10% Blog Income Give Back # 1 Winners and Charity Selected!

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Approximately 2 weeks ago on October 31st, the first ever My Personal Finance Journey Community and Charity 10% Blog Income Give Back came to an amazingly successful close. As such, I wanted to share the results of the October give back with you all today.

I apologize in my delay in sharing these results with you all, as I have been traveling to New York City and tied up with work in my Alzheimer’s disease lab for the past few weeks. Things have been slightly crazy to say the least!

October 10% Blog Income Give Back Set-Up

As described in the original October Give Back post, the October 2011 10% Blog Income Give Back was set up in the following way:

• $205 total blog income to give away – $105 going to My Personal Finance Journey readers and $100 going to the charity selected by the giveaway grand prize winner.
• $105 in prizes available to two readers was broken down in the following way – 
• 1) Grand Prize = $75 cash via PayPal.
• 2) 2nd place prize = $30 cash via PayPal.

October 10% Blog Income Give Back Entry Points Summary

During the 3 weeks that entries in to the giveaway were open, there were a total of 1229 entry points accumulated by approximately 66 readers.

I used the relatively new Rafflecopter giveaway tracking/management tool, and I was very satisfied with the experience! It made counting up the entry points much easier since I could export and sort them by entrant using Excel. Rafflecopter also has a nice feature that allows you to use a previous giveaway as a template for a new one. This will greatly streamline setting up this month’s (November) 10% blog income give back. More details on this will follow shortly.

Some significant highlights of the results of the entries are described below:

• 19 people filled out the Site Feedback Questionnaire. I really appreciate everyone doing this, as it helps me out greatly to know how to change/tweak this site in order to serve the readers better. I’m reading through everyone’s suggestions and feedback now. 
• 32 subscribers signed up to the new free My Personal Finance Journey Intelligent Financiers Newsletter. 

Give Back Winners and Charity Selected

Ultimately, Corey from 20’s Finances and T. Alexander were the Grand Prize and 2nd place prize winners, respectively. Corey received $75 cash via PayPal, and T. Alexander received $30 cash via Paypal. Congrats winners!!!


The charity selected by Corey from 20’s Finances for the 5% blog income ($100) donation was Greenpeace. The $100 donation was processed on 2-November-2011.

If you’re like me and are not very familiar with Greenpeace, pasted below is a quoted excerpt from Greenpeace’s donation page explaining what their purpose is:

Greenpeace’s mission is to expose global environmental problems, ensure that the Earth is able to nurture life in all its diversity and promote solutions for future generations.

Greenpeace is a force for hope. We are independent and non-partisan. We do not solicit donations from corporations or governments and rely on individuals to make our work possible. 

Greenpeace Fund supports our educational and public outreach efforts, in part, through our Greenpeace Quarterly magazine, fact sheets, and reports about our campaigns. Greenpeace Fund also informs the public about environmental issues through our media operations and supports our scientific and public policy research that is fundamental to our campaign work, both nationally and internationally.

As I understand it, Greenpeace is essentially a direct action non-government funded organization that exists to help to expose actions around the world that are being taken that harm the environment. By exposing these harmful actions, it helps to garner support to correct the problem. It seems they have been quite effective to date with this method. They definitely gather a lot of media attention to say the least! I heard that several years ago, they somehow hung a “Stop Global Warming” poster on Mount Rushmore. I have no idea how they managed to do that!

One of the really cool things about this giveaway was that it enabled me to learn about many charities that I was not aware of previously. Giveaway entrants selected charities ranging from food banks to nature conservation groups to disease research organizations and all points in between. It was really an eye opener!

Looking Ahead…

To conclude, I want to send out a big thanks to everyone who entered the October giveback/giveaway. I’m going to start putting together the November 2011 10% Blog Income Give Back today and plan to start opening entries tomorrow.

The total to give away to charity and blog readers will be a similar amount to last month. $201.40 will be up for allocating for the November giveaway! Should be exciting!

As always, thanks for being a faithful reader and participant in the My Personal Finance Journey community.

Jacob

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/404037340/sizes/o/in/photostream/