Giving, of my words, my blog, my time.

A while ago I wrote a blogpost about a charitable endeavour, and it sparked me to think of doing more than just linking to and promoting charity gifts (note the original post was not sponsored. It was a charitable carnival). I wondered if I could somehow use the blog to raise money to buy the gift I talked about, a library.

So I started a fundraising page. And I started pondering how to raise money. And I chose a family challenge to read and review 100 books in January.

What I don’t think I thought through was how this was going to raise any money. Since I started it, although we’re getting lots of support from book PRs and publishing firms in the form of book parcels, it’s been rather more difficult to get even RTs on twitter and so on. I have a loyal band of supporters who are blogging about the challenge and a great group of readers who are commenting as we go, but so far, there’s been just 1 donation since we started the challenge.

That takes the money raised to £30. Not very far along the path to build a library.

So am I doing something wrong? I *am* going to donate money myself, but I don’t have a lot to give. I’m going to give away the books I’ve been sent just as soon as I’ve reviewed them – so far most of those I’ve reviewed have been library books. Will giveaways raise the profile enough that ppl might feel like donating? I’ll be working my way through the gifted books over the next week. Is it that this is just the idea of one lowly blogger, without any kind of PR campaign behind it?

Is it because I’ve no personal connection with the charity? I haven’t been out to see a place that needs libraries – would pictures or personal stories about how a library can change lives make a difference? Or is it just that we are all giving everything that we can already, and in this day and age, ppl feel it’s our libraries close to home that need our support?

I don’t know. I think that we are still, even if libraries here do shut, very very lucky, and that we could still afford to send a little money via OxfamUnwrapped to other countries not nearly as well supplied.

But I guess that even if all that happens this year is I read a lot of books and write about them, and gradually donate what I can when I can, it will still be worth doing, and I will feel like a better person for it.

Written for the Writing Workshop on Giving.