Josh Shear
The first $1,000
New Year's Eve saw a windfall for the Josh's Beard project, thanks largely to the efforts of . Chris reached out to me on Twitter in the morning and said he wanted to try some sort of challenge, so we came up with the challenge, and asked people to post a message to their Twitter accounts.
Bottom line: We started the day at $578 to fund research into childhood cancer, and by the time I woke up in 2010, we had $1,207 – that's $629 in one day.
In case you're not aware of the project, I'm raising money for the . They make grants to fund research into cancer in children, and their signature event is called a shave-a-thon. People donate money for their friends to shave their heads.
Since nobody's going to spend money to see me shave the little bit of hair I have, I've decided to grow a beard. I am posting to show my beard's progress, and, while nobody's taken me up on it, for a larger donation I'll happily wear your t-shirt or hold up your book, do crazy things to my beard (including sticking a business card in it or simply dying it), and generally tell people how wonderful you are, like I'm doing with Chris.
There's also a , in case you have photos, videos or things to say about my beard (unless you're the sports editor of the local paper – you're not allowed to tell people how scary my beard is).
So we've hit $1,000. Pretty darn awesome. We're still a long way off from my $25,000 goal, but the momentum is growing. We have a fundraiser scheduled for March, and one in the works for February. I hope you'll get involved by giving if you're able and definitely by spreading the word.
And if you have ideas for getting more money to the organization, email me.