50 days until Christmas, so now we can start with the C word… So, upon request, here is the official announcement: We’ll have another fundraiser, in time for the holidays. To that end, I am planning the event for three days in the first week of December. Exact dates tba at a later stage, but mark the first week of December in your calendars. (The date has been chosen to facilitate postal dispatch for items to arrive in time for the festivities.)

The #2020DecemberFundRAiser will consist of two separate fundraising “events” – a fun auction of fan items on eBay, and a fixed-price sale of specially-made fan items on Etsy. Both platforms will incur fees that have to be covered by the fundraiser itself; however, they have been chosen because they both facilitate easy and safe monetary transactions at relatively little organisational effort. Plus, they are tried and tested as we have conducted fundraising projects both through eBay and Etsy before.

As it appears as if charity donations via Richard’s JustGiving sites have been disabled, I propose benefitting LOROS again with our donation. They need any help they can get.

Calling all crafters

If you would like to get involved, or if you are craftily inclined, you are invited to donate or create fan items, particularly for the fixed-price sale. We have a stash of fan items for the auctions already set aside, but for the fixed-price sale we are looking for items that can be priced at an affordable rate, preferably including moderate postage costs. The guiding principles by and large:

• flat items that can fit in postage envelopes (= keeping postage low)
• low-ish in value so as to be priced no more than 10 Euro (= still allowing for profit when subtracting transaction fees and postage)
• can be hand-crafted but don’t have to be
• preferably multiple items of the same kind so as to offer a number of buyers to be lucky and get their hands on a low-price item, as well as making the sale via Etsy easier (= one listing that draws from a stock of multiples)
• items must be finished and ready for sale by end of November (if posted to buyers by crafter) or by mid-November (if passing on to me for central dispatch – please bear in mind whether you have posting restrictions due to Covid)
• if crafter dispatches items to buyers themselves, items need to be photographed for me to add these images to the Etsy listings

If you would like to contribute as a donor/crafter of items, please get in touch with me bts – guylty@photographer.net or DM on Twitter @guyltypleasure – so that we can avoid doubles and discuss whether the items are appropriate in terms of posting.

Sorry for the bureaucracy above there in the guidelines, but that is just to avoid any confusion 😊. Hope I haven’t forgotten any other important info. Looking forward to making December a little brighter 🎄