First of all my apologies for taking a week to transfer our donation to the Turkey Syria Earthquake Appeal of the British Red Cross. While I did manage to dispatch all the items that were purchased in our charity sale, add the net proceeds and calculate the deductions through fees and postage *prior* to my quick trip to London, I stupidly did not bring my notes with all the numbers with me on the trip. So it had to wait until now. But now it has been done, I have just transferred our donation. (More about the finances further below.) Unlike our usual donation recipients, the British Red Cross website does not provide a public record of the donations. So I can’t give you a handy link where you can see the proof of donation. However, here are two screenshots of the donation receipts:

This is the automatic donation receipt on the website itself, and the following is the automated e-mail I received:

Our donation will go to the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) and Syrian Arab Red Crescent via the British Red Cross. The Turkish and Syrian Red Crescent are uniquely positioned in the affected communities and are continuing to provide the essential support for survivors who have lost their homes, belongings, livelihoods and loved ones.

Thank you to all supporters of the charity sale. I would like to thank Esther, Kate and Nancy for their contribution of unique items to sell for charity. They not only donated their time, creative ingenuity and material cost of items to the fundraiser but also took on most of the postage costs for shipping their items to the buyers. An equally big thank you to all buyers of items. You know who you are. Your generosity and willingness to shell out makes these fundraisers possible, and I appreciate that more than I can say.

The financial details

Our £625 donation (€710.62) comprises as follows (calculations in €):

The Etsy/Pattern proceeds came to €770.59, fees already automatically deducted at source. We had postage costs of €100. So total net proceeds from the sale was €670.59. A private donation of €32.79 by a fan luckily pushed us back over the €700 mark. So our total came to €703.38. This converts to £618.31.

Disclaimer: Any sales of my own items that occurred during the fundraiser and incurred fees were calculated, and I made sure to charge these fees to myself and not the fundraiser. Many thanks to those of you who kindly took the opportunity to buy one of my own products. ❤️ For the purpose of making doubly sure that none of *my* Etsy fees were debited from the fundraiser, I also donated half of my postage costs and additionally rounded our final donation from £618 to £625. Hence we arrived at a final converted transfer sum of €710.62.

I hope that the calculations are all clear. Please let me know if you have any other questions regarding the transaction.

Just to spread the “joy of pretty”, I’ll leave you with a collage of tweets announcing the arrival of the happy mail: