Helping a charity in 2009

I blogged back in April on an idea:

I’m a big believer in helping charities. Hell, I worked for the Red Cross for four years and it is amazing at how much can be done for sometimes not a lot of money. One or two staff can get water supplied to camps of thousands etc. Kiwis are great at giving up so much time and money to help others.

There are many great charities. SPCA, Women’s Refuge are a couple I always donate to. And all the cancer ones. Plus of course you get phoned all the time now asking for donations to other charities and you give a bit more often than not.

Anyway what I have been thinking is it would be great if the community that forms around a blog, can be used to support one particular charity in a really significant way.

I proposed five steps:

1. See if people think the idea has merit
2. Try and get a small number of volunteers on board to help organise things
3. Ask people to nominate various charities for inclusion in a poll, to be Kiwiblog Charity for 2009. Probably have some criteria for shortlisting.
4. Have readers vote on preferred charity from the short list. We’ll rotate it every year, so missing out is not permanent.
5. Then over a year, undertake a range of activities for the charity, with some possibilities below:

There was excellent feedback, so No 1 is done. I now want to move to Step 2.

The organisational side is going to be a lot simpler than I feared, due to the kind offer of partnership by Give A Little. They have all the tools and widgets to make it really easy.

What I want to do now is have a get together on Monday (after work) with people who are keen to form a sort of organising committee for the initiative. Basically to discuss:

1. Shortlist criteria
2. Possible events/ideas as fundraisers
3. Potential partners

If you are interested in helping out, let me know. At this stage the time commitment is very modest, but as we progress into next year there might be a reasonable amount of organising to be done – possibly quiz nights, celebrity debates, sponsoring a Kiwiblog team (including me) for a half marathon etc etc.

We’ll probably get together at 5.30 pm Monday (at the Backbencher) for an initial chat.