“2008 PMC Software Auctions”

Background #

August 1st, 2nd and 3rd (Friday - Sunday), I'll be riding my bike across the state of Massachusetts in the PMC, along with about 5500 other riders. Riding the bike for 300 miles is the easy part. The real challenge is meeting my $10,000 goal for this cancer-care-and-treatment charity.

If you want to know more about the ride, or my participation in it, start here or even try the pmc channel on the journal.

This is the third year I've done these software auctions to raise money for this charity.

The biggest part of my fundraising plan this year is this Software Auction.

I need hundreds of donations in order to meet my goal this year. Last year was awesome, but I want to do even better this year.

Auctions #

The auctions will start in June, or whenever enough software has been donated for me to start creating bundles.

The Plan #

This page is specifically for software developers (both indies and larger companies!).

I'm looking for donations of mac software from the developers. The donated software will be sold for charity.

I'll sell it in two different ways:

1. Some of it will be burned to CDs. The CDs will be auctioned on eBay. 100% of the auction (minus the cost of the auction and credit card processing) will be donated directly to the Pan-Mass Challenge.

2. The rest of it will be "sold" through the PMC itself. Technically, this isn't a sale, but is a gift in appreciation of a donation.

   How does this work? People "make me an offer" for bundles of at least two apps. If the offer is good enough, they make a donation to the PMC and email the receipt to me as proof. This worked quite well, and is much faster than the auctions.

Buyers can receive their apps in one of two ways: I'll burn a CD with all of the software in the bundle, and mail it along with a printout (and/or email) with their license codes for each application, or I'll create a disk image and put it on a server for them to download. (Some people just want a disk image to save the shipping fees.)

When I'm running the auctions, I run lots of different "sets," but none of the sets contain a copy of every app. Last year I did sets for web developers, graphics, programmers, games, utilities, and lots of others.

Last year these auctions raised over $5,000. This year, I'd like to raise the majority of my $10,000 goal.

All proceeds will be donated to the Pan-Mass Challenge, and in turn to the Jimmy Fund, for the research and treatment of cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Pan-Mass Challenge is one of the most efficient charities in the world (over 99% of all rider-raised funds are passed through directly to the Jimmy Fund). I won't make a penny from any of this.

Please help me to make these auctions irresistible! I'd like to have hundreds of different titles. I won't say no to the donations of any reputable mac apps until I've met my goal.

To my friends, peers, and heroes in the industry: are you willing to step up and donate some software? Please contact me, ASAP. I'd like to start the auctions in June, but I need your help.

Links #

If you'd like to link to this story, or want to encourage your favorite software developer to participate, that's great! I can use all the help I can get. Please use this link, or one of the following image links (they all use versions of the image at the top of this page):

500 x 331 PNG, Transparent Background

<a href="http://www.truerwords.net/fundraising/pmcsoftware/"><img
  src="http://media.truerwords.net/images/pmc/donations_wanted_2008_500.png"
  width="500" height="331" align="left" alt="Donate Software, Fight Cancer" /></a>

500 x 331 GIF, Transparent Background

Smaller file but lower quality.

<a href="http://www.truerwords.net/fundraising/pmcsoftware/"><img
  src="http://media.truerwords.net/images/pmc/donations_wanted_2008_500.gif"
  width="500" height="331" align="left" alt="Donate Software, Fight Cancer" /></a>

300 x 198 PNG, Transparent Background

<a href="http://www.truerwords.net/fundraising/pmcsoftware/"><img
  src="http://media.truerwords.net/images/pmc/donations_wanted_2008_300.png"
  width="300" height="198" align="left" alt="Donate Software, Fight Cancer" /></a>

300 x 198 JPEG, White Background

<a href="http://www.truerwords.net/fundraising/pmcsoftware/"><img
  src="http://media.truerwords.net/images/pmc/donations_wanted_2008_300.jpg"
  width="300" height="198" align="left" alt="Donate Software, Fight Cancer" /></a>

The Donors #

Warning: don't take the "What is it?" column too seriously. ;-) Most of the developers don't provide these "one-liners" so I make something up after looking at the software's web site.

* The "Developers Wanted" image was provided by Carmelyne Thompson. Thanks!