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2013 Brickset Raffle *ENTRY TO RAFFLE NOW CLOSED*
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So much so I decided tonight to redraw up a design and relaunch one of my old websites that gets roughly 1 million hits a month. It hasn't changed for over 4 years. Oops
MILLION hits a month and hasn't changed for 4 years? Don't they notice?
What website is that? (pm me, i'd love to have a look).
By the way, that would mean clicking the little 'message' button, NOT writing in the white box - unless you want the world to know. :oD
I'll do my bestest :-)
http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/866/page/40419
All twelve locations are now announced and I'll put together a master list later. Really a conversation for another time but if you would like to be involved with distribution next year, assuming there is a next year feel free to drop me a pm.
We need to go back to last year when this idea was first considered. It wasn't a long thought process. Standing outside the Sheffield Brand Store talking to @atkinsar before loading his car full of cut price sets for distribution to others. We had just attended the grand opening and I had picked up a second copy of the mini brand store. Usually I would have offered this to a mate but so many wanted one how could I choose one over another? I said to Andy I might try and raffle it. He thought it was a good idea and @Huw gave me the green light to go ahead. It was a nervous time but ultimately a success with a free set eventually generating £300 which was spent on donated LEGO to make children very happy.
Fast forward to April 23rd this year when I posted a request to buy a Mr Gold at a reasonable price. It was a post more in hope than expectation but knowing the wonderful spirit that exists here at Brickset I thought I had a chance. With the addition of a few extra from myself I had this dream that with a Mr Gold maybe £1000 could be raised and used to buy LEGO at four hospitals.
What happened next blew me away. It shouldn't have this is Brickset. @TheCableGuy offered an alternative prize of a Chrome Darth Vader. This then snowballed very quickly with prizes being offered from all over the world. I honestly couldn't keep up. The combined value of the prizes never crossed my mind until @Basta offered to high value items and asked about potential ticket sales. Would we sell enough tickets to cover the value of prizes or would it be better selling the items? Panic suddenly set in. @Legoboy had expressed a similar concern earlier in the day during a telephone call and I quickly made the decision to close the prize pool and not accept anymore prizes.
I need to take this opportunity to publicly apologise to anyone that wanted to contribute a prize. It was a panic situation and I know lots of people were disappointed. I still don't know if it was a correct decision but I feel I was correct in making it.
Once everything was announced and ticket sales started the sleepless nights kicked in. The constant fear of not covering the cost of prizes wouldn't go away. I didn't know the combined value. Part of me didn't want to know but I had to settle my nerves. I couldn't bring myself to calculate it though. I emailed @atkinsar to do it for me and in the blink of an eye he had worked out we had around £600 worth if items. I checked the running total. It was higher. I was happy. The raffle was justified. Now all I had to do was wait for the sales window to close and draw the prizes. Nothing could be more simple.
Simple that is until I received a pm from sirrich69. He had a Mr Gold. He was willing to add him to the prize pool. I was lost for thoughts and words. I was still dumbstruck when @LostInTranslation sent me an excited sms message about the possibility of getting him. How did she know? Had Mark gone public. A few minutes later I realised Lucy had been included on the pm. I had to think. A quick ebay search told me Mr Gold was changing hands at around £500. Ticket sales had been slowing and would another £500 arrive or would his value be wasted?
I chatted to Mark and Lucy. I needed another opinion so contacted @Legoboy to discuss. James throughout this process has been my Jim Morrison from Waynes World 2 thankfully without the weird naked Indian. He confirmed what I thought that his introduction combined with another front page news story would boost sales and cover his value.
From there sales exploded for a while and then slowed again to a constant but lower regular amount. It became a morning ritual to check the overnight sales from around the world. The worldwide aspect of this is massively important to me. This isn't a UK event, hobby or community. We are a true international LUG and hopefully no one from any part of the world felt excluded. The allocation of funds has been international but perhaps fair to say not as much as I would have liked. Despite it not being said publicly or indeed privately there are some obvious areas of the world not covered. Now clearly money can't be distributed everywhere but despite very hard work to include other countries it just wasn't possible this time. Going foreward this is something that can and must be addressed with more planning.
I know many felt the ticketing progress comical. I could sense the questions. Is he really writing out tickets? No really? Is he mad? I would say yes to the first two and the third maybe a little bit. In some way it helped me feel connected with all of you. Despite the time it took it was worth it. Names of good friends appeared, names I've never seen here on Brickset, names of people who are not even members.
The draw is best described as organised chaos. There was talk of webcams, live feeds etc but with my lack of computer knowledge that was never going to happen. I felt it worked well as a text event. Armed with my trusty hat, books of ticket counterfoils, pen and paper, workhorse S3 and perhaps most importantly cups of tea I was ready to go. I can't say I ever really got into a rhythm with it but from reading the comments afterwards everyone had a good time regardless of if they won a prize or not. There were some genuinely funny moments in there and if you missed it "live" its well worth going back for a read.
At various times throughout this I've almost been reduced to tears. Three things stand out. The post by our eventual Mr Gold winner @meyerc13 recalling a personal experience with his own son and what LEGO meant when he was in hospital. The second was when I was given a set to donate to the cause by a four year old boy Jack, the son of @indigobox. Having just won the set he was happy to hand it over to others less fortunate. The third was a post by @bogeymanuk saying this event had inspired to to do more himself in his local community to help others. For me that raised the bar of what we were doing even higher.
To be continued below...........
@Huw for allowing this event to run in the first place. It wouldn't get off the ground without him and another fine example of standing within the community.
@drdavewatford for putting his ambassador skills to fine use in negotiations with TLG regarding any help they could offer us.
The CEE team at TLG for their support and assistance. It would be inappropriate to provide details of the support but its been substantial.
@bricksan and @MinifigsMe. The pimpers. Richard provided a front page article on his website Brickfanatics. Caroline wrote a blog and featured us on her facebook page.
@LostInTranslation and @MinifigsMe.The builders. I asked Lucy to try and build a totalizer and it was built then re built twice without question. There were the surprise scenes of me drawing tickets and resting. I'll even forgive her for the Fairy tag I've acquired and I think will take some shaking. Caroline at very short notice produced the gif that helped in my reveal of Mark as the secret Mr Gold donator. Even her dinner guests were made to wait!
@Legoboy for being my Jim Morrison. At several times he brought me back from the edge of insanity none more so when I interrupted his fencing project on the middle Friday at 5pm expressing serious doubts about everything. James also secured a Chima set from TLG in Slough.
@TheCableGuy @samiam391 @coachie @greekmick @LostInTranslation @morezone @cheshirecat @richo @kempo81 @y2josh @sidersdd @atkinsar @jadeirene @indigobox and @Basta. They all stepped foreward without being asked and supplied a wide range of fantastic prizes.
@sirrich69 aka Martina aka Mark. At a guess the inclusion of Mr Gold was worth around £2400 to the total. If not for Mark LEGO would be going to six hospitals not twelve.
@sidersdd @rocao @bmwlego @Legoboy @warrenelsmore @coachie @Legopants @Jenni @Supersympa @lluisgib and @Basta. Everyone has contributed significant amount of time and effort. This stage is far from complete and I know everyone will continue with their stirling progress.
I hope you're all still awake. I'm sorry if I've missed anyone that should have had an individual thankyou. I think you're all bloody brilliant. I've said thus before but it needs repeating. This isn't Kevs raffle. Its ours. Its Bricksets. If the demand is there I'm happy to return and head it up again next year. I'm equally happy to pass the torch.
Let me finish with the most important thankyou I can make.
Thankyou @The Brickset Community. It doesn't get any better than this.
This to me is what makes this community something different and something unique. I have been on many communities in my time of being on the internet and this one certainly has proven that people can pull together.
Thanks @SirKevBags for of your hard work as well. Without this raffle may have never started, let along raised £4800 for hospitals around the world, and the donations from the people who contributed their time and there collectable LEGO sets, some of which are extremely rare and hard to find.
Thank you for letting Jack and I to be a part of it and we can't wait for next years! :P
Here's to @SirKevbags, the Brickset community and those we have been able to help!
Yes @SirKevbags, it was a real blast. Not sure how we managed to hold you together to get you through in one piece, but we did.
When Kev told me who had pledged Mr Gold early one morning whilst waiting to go into my place of work and then later revealed him to be "a lady", I almost choked. @Rich69, I think it might have been me who named you @Martina. Sorry about that. :o) But really well done for making that donation Mark. Incredibly generous. In fact, all of the donations were, but without your's I'm not sure we would have raised a third.
@Kevbags, I am looking forward to helping out next year complete with JM and btw, who's to say I wasn't sporting my 'weird naked indian' look on more than one ocassion?
Thanks again to all involved, looking forward to the next one, I will need to find something to donate this time!
Bob
I don't think you know how to :)
Many thanks again to all involved :)
An update on the spending of proceeds. Everyone is working extremely hard to make sure the hospitals get what they need. Some interesting, perhaps surprising choices. Huddersfield for example will be receiving a large amount of Duplo because they are particularly short of it.
Some of the sets are also quite fun. My eldest (8) still likes playing with a duplo castle.
Thanks again @SirKevbags. I look forward to the next charity raffle. I was going to say next year's raffle, but who says it has to wait that long? :)
http://www.ilugny.org/2013/06/09/donation-of-lego-to-cohen-childrens-medical-center-from-brickset-community-and-i-lug-ny/
Thanks for organizing this SirKevBags and to those who donated towards the raffle!
Thanks @SirKevbags and everyone involved, and thanks to the kind person who donated the Darth Maul, he is now very much loved by my son.
I already have something earmarked for donation for the next raffle.
The Bounty Hunter Assault Gunship and Daily Bugle sets were replaced at the last minute after everything was boxed up and I didn't have time to set up and take another pic.
In short, the donation had a retail value of just over double of the actual donation budget.
Thanks again.
Anxious to hear when my prize donation reaches it destination @Branko, it was shipped a few weeks back now.