Oops! Woman accidentally swallows $5,000 diamond at charity event
(Photo: Getty Images)
The idea behind the Tampa Women’s Club charity event was simple. For $20, you could buy a flute of champagne and a chance to win a one-carat, $5,000 diamond.
Yum.
Coffee date with Tim Cook earns $295,000 bid, breaks Bill Clinton’s charity record
Charitybuzz’s offer of a coffee date with Apple CEO Tim Cook may only have entered its third day of bidding, but it has already broken the record for the biggest ever charity auction on the website. With bids totalling more than $295,000, Cook’s auction has surpassed the previous record bid of $255,000 — for a chance to spend a day with former US President Bill Clinton — and there are still 18 days left to bid.
Tim Cook is an expensive date.
Lance Armstrong has stepped down as a board member of Livestrong, the cancer-support charity he founded in 1997, the organization said Monday.
“Lance Armstrong has chosen to voluntarily resign from the Board of Directors of the Livestrong Foundation to spare the organization any negative effects as a result of controversy surrounding his cycling career,” Livestrong chairman Jeff Garvey said in a statement.
“We are deeply grateful to Lance for creating a cause that has served millions of cancer survivors and their families.”
Despite essentially not having any say over what the charity does, a spokesperson says that he ”remains the inspiration” for the charity’s work, as well as its largest individual donor. This resignation comes less than a month after he resigned as the charity’s chairman amidst scandal over his career.
They showed up there, and they did not have permission…The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. [Paul Ryan] did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society. He’s irritated that the Romney campaign had Paul Ryan stop by his soup kitchen, unannounced, and pose for pictures while “washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty,” as the Washington Post puts it. Antal is particularly distressed at the prospect of his center appearing to take political position, as he believes that could jeopardize its continued existence: “We are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” he explained. “I can’t afford to lose funding from these private individuals.” Here’s the photo in question. source
What happened: Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, better known as comedy-rock duo Flight of the Conchords, have been keeping a relatively low profile since the second season of their eponymous HBO show came to an end in March 2009. However, the two recently came out of hiding to do their part for the Red Nose Day: Comedy for Cure Kids event. The pair debuted a new charity single, created with help from enterprising young children and some of New Zealand’s top musical acts, and all proceeds will go directly to Cure Kids. Check out the video — don’t worry, it’s work safe — or head over to iTunes to buy the song. source
Mission Accomplished: With more than a month left to go, and nearly a million in total donations, the campaign to raise the funds necessary to begin creation of a Nikola Tesla Museum can officially be ruled a success. After Matt Inman — creator of “The Oatmeal” and a noted fan of Tesla — learned that a company was planning to purchase the land where Tesla’s final lab is located, and destroy it to make room for a retail complex, he felt compelled to intervene. Now, thanks to a matching donation from the state of New York, the project can be called a resounding success.This makes the second time that Inman has used the popularity of his web-comic “The Oatmeal” for charitable purposes, but has already dwarfed the now seemingly-paltry $211,223.04 raised by Operation: Bear Love Good, Cancer Bad. source
Here’s the problem: while ‘I’m buying a dream’ makes a certain amount of sense for a $1 lottery ticket, it makes much less sense for $100 vaporware. Just speaking for myself, if I’m spending $100, I want significantly more than just a dream. That’s more money than I’ve spent on lottery tickets in my lifetime.Reuters’ Felix Salmon takes on the idea that Kickstarter’s business model is “selling dreams,” i.e., marketing ideas which may or may not actually happen. Salmon, jumping off commentary by Fast Company’s Ian Bogost, agrees with Bogost (in part) that Kickstarter is like QVC when it first launched — an innovative approach to marketing that’s very social and mixes multiple conceits. But there’s more going on than that, he notes. “Kickstarter neatly wraps that charitable impulse in a commercial transaction, which makes it easier to ask for — and receive — more money than either approach would yield on its own.” Salmon wonders aloud if a handful of high-profile failures might take the whole thing down a few pegs. To those who have donated to Kickstarter projects, was it worth it in the end?
» The previous record holder, Jamie Gold, won approximately $12 million during the 2006 World Series of Poker’s $10,000 “Main Event” tournament. More than ten thousand players, both amateur and professional, entered the tournament that year. By comparison, Esfandiari bested 48 other players for his most recent win, including second-place winner Sam Trickett, and Greenlight Capital Inc. co-founder David Einhorn who came in third. The charity tournament was for Big One for One Drop, which received $5.5 million from the tournament.
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» Good, but still bouncing back: In 2007, charity giving hit a record $309 billion, which then took a nosedive with the economy, falling to $278.6 billion at the recession’s low point in 2009. While the number recovered in 2010 and 2011, it was the second-smallest recovery in charity giving since 1971. While giving was wide — 117 million households and 12 million corporations gave something last year — the rate, at 1.9 percent of income, was below the 2005 peak of 2.4 percent. Religious groups remained the biggest recipients of donations, but saw the total dip from 2010; international groups, however, saw their donations leap by 7.6 percent.
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How to respond to a threatening letter: Matthew Inman, the creator of The Oatmeal, recently received a letter from a lawyer representing FunnyJunk, a meme site which actively allowed users to steal his content without credit, advertising all over it. The letter claimed that he was grossly misrepresenting the site, and that they wanted him to give them $20,000 or fight a lawsuit in court. Inman did neither, choosing instead to write an epic annotated response and use the situation as an excuse to raise money for charity — half for the National Wildlife Federation and half for the American Cancer Society. So how long did it take Inman to raise $20,000 as the result of his post? An hour. Boom.
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