I've been a member of this community under one name or another since the Dean campaign. Some of you know me as a disabled artist - I draw with my mouth - and have followed my story since I began my Will Draw For Food drive several months ago when I was in desperate need of help. As the holiday season approaches, I've decided to use my talent for good - other than my own, at least - and will occasionally be doing a series of diaries called Will Draw For Charities, in which I will undertake marathon drawing sessions in order to raise money for worthy causes. As I'm still living below the poverty line and must admit I consider feeding my family to be a worthy cause, I'll accept tips on the side for the work that I do, but the primary focus will be on getting pledges for charity.
Before I begin, I'm going to need your help picking the charities I'm going to do this for!
So I need your help!
I want you to give me some ideas for charities that deserve our help. It can be any kind of charity - political, poverty, women and children, GLBT, environmental... I'm open to any and all suggestions. From your suggestions, I will pick those that catch my eye as I research them. Then, the work begins!
Every few days over the course of this holiday season I will set aside a day to devote to the cause. On that day, I will ask all of you to e-mail me your pledges for the charity of the day. I will do two types of drawings during the day: I will do one detailed caricature of a politician or news person an hour for as many hours as I can during a 24 hour period, based on the first person to comment that hour and name a public figure for me to draw. Once that drawing is completed, I will do quick cartoons of anyone else that people suggest in the comments, completing as many of them as I can. This will be the labor that I put into the fundraiser.
Now here is where you come in.
There will be two ways that you may pledge: You can pledge for every hour that I do at least one drawing, and you can pledge for every drawing that I do in a day. For example, in the first case you may choose to pledge, say, $1 for every hour that I managed to do a drawing within 24 HRS. If I'm able to complete a drawing an hour for 8 hours, then you would donate $8.00 to that charity at the end of the day. As an example of the second case, if you pledged $1.00 for every drawing that I can complete during the day, and I managed to complete 30 drawings, then you'd donate $30.00 to that charity at the end of the day. The more that I'm able to draw, the more money we raise for charity.
When I've reached my exhaustion point, I will post a final update tallying the total drawings for the day. I will then e-mail each of you that have mailed me a pledge and let you know how much your donation should be for. Now of course I can't come to your house and make you make the donation that you pledge to make, but as this community is full of generous and caring people I really don't think that will be a problem.
It is my hope that in doing this I will be able to use my talents to help some very worthy causes. To do this, however, I'm going to need your help. You can start by giving me ideas in the comments for charities to look at and consider for the project. I look forward to your suggestions!