Sorry for being late to the party here, I drowned in work as soon as I got home from the convention. I have some things I want to say, so fair warning, this will not be a short post!
I just cannot believe how amazing you all are. I want to thank each and everyone who donated even the smallest amount, everyone who bought lottery tickets, otter noses and tickets to the concert, everyone who bid or even won the auction items, to the spontaneous collections that people organise on their way to the con or in other situations, to everyone I forgot to mention here, to EVERYONE who helped us reach this amount, from the bottom of my heart and (I'm sure) from the bottom of the charity's heart: Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I also want to thank my team, they work so hard to get everything organised! You may wonder, who is actually in the charity team, who are the people making this possible? Well my list of gratitude below will serve as an introduction to them as well. And you will also get a sense of how many different areas and contact points we are actually working with to make this happen.
First of all, I simply couldn't do this without my deputy Tani who not only speaks German fluently and therefore is able to do all the pre-con communication with the charity, she also makes amazing art designs for us, handles the money, receives all pre-con item donations, helps with making the art show display for the charity, organises, arranges and works incredibly hard on a million other things for us with a list that is simply too long to mention here. Tani, you are incredible, there would be no Eurofurence charity without you! Thank you!
A thank you to Pan who handles the contact to the Fursuit game preliminaries, our official collecting fursuiters that you met during the opening ceremonies, does the amazing concert poster designs and generally helps out in every way she can.
Of course - one of the most visible points for us (which was made extra visible this year by some people I thank below) is the lottery booth, which is assembled, organised before the con, run during the convention, and dissembled again at the end by Ithcigo Icetalons. It is a huge job, thank you so much for all the work you put into this, even when you fall and hurt your leg you still crawl down in the booth to sit and work, you're a machine, sir!
Also a huge thank you to our newest member, Snowi, who joined us this same year but still managed to hit the ground running. She is our art show liaison and takes care of all on-site item donations, and with the help of Tani decides which items go to the lottery booth and which go to auction and displays these on stage in the art show. She also updates all our lists (both our own and in the art show system), makes sure all auction items are photographed and ready for auction, helps out in the lottery booth and runs back and forth between the art show, the booth, our photographer, main stage during auction, Tani and me. No wonder she stays in such a great shape!
Finally there is also a lot of people who are not officially part of the team but who help out in so many ways. The amazing charity booth design was made by Karpour and Henrieke, and Titash and Karpour were our official fursuit collectors though I saw many others join in such as Henrieke, Sithy, o'Kill and Leeuwlion. Thanks also to Atkelar and his crew for making the charity part of their fursuit games preliminaries and to Ysegrim for working late every night making photos of the auction items you guys donated all day to us, as well as to the art show crew for helping us with actually receiving the items.
A huge thank you also goes to Kage who got drunk and made an ass of himself just for us, and so helped us raise an incredible amount and was generally amusing beyond words - we are so grateful to you for what you did. And finally, last but in no way least, I want to thank the amazing charity concert performers. Foxamoore, who helped me organise the event, to the beautiful miss Amadhia with the mesmerising singing voice and to Garra our wonderful man-with-the-strings.
I think the above shows not only how many activities and events it takes, but also how many people are involved and what a big job simply keeping communication going between everyone is. There are no words that I know that express how grateful I am to everyone who work for us or helps us and especially to every attendee who donated in one form or another.
You have a real impact on real animals out there who now have better lives because of you, you are actively changing the world for the better! You should all be so proud of yourselves, you did this, you were part of this, this alone should give you pide in who and what you are.
Well done, everyone, well done!
*offers hugs to you all*
