#donor base

[chrisstoddardintspeaker1]

Chris Stoddard - CEO of RaiseMore | Charity Fundraising Expert

Chris Stoddard is the CEO of RaiseMore, an organisation dedicated to helping small charities maximise their fundraising efforts. With over 35 years of experience in the charity sector, Chris is an international speaker, author, and expert in charity fundraising. He has successfully raised over £20 million for charities globally. Chris provides a range of services, including donor base building, large donation attraction, in memoriam giving programmes, and grant applications. Visit: https://chrisstoddardfundraising.co.uk

[wiezumbeispiel]

Misc portal things inbetween projects

[epiphainie]

.

[irradiatedwarlock]

This show is trying to kill me.

[witchofthesouls]

Would Tarn every admit to imprinting on carrier? Like “Well of course we are married—*goes into some long speech about family and sparkling dynamics that some how includes megatron*” or is it just a silent agree between everyone that yeah these two are together but we just gonna poke around that.

That Idiot Sandwich didn't even know he imprinted. Tarn is a mech of extremes, so he's an overachiever to the max.

Nickel and Kaon formed a powerful blockade against Vos' machinations to convert Tarn to his tastes in the berth.

Shoot, because Kaon's dreams of a wedding gets dashed since Tarn isn't getting a clue, he puts in the paperwork of a bonded couple by witnessed Conjunx Ritus.

Tarn helps out with your carriage, and you debrided the active infection on his face. It fits the Acts enough.

It gets approved. By who? No one knows, but everyone starts talking because it's Tarn. That Tarn. As in Tarn of the Decepticon Justice Division. Y'know, Megatron's biggest fan-boy?

That Tarn got married?! To a living mech!? Really!?!?

Of course, no one knows until the DJD starts coming across other Decepticons that's just going, "Congratulations! I think..."

Tarn misunderstands them as a picking up duties necessary to the Decepticon cause and its roots.

Other Decepticons: Holy shit, this slagger reproduced-

Now, there are so many rumors going around with about Tarn's never seen bonded. Like buckwild rumors like "Megatron gave Tarn a defective clone" and "It has to be an Autobot trap" and "What if High Command ordered him to check if his abilities could be passed or negated?"

And then it devolves into what kind of crazy, horrifying Pits of tortured debauchery or witchcraft is his bonded capable of. Like, who the hell would pledge loyalty to such a mech!?

Meanwhile, you're in the ship trying to coax the guy into a different position because your knees and thighs are too exhausted.

[urlocalwhumper]

a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic world stumble upon a lonely little house on the edge of a forest. beside the house is a single grave, inside the house is android whumpee.

they've been there, alone, for years. they're visibly excited to have company, though there's this melancholic air and weight to everything they do. they don't have food for the survivors - they never bothered keeping any considering they don't need it - but they do have medicine and blankets and tools, and they're happy to share.

the survivors all flash each other guilty looks. because while they appreciate the supplies, that isn't what they need. one of their companions is an android, and in desperate need of repair. what they really need is parts.

parts that android whumpee almost certainly has.

when they admit this, whumpee goes silent. and then they readily agree.

when the survivors ask them if they're sure, that this will render them nonfunctional and as good as dead, whumpee tells them that the grave outside belongs to their owner. whumpee had been their faithful, beloved companion for over fifteen years. whumpee had tended to them in their final days, as infection from a wound they didn't have the means to treat slowly took them. whumpee had held their hand as they died. whumpee had buried them beside their shared home.

whumpee has not wanted to be here anymore from the moment they lowered the only person they've ever loved, their body lovingly wrapped in their favorite blanket, into their grave. for ten years they've wanted nothing more than to lay beside them and sleep forever.

but they stayed. to tend to the house, to their owner's grave, and maybe to finally help someone the way they couldn't help their love. and being essentially an organ donor for another android, one who still had a reason to live and people who loved them, was good enough for them.

"you can have the house. everything in it. it's all yours." whumpee said, unbuttoning their shirt so the group mechanic could more easily get at their chassis. "take any spare parts you want, as well. i won't be needing them."

they paused, looking up so they could meet the survivors' eyes. "just bury me next to them. please. it's all i ask."

the android survivor, the one they were giving their life for, reached over and gripped their hand. "i will. i promise."

whumpee gave them a small smile, then took a deep breath to settle themself. they pulled their shirt off, and sat propped up against a wall.

"it was nice meeting you all." they said.

"you too." one of the survivors responded. "thank you so much. for everything."

whumpee fixed their eyes onto a picture of their love that they'd hung on the wall - happy, healthy, alive - and powered themself off, content with the knowledge that they'd never power back on again.

[googiesarakaya]

do you have some cashish lying around? some disposable income? are you gripped with the capitalist urge to spend money this weekend but burdened by the understanding that, hey, that’s probably just the consumerism trained into you and you don’t actually need a six egg cooker and actually waiting for the water to boil is fine, what’s even the point of a one trick pony like that?

but you still need that itch scratched. that money spending high. consider giving to your non-profit of choice next week!

it’ll be giving tuesday on the 28th, which is a day that always happens the tuesday after american thanksgiving, and is meant to ~counter~ black friday and cyber monday’s utter consumerism. spend on non-profits instead of capitalism!

it also means most of the international ngos are running match campaigns! what does that mean!! your donation is gonna get matched, usually with a limit on the amount and with a deadline (ex your gift will be matched until they reach $50k by midnight, 11/28). 

here’s a few places doing matches for giving tuesday!

-doctors without borders

-international rescue committee

-save the children

-planned parenthood

-heifer international 

and if you’re not in a place to give, don’t worry! getting involved in social is also important (seeing people just talk abt the entertainment community fund on my dash during the actors strike was incredible).

[just-antithings]

I really feel like the ppl making angry posts about the ao3 fundraiser donation amounts are fundamentally misunderstands the sheer *volume* of ppl using ao3 on the daily. Like. It is understandable to feel things while being in a position to need money but it is wildly illogical to blame other tumblr users for the attention gap

[ntrlily]

It logically makes sense but it didn't occur to me before that menopause increases one's hemoglobin

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

.

[coochiequeens]

I agree that producing babies for adoption is human trafficking but the people who should be punished are those exploiting poor women not the women themselves. And making poor women raise children not theirs is just cruel to born the women and children.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The baby was not hers, not really.

Hun Daneth felt that, counted on that. When she gave birth to the boy, who didn’t look like her, she knew it even more.

But four years after acting as a surrogate for a Chinese businessman, who said he had used a Russian egg donor, Ms. Hun Daneth is being forced by the Cambodian courts to raise the little boy or risk going to jail. The businessman is in prison over the surrogacy, his appeal denied in June.

Even as she dealt with the shock of raising the baby, Ms. Hun Daneth dutifully changed his diapers. Over the months and years, she found herself hugging and kissing him, cajoling him to eat more rice so he could grow big and strong. She has come to see this child as her own.

“I love him so much,” said Ms. Hun Daneth, who is looking after the boy with her husband.

The fates of a Cambodian woman, a Chinese man and the boy who binds them together reflect the intricate ethical dilemmas posed by the global surrogacy industry. The practice is legal — and often prohibitively expensive — in some countries, while others have outlawed it. Still other nations with weak legal systems, like Cambodia, have allowed gray markets to operate, endangering those involved when political conditions suddenly shift and criminal cases follow.

When carried out transparently with safeguards in place, supporters say, commercial surrogacy allows people to expand their families while fairly compensating the women who give birth to the children. Done badly, the process can lead to the abuse of vulnerable people, whether the surrogates or the intended parents.

The practice flourishes in the nebulous space between those who can and cannot bear children; between those with the means to hire someone to bear their biological offspring and the women who need the money; and between those whose sexuality or marital status means they can’t adopt or otherwise become parents and those whose fertility spares them having to face such restrictions.

Cambodia became a popular surrogacy destination after crackdowns in other Asian countries nearly a decade ago. Foreigners flocked to newly opened fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies in Phnom Penh, the capital.

As the industry flourished, the government imposed a ban on surrogacy, promising to pass legislation officially outlawing it. The ill-defined injunction, imposed in a graft-ridden country with little rule of law, ended up punishing the very women the government had vowed to safeguard.

In 2018, Ms. Hun Daneth was one of about 30 surrogates, all pregnant, who were nabbed in a police raid on an upmarket housing complex in Phnom Penh. Although Cambodia to this day has no law specifically limiting surrogacy, the government criminalized the practice by using existing laws against human trafficking, an offense that can carry a 20-year sentence. Dozens of surrogates have been arrested, accused of trafficking the babies they birthed.

In a poor country long used as a playground by foreign predators — pedophiles, sex tourists, factory bosses, antique smugglers and, yes, human traffickers — the Cambodian authorities said they were on the lookout for exploitation.

“Surrogacy means women are willing to sell babies and that counts as trafficking,” said Chou Bun Eng, a secretary of state at the ministry of interior and vice chair of the national countertrafficking committee. “We do not want Cambodia to be known as a place that produces babies to buy.”

But applying a human trafficking law to surrogacy has imposed the heaviest costs on the surrogates themselves. Nearly all of those arrested in the 2018 raid gave birth while imprisoned in a military hospital, some chained to their beds. They, along with several surrogacy agency employees, were convicted of trafficking the babies.

Their sentencings, two years later, came with a condition: In exchange for suspended prison terms, the surrogates would have to raise the children themselves. If the women secretly tried to deliver the children to the intended parents, the judge warned, they would be sent to prison for many years.

This means that women whose financial precarity led them to surrogacy are now struggling with one more mouth to feed. The intended parents are separated from their flesh and blood. And surrogacy, a well-regulated practice in places like the United States, Georgia and Ukraine, has been relegated to the shadows in Cambodia.

From behind the bars of a courthouse in Phnom Penh, Xu Wenjun, the intended father of the boy to whom Ms. Hun Daneth gave birth, spoke quickly, his words tumbling out before the police intervened. He has been in prison for three years.

“My son must be big by now,” said Mr. Xu, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit. “Do you think he remembers me?”

‘Where did he come from?’

Amid a cloud of mosquitoes, near a pile of garbage sodden from recent rains, a boy ran up to Ms. Hun Daneth, still in her factory uniform. She scooped up her son and sniffed his cheek, a sign of affection in parts of Southeast Asia.

Ms. Hun Daneth, now 25, decided to become a surrogate for the same reason as the others: debt, lots of it.

Over the past few years, Cambodian households have become some of the most indebted on earth, victims of a microfinance crisis. Once touted as a transformational tool for lifting families out of poverty, microfinance has in some countries, Cambodia included, devolved into a predatory scheme trapping millions in cycles of dependency.

Local banks compete to offer microfinance loans that can balloon fast. Ms. Hun Daneth said her family took out multiple loans, some just to service interest payments that exceeded 10 percent a month.

“At first it was a few hundred dollars,” Ms. Hun Daneth said, of her family’s burden. “Then it was thousands of dollars.”

Like nearly a million other Cambodians, mostly women, she had left the countryside to stitch together T-shirts and bras, gym bags and sweatshirts in factories. But a couple hundred dollars a month doesn’t go far in the cities.

A scout at the garment factory where Ms. Hun Daneth worked told her of a way out. She could earn $9,000 — about five times her annual base salary — by acting as a surrogate.

She knew of villages outside Phnom Penh where imposing concrete houses, said to have been built from surrogacy payments, loomed over bamboo shacks.

“They paid off their debts,” Ms. Hun Daneth said. “Their lives could start like new.”

The scout was connected to an agency managed locally by a Chinese man and his Cambodian wife. Her sister ran luxury villas where the surrogates stayed.

Eight surrogates who spoke to The New York Times described chandeliers, air conditioning and flush toilets in the villas, none of which they enjoyed at home. Their meals were plentiful. The women dreamed about the money they would earn. They also thrilled at the notion that they were providing a desperately needed service.

“I was helping give someone a baby,” Ms. Hun Daneth said. “I wanted to give that joy.”

Mr. Xu, a prosperous businessman from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, was matched with Ms. Hun Daneth. The one thing he was missing, he told friends who spoke to The Times, was a son to continue the family line.

Most of the Chinese babies carried by Cambodian surrogates are boys. Sex selection is banned in China, but not in Cambodia. Commercial surrogacy is not openly practiced in China, despite official concern about the country’s plummeting birthrate after decades of a brutally enforced one-child policy.

In Cambodian court testimony, Mr. Xu said his wife could not bear a child. But Mr. Xu’s friends, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of antagonizing the Cambodian authorities, said that his situation was more complicated: He had no wife and was open about being gay. Ms. Hun Daneth said Mr. Xu told her about his sexuality. L.G.B.T.Q. couples cannot adopt in China, and gay or single individuals are precluded from surrogacy in most countries where that practice is legal.

Perfect Fertility Center, or P.F.C., a surrogacy agency registered in the British Virgin Islands, showed rare sympathy for L.G.B.T.Q. intended parents, promising babies via Cambodia, Mexico and the United States. The company’s website is illustrated with photos of same-sex couples cradling babies.

P.F.C. was founded by Tony Yu, who turned to Cambodian surrogates for his own children. Mr. Yu, who is openly gay, said Cambodian lawyers assured him that his agency was legal.

It was a multinational operation that spanned continents. Mr. Yu partnered with a fertility clinic in Phnom Penh run by a Vietnamese person. There, a German fertility specialist trained Cambodian doctors. An Indian logistics expert flew in with eggs harvested from donors.

In 2017, Mr. Xu signed a contract with P.F.C., agreeing to pay $75,000 for surrogacy in Cambodia, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Xu visited Ms. Hun Daneth at the luxury villa. He told her that the egg donor was a Russian model, and he later showed Ms. Hun Daneth and her husband photographs of a white woman with wavy hair standing next to a sports car.

Mr. Yu, the agency founder, said that many of its egg donors came from Russia, Ukraine and South Africa. The intended fathers were Chinese, and many were gay.

“Mixed-race children are popular with our clients,” said Mr. Yu.

For the Cambodian surrogates, being forced to raise children from other ethnicities can create additional strains in their families and their communities. The children’s features make it hard to explain their origins.

“People wonder, ‘Why does he have brown hair? Where did he come from?’” said Vin Win, 22, another surrogate who was arrested with Ms. Hun Daneth.

Ms. Vin Win’s husband resents the child she bore, she said. They have separated. She hopes the boy will get more than the third-grade education she received.

“I look at my son, and I feel pity because I think he should be living in a nice place,” Ms. Vin Win said. “This is not his real home.”

‘Disaster happened’

The police swarmed past the compound’s marble arches and burst into the two villas, handcuffing pregnant women who had been dozing on their pink-framed beds or lounging on sofas playing Candy Crush.

The police operation in July 2018 followed a regionwide crackdown on commercial surrogacy. Three years before, Thailand had banned the practice for foreigners, shutting down a cheaper alternative to surrogacy in the West, which can cost more than $150,000.

Two cases spooked the Thai authorities. One involved an Australian couple accused of refusing a baby boy with Down syndrome. A judge in Australia later found that the couple had not abandoned the child; the boy remained in Thailand, with the surrogate.

The other case raised concerns about baby trafficking after a Japanese man fathered at least 16 children by Thai surrogates. A Thai court eventually granted the man custody over most of the children after he said that he wanted a large family.

India and Nepal also limited surrogacy for noncitizens. In many of these cases, politicians spoke of the sanctity of the maternal bond and the purity of Asian women.

With options narrowing, Cambodia beckoned. Fertility clinics in Thailand moved across the border. Intended parents arrived from Australia, the United States and, most of all, China.

Ten Cambodian women who spoke to The Times, including the eight who were arrested in 2018, said surrogacy was their choice.

As the surrogacy business blossomed, a senior official from the ruling party questioned whether foreigners should be paying for access to Cambodian women.

With its compromised courts and pliant legal system, Cambodia has been plagued with exploitation, by foreigners and by its own citizens. The government of Hun Sen, the world’s longest-serving prime minister and a former functionary for the murderous Khmer Rouge, has been tied to systemic corruption and the erasure of human rights.

Late in 2016, the Cambodian Ministry of Health announced the ban on surrogacy, but did so without adopting new legislation making it a crime. In the resulting gray space, fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies continued to open up.

The raids began the next year. An Australian nurse and two Cambodian staff members at a fertility clinic that worked with surrogates were convicted of human trafficking.

Mr. Yu, who was not in Cambodia when the police raided the villas, said he’d had no idea that his agency was breaking any law. Lotus Fertility, one of the clinics the agency relied on to perform in vitro fertilization for surrogates, operated out of Central Hospital, a private facility with a strong political pedigree. The hospital’s director and deputy director are the daughter-in-law and son of Dr. Mam Bunheng, Cambodia’s health minister. The hospital has not responded to requests for comment.

“I wanted to do everything legally and openly,” Mr. Yu said. “With the fertility clinic, everyone said, ‘Everything is safe, everything is comfortable, they have a good background,’ so I believed them.”

“But then disaster happened,” he added.

Ms. Hun Daneth said she’d had a sense that she wasn’t supposed to talk too openly about what she was doing. Four other surrogates said they were warned by agency staff not to stroll outside the villa complex.

In documents for Mr. Xu’s payment to P.F.C.’s bank account, an addendum cautions: “Do not note surrogacy-related words when transferring money.”

A Cambodian employee of Lotus Fertility, who agreed to speak only if her name was not used, said that the clinic filed documentation stating that all the in vitro fertilizations were for prospective Cambodian mothers, even though it was clear many of the women were surrogates.

Lotus Fertility has closed. A representative for the clinic blamed the coronavirus for the closure.

In testimony this spring before the United Nations-linked Committee on the Rights of the Child, Ms. Chou Bun Eng, the government official, dodged questions about the children born of imprisoned surrogates.

“The committee does not take a position on whether surrogacy is wrong or right,” said Ann Skelton, a children’s rights lawyer and member of the committee. “But we are concerned about a situation that does not uphold the rights of the women, the intended parents and, of course, the children.”

‘Our babies are the crime’

Chained to a military hospital bed in August 2018, Ms. Hun Daneth delivered a baby with soft brown hair, a pale complexion and the same wide eyes as his intended father.

Another surrogate, Phay Sopha, gave birth sprawled on the cement floor of the military hospital, no midwife in sight.

“The baby came out, and I thought, ‘It looks Chinese,’” Ms. Phay Sopha said. “Then I passed out.”

After Mr. Yu, by his account, paid the police nearly $150,000, the surrogates were released. In total, Mr. Yu said he spent more than $740,000 trying to fix the situation, money paid in cash to intermediaries or to anonymous bank accounts.

A spokesman for the Cambodian National Police, Chhay Kimkhoeun, questioned Mr. Yu’s claim.

“First, is there any evidence of what is said?” he said. “Second, if there is factual evidence, they can file a complaint.”

Ms. Phay Sopha now works at a garment factory, from 6:30 in the morning to 8 at night. She rents a boardinghouse room barely long enough to fit her outstretched body. The child, she said, is back in her village, being raised by her mother.

The government ordered a Christian charity, founded by Americans to combat child sex trafficking, to check up on the women after they gave birth, officials said. Some surrogates said they also had to report to the police station, children in tow.

“It was like we were criminals,” said Ry Ly, another surrogate. “Our babies are the crime.”

Most of the women are struggling financially. Soeun Pheap, aunt to Chan Nak, a surrogate who gave birth to twins, said her niece fed the babies water thickened with a squirt of condensed milk. After living for a while with her aunt, Ms. Chan Nak left abruptly with the babies. She sent another surrogate a message saying she was out of the country and would be returning without the twins.

Despite the surrogates’ promises to the court that they would raise the babies, a good number of the children are no longer in Cambodia and have been united with their Chinese parents, Mr. Yu said.

Mr. Xu, the Chinese businessman now in jail, went to Cambodia to try to extricate his child. He contacted Ms. Hun Daneth directly, even though the agency had warned him to keep a low profile. He bought toys and diapers for the boy, whom he called Yeheng in Mandarin, a name alluding to karmic perseverance.

Mr. Xu submitted a paternity test to the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh. In 2019, he secured a passport for the boy.

A worker from the Christian charity accompanied Mr. Xu to the police station to finish up paperwork. The founder of the surrogacy agency warned Mr. Xu that it was a setup by the police. Officers were waiting. He has been imprisoned ever since.

Representatives for the charity, Agape International Missions, would not comment on Mr. Xu’s arrest.

In 2020, Mr. Xu was convicted of human trafficking and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In June, his appeal was denied.

“Are they serious that he is trafficking his own child?” said May Vannady, Mr. Xu’s lawyer, waving a notarized copy of the paternity test.

Mr. May Vannady says they will take their appeal to the Supreme Court. Ms. Chou Bun Eng, the government official, said that the conviction should stand. She suggested that Chinese gangs wanted to harvest organs from children born of Cambodian surrogates.

This spring, Ms. Hun Daneth took a day off work and rode a motorized rickshaw to the appeals court in Phnom Penh. Mr. Xu didn’t mean any harm, she told the judge. He only wanted a son. He was not a baby trafficker.

Still, she told the court, she had grown attached to the boy. After the hearing, Ms. Hun Daneth said she had decided to move back to the countryside because she did not want anyone to kidnap her son. She didn’t like it when Chinese-speaking people showed up at her home.

“No one will take him from me,” she said. “He is mine.”

[bunnyb34r]

Ehehehehehe I started donating (when I can fucking remember to write a check) to two charities, both bc I genuinely support their work and believe that they're not scamming donors (like the one uses 90% of every dollar you donate for research, 8% for fundraising, and 2% for management. While march of dimes is VERY UPFRONT ab only using 10% per dollar for research for premature babies) and bc I wanted to get "free" seasonal address labels and other donor gifts in the mail

And the one charity had asked me if I wanted them to pass my info to other charities they work with to send me donor requests and WHOO BOY DID THEY EVER! I got address labels the other day from ASPCA and one I do donate to, and today I got 4 different donor requests sgfsfsfsfsfs, 2 gave me address labels >:)

My aunt used to donate to a lot of charities and when she passed I was tasked with shredding her old mail/documents bc I looove shredding shit and my God did she have a lot of address labels and notepads from charities sgdgdgdgdg that's gonna be meeeee

[esmecarmona]

i just don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like the donor storyline and is mad about buck spending time with his literal niece like yall are just...

[harrowharkwife]

I can’t believe I just woke up to this 😅 Does the whole sperm donor theory comes just from the TVline snippet? Fandom absolutely skipped over the obvious threesome suggestion (quite possible as Eddie “gets involved” with the singer and if it implies something even remotely romantic for Eddie we know how Buck gets) and jumped straight to sperm donor thing? Threesome is sort of close to Buck’s current storyline of being single and realising he’s better being alone for now but the last time he talked about being a father was in season 1 maybe. No offence but it’s the most outlandish theory ever since “Maddie is actually Buck’s mother”. Am I missing something that makes it so believable to others?

cranky cause you can't handle fun theories, huh?

POV im washing this rancid ask down the drain

[sourstiless]

you point out that they’re drawing false equivalencies and just because they don’t like a certain decision a character has made, doesn’t mean it’s out of character for them, and said researcher blocks you instead of acknowledging it. that’s not very “researcher” of you.

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.