I'm giving away some of these (the money, not the condoms)

To celebrate yet another year of employment, I’m giving away some of my money again.

And as in previous years, your participation does not involve you spending any money, just helping to inflate my ego a little bit.

In the past I’ve given to Dans la Rue, the Welcome Hall Mission and the Old Brewery Mission. Now all of them are annoying me regularly with letters in the mail, which I find annoying not because they’re charities asking for money but because they’re wasting so much on printing and postage. It just seems weird that there’s someone who has gone through the calculation and determined that this money needs to be spent to get people to donate.

This year, I was told by my boss that I’ve reached the five-year rate of pay at work. Under the current collective agreement, that’s the maximum rate, even though I’m still a part-time temporary employee whose future there isn’t at all set in stone.

While I could use some more job security  … and my own weekly column too, while you’re at it, imagination … my bank account can attest to how much I’ve benefitted from these people paying me to do something I enjoy so much, so I’m giving back by sending my big donation to the Gazette Christmas Fund. Or The Gazette Christmas Fund. I’m still debating whether the “T” should be capitalized.

Anyway, here’s how it works: I’m going to give $1 of my own money for every new (legitimate) follower to my Twitter feed between now and one week from today (Dec. 21), and $2 for every new subscriber to my RSS feed. The former is currently 3,816 and the latter is 1,196 (though I don’t know how reliable that Feedburner count is). And to save myself going bankrupt in case this goes super-viral, there’s a combined limit of $2,000, which I can totally waive if I feel like it, because I set the rules, man.

So go forth and sing my praises, and together we can give away a bunch of my money and make me cool at the same time.

And if you insist on donating your own money, go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.

Now I feel slightly less guilty about not giving my spare change to panhandlers

I asked you to show your support, and once again the response was “whatever”, but I have enough of an existing audience that the Old Brewery Mission will still be slightly richer for the Christmas season.

For the record, my Feedburner subscription count went up a whoppingly massive nine, while my Twitter follower count went up by a slightly more respectable 46. So $650 for existing feed subscribers + $9 for new feed subscribers + $23 for new Twitter followers + a bonus $214.7 for existing Twitter followers ($0.10 each) = $896.70 to help society’s forgotten.

So as the charity thanks me for my donation, I thank you for your continued support, and particularly thank the Gazette, my employer for 11 of the past 12 months, whose union wage scale (combined with my lack of dependents and serious medical issues) means I have the kind of money to stupidly give away like this.

Merry Christmas, folks.

p.s. If you totally want to show me up, or even just feel a bit less bad for the fact that I’m donating my money in your name, you can make your own donation. The Old Brewery Mission accepts money online through CanadaHelps.org.

I made so much money this year, it made me go CRAZY!

I don’t know why, but I still have a job. And because I don’t have a life a dozen kids, pets and other regular expenses, I’ve decided once again to give away some of the cash I’ve been hoarding to a different financial black hole: a local charity. And the amount will depend on you.

If you’re new to this, you can see the posts from 2008 and 2009, but the idea is the more people who subscribe to this blog via feed readers (like Google Reader), the more money I give away. According to my spies at Feedburner, the current subscriber count is 1,250, which is pathetically similar to what it was a year ago. Like last year, I’ll start with $0.50 for each of those people as a base ($650), and add $1 for every new subscriber after one week, to a maximum of $1,000 (just in case this goes viral and I end up having to pay a quadrillion dollars or something).

As a bonus, I’m also donating $0.50 for each new Twitter follower (spammers and other non-human accounts not included, along with those who have astronomical following counts). At the moment of writing this, that number is 2,147. Again, this will be up to a maximum of $1,000 (so don’t bother following me if the count hits 3,147, I guess) – yeah, I know everyone’s doing it, and for more money, but I don’t have Véro cash.

The recipient of my stupid crazy giveaway this year will be the Old Brewery Mission, who will no doubt then add me to a mailing list like Dans la Rue and the Welcome Hall Mission, where I will be reminded regularly through the mail of how my contributions are helping people.

As if I care about helping people. I’m in this to get famous, and giving money to readers directly doesn’t give me a tax receipt.

This not-contest ends exactly one week from now, at noon (ish) on Wednesday, Dec. 22.

P.S. Speaking of giveaways, I have a small collection of swag – some media-related, others of local interest – that people have handed me over the past little while that I can’t really use because it offends my ethical sensibilities. I haven’t figured out the most fun way of distributing this stuff to those who might enjoy it, so I welcome your suggestions below. A charity auction? A party? A contest? Use it to bribe people into becoming friends with me? Just throw it in the garbage? Hand it to Jean Naimard where his burning rage will cause it to immediately combust?

I got so much money, I'm giving it awaaaaaaaay!*

Last year, I found myself in the enjoyable position of having some extra money laying around, so I decided I’d give some of it to a local charity. Being a self-centred narcissist obsessed with attracting attention, I decided to tie it to the number of people subscribing to my blog.

My eight-week contract as a part-time copy editor at the Gazette was extended a few more times, and though it could see its end after the upcoming two-year mark, I’m grateful for the chance to make all this money doing something I enjoy, so I’m doing this again.

I set up a Feedburner feed for this blog (it should be transparent to existing subscribers, so no need to change feed addresses), and it reports an astonishing 1,126 subscribers, almost three times as much as 12 months ago. Since I have about seven friends, I have no idea who most of those suckers people are, but I feel humbled by the fact they – you – like to read all the junk I post on here.

Last year, I donated $1 for each of my 402 subscribers to Dans La Rue (and, because I like round numbers, I rounded it up to $450). That was enough to get me on their mailing list and on a special pamphlet listing their few hundred largest donors. This year, because I’m cheap [come up with better excuse here], I’ll donate 50 cents for each of those subscribers ($563), and add $1 for each new subscriber between now and a week before Christmas (Dec. 18, for those of you who can’t count).

My chosen charity this year will be the Welcome Hall Mission, which helps the people most in need in this city.

I won’t be giving you sob stories about the poor families in desperate need of assistance. I won’t be showing you pictures of starving African children. I won’t be interrupting your regular programming to ask you to pledge in exchange for a tote bag. Hell, I’m not even asking you to give any money yourself, I’m giving away my money for you (but if you wanted to feel less guilty about that, you could match the measly 50 cents I’m donating for you, and maybe throw on a dollar above that for the two freeloaders on either side of you).

So give it a try. Set yourself up with Google Reader (like 710, or 63% of my feed readers) or another RSS aggregator of your choice, and subscribe to this blog. If you want to unsubscribe after I’ve given my money away for you, that’s cool.

Tell your friends if you want, but I’m not doing any marketing for this (why would I want to aid in the bleeding of my money?). I’m just doing this as a thank-you to my readers, and a way to silence my liberal guilt.

And if other fellow bloggers want to match my challenge (50 cents per existing subscriber, 1 dollar for every new one), I welcome the competition. But if you’re too cheap to put your money where your blog is, I understand. Cowards.

* Eagle-eyed Fagstein readers will recognize part of this picture as the one used in this blog’s header. The picture was taken for use in my freelance invoices. No, really.

During all of 2007, I was technically unemployed. A mixture of EI, freelance work and tax rebates from the government (I never quite figured out how that all worked) kept me afloat.

In January, I got offered an eight-week contract at my favourite job, as a copy editor at The Gazette.

I’m still there.

Facing the continually impending unemployment that contract workers must always prepare for, I’ve been pretty responsible with my money, putting most of it away in the bank. It’s gotten to the point where I can start considering things like RRSPs for the first time.

Being a bleeding-heart liberal, I’m also overcome with guilt that I’m not giving the money away to help homeless people or something. So, I figured, why not just go ahead and do that?

Rather than just cut a cheque, though, I figured I’d have a little fun with it, and involve the dozen or so people who read my blog.

My challenge

So here’s the plan: One week from today (Saturday, Dec. 20), I will donate $1 for every subscriber to this blog’s feed through web services that report such information (Google Reader, Netvibes, NewsGator, Bloglines) to Dans La Rue, a Montreal charity that helps street youth, up to a maximum of $1,000 (you know, just in case this hits Fark or something and I have to contemplate taking out a mortgage on a home I don’t own just to keep my promise).

By my calculations, I have 383 subscribers through those four main feed readers already, which means I’m $383 in the can. Let’s see how high I can push that number up (I’ll be keeping a close eye on traffic and other indicators, so don’t think about artificially inflating those numbers through fake subscriptions).

If you don’t subscribe via RSS and don’t know how, check out What is RSS and the video RSS in Plain English to explain it to you. My feed’s address is http://blog.fagstein.com/feed/

Your challenge

Now this second part is, of course, entirely optional, but while you’re getting me to donate a buck on your behalf, consider making a $10 donation on your own to a favourite charity. Don’t make me give out those “cup of coffee” metaphors to show you how insignificant $10 is.

If you want a charity idea, here are my suggestions:

• Dans La Rue helps local street kids
• Welcome Hall Mission gives out free meals and provides beds and social programs for homeless
• The Gazette Christmas Fund gives out $125 cheques to low-income Montreal families to make their Christmases a little brighter

Let’s work together to make Christmas merry for everyone. Especially my ego.