffle for prizes; for each $5 beyond up-front costs, you will get an extra ticket. So, if you pay $25+shipping for a t-shirt, that’s three entries into the raffle.
What are these raffle prizes, you ask?
1 signed Drana print from my man PolishTamales, as seen up in here:
1 signed print of Kaalia of the Vast, again by PolishTamales, as seen here:
1 ‘Misty’ playmat from my other man Derfington
1 GP Toronto 2010 Skithiryx playmat
3 CommanderCast T-Shirts (size will be based on winner’s purchase, colour will be different from order)
1 CommanderCast Hoodie (size will be based on winner’s purchase, colour will be different from order)
3 Official Giant Shark Deck Backing Kit (100 Ultra Pro sleeves plus x100 Giant Shark)
CHARITY CASES
As with the last fundraiser, I will be running a regular ‘Charity Cases’ segment on the podcast where I will be running down the donors to the fundraiser and reading messages they want read. If you buy a shirt, feel free to inlude a message or even an .mp3 file of a recording you’d like me to put on the show. Anything that passes my very low standards of ‘acceptability’ (no excess vulgarity and please keep things focused) will be read/played during the Community segment over a span of a few week’s worth of episodes on a first-come, first-serve basis.