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Memes for charity: vote for your favorite
Memes are well known to bring laughter and camaraderie. However, they can also raise tens of thousands of dollars for charity.
Another SF meme page is a prime example. We spoke with the anonymous page admin who had this to say:
“This is the 4th tournament I’ve run, second at Halloween. First one was March 20 and was a way to have something fun for people during the original COVID ‘two weeks to slow the spread.’
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I didn’t tell anyone anything prior and my page was still fairly new, just sat down and seeded a 64 page tournament and dropped brackets and it exploded. It was the perfect time with COVID and the community needed something fun.
About halfway through I had doubled my followers and realized we could do some good, so I had sponsors for the last 2 rounds. Raised like 2k straight to charity and thought great.”
Memes changing lives
The admin elaborated by saying:
“People loved the original March Madness tourney and kept bugging me to do another. COVID was still a thing and I thought why not, so I dropped Hallomememadness 20. We raised over 11k for charity, Hunter7 and Spec Ops Warrior Foondation.
Then in March of this year it jumped again, when I dropped Milmeme Madness 21. All told, we raised over 55k for Hunterseven Foundation in a month, including 20k from forward observations.
With about half coming from sponsors and half just coming from fans of the tourney that donated between $5 – $500.”
Decided by the followers
The memes are posted, then a poll is conducted on the story of the page. Fans then cast their votes and the winners move up the ladder. As you can imagine, it is quite the undertaking. The admin continued with the explanation below:
“I wasn’t planning on doing Hallomeme again because these things are a ton of work and take a looooot of time to do it right, but people really wanted it. I reached out to our bracket and title sponsors and 100% wanted to donate again, so that told me we were doing something right.
The main thing I always make sure everyone knows is that I take or touch no money from these tournaments. The “sponsorship” is a donation directly between the person/business and the charity.
I just give shoutouts or post logos as a thank you for their generosity, but not a single cent goes to me. I’m also not involved with and don’t benefit directly from the charity. But, I know if I ever get a bad diagnosis, they’ll be there for me, just like any other service member.”
