Godless Spellchecker's Blog

As my recent and relentless Twitter campaigning may have indicated to those kind enough to check my timeline, Friday the 15^th of March marked the 25th anniversary of the Red Nose Day event.

Rest assured, this now concludes my shameless harassment and bribery of the Twitterverse for charitable donations.  Well, at least for this year.  Or unless I find myself out of paid work.

Since creating my silly little Twitter account (let there be tweet! And It took me less than 6 days), I’ve always been incredibly impressed, surprised and flattered by the frequency with which people engage with what I have to say, and how passionately they do so.

From how they contribute to the general discussion, to how they show support for various initiatives (from the Golden Twits, to the Shorty Awards, petitions etc).  The good will, wit and informed comments make it incredibly rewarding.  I’ve laughed and learned. A lot.

It occurred to me that this potent comradeship, good will and initiative could be put to great use if its attention was focussed on a charitable cause.

The excitement I experienced by this thought inspired me to set up the team page ‘Good For Good’s Sake” on our behalf.  The ethos being that all we needed to agree on was:

1. The Red Nose Day Cause is a good one.
2. Contributing to this cause would be a good thing to do.
3. Being good is worthy for its own sake.

It seems we did agree, as by the end of the evening (March 15^th ), we had reached a staggering £10,930.  This placed us at number 7 on the overall ‘Leaderboard Legends’ when the event had concluded.  This leader board includes every single team in the UK who were raising funds for the event.

A few days after the event we were bumped up to 6^th place. This resulted due to the merger of two corporate teams.  I don’t care. I’ll take it nonetheless. 6^th place everyone!

I fully expect us, of course to drop down, or even off this board in the coming days/weeks as other teams collect their remaining, or pledged funds, but that’s not important.

To be there at all, right up to and on the day of the event is an incredible achievement, one which I’m still a little overwhelmed by.  One that anyone who contributed should be proud of.

This is even more astonishing when you consider we had zero corporate backing or media attention of any kind, unlike many of the top fundraisers.  The funds we raised are a result of one thing, and one thing only: our willingness to do something good for its own sake.  We were simply a group of like-minded individuals with Twitter accounts who decided to do something good.

We had people from all over the planet give up their cash for the cause, and the rapidly increasing total gave no indication of slowing down, from the moment I naively set the starting target at £250, to when the unthinkable happened: smashing through the 10k mark.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed.  This amount, I’ve no doubt will help improve lives for the better.  And what could be better than that?  Please take the time to have a look here at some of the great work that will be done as a result of your kindness.

You’ve done a wonderful thing and I’m proud to be able to share a little corner of the internet with you.

My non-eternal thanks,

GS

UPDATE (Certificate Download)

In the months following our epic March 2013 Red Nose Day fundraiser, I have been in communication with the wonderful RND team with the hope of getting us a certificate so that I may make it available as a thank you to everyone who has contributed.  This is a huge achievement, one which I doubt I’ll ever be part of again.  I think it will be nice to own a reminder of what a small group of people can achieve when they agree something is a worthy cause.  Click download below.  Please also click here to support our latest charitable fundraiser and be part of the next Team #GFGS achievement.

Download Certificate (PDF)