Tournament Finished
When I ran this in 2015 it went pretty well; raising $2,550 for a $500 prize and I had several people ask if I'd do it again in 2015. I agreed, but the only one who actually showed up and raised anything was the winner of the 2015 run, WhiteRoseRaven. Needless to say, he won, raising $390 and collecting a prize of $25. If seven or eight people can convince me they'd actually participate if I did this a third time I would. Otherwise I'm not sure that I will.
I'm hosting a fundraiser/ tournament, to sponsor a village through Oxfam and get a chance to show off some of our pony stories; and am offering cash prizes for those who do it well.
Entries may be one story, or a series of direct sequels with a final word count of over 100k by the time the tournament ends on December 31st 2016. Each author can only make one entry. Apart from that: there are no limitations, (eep!).
Winning the tournament will be achieved by gaining sponsorship from your reader base for Oxfam. To enter your story in the tournament; add it to the main folder and then make an account in - Oxfam America -, make a fundraiser and title it “TOC –“ (Tournament of Canterlot) and then the name of your story. Join your fundraiser with the team "Tournament of Canterlot", link that fundraiser with the description of your story, and you’re in.
Step by step walk through on how to make a fundraiser page is here Example of a valid story participant donor page
The fundraising goal will be $5,000; enough to sponsor one village to recover from disaster. The prize pool will be one tenth of the money raised, rounded down to the nearest $25.
The first and second increments of $25 will begin the prize for 1st place. The third will begin the prize for 2nd place. The fourth, fifth and sixth, will be added to the prizes of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in that order; and increments seven to eleven will add to the prizes 1st to 4th, and so on until the goal of $5,000 is reached.
If that happens, I’ll throw in an extra $25 and the prizes will look like this.
1st: $150 - 2nd: $125 - 3rd: $100
4th: $75 - 5th: $50 - 6th: $25
I might try to keep raising the prize pool after that; but I make no promises.
Stories that were entered last year may be entered again. Last year’s winner, (and recipient of $500); BlackRoseRaven is allowed to participate, but he can’t enter the same story as he did last time.
Given that it would be impossible for me to effectively police against this, sponsering your own story will be legal.
Link to the Oxfam group fundraiser page
P.S. My story Limits of the Horizons, is the example fundraiser page; but I am not eligible to collect any of my own prizes. In fact if you did want to sponsor me, I'd ask you put it towards evening up the top two or three candidates so the leader doesn't rest easy, the runner up(s) don't give up, and the race continues.
All money donated goes directly to Oxfam, it never goes through me.
All American donations are tax deductible.
405999
No.
Friendly end-of-year reminder to everyone.
Oxfam donations ARE tax deductible!
405996
Have you even tried to make a fund raiser page?
405980
You sure?
405934
It's been a while since I made a fund raiser page; but I'm almost certain you're not asked for any information beyond your email...
405932
I fear giving out personal information.
405857
thank you
405856
Have you made a fund raiser on Oxfam and linked it to your story?
405855
Well, I donated 15 bucks.
405855
And where does my fanfic come in?
405841
You go to the tournament homepage.
You choose one of the fund raisers from the list at the right of the screen and you click donate.
If I were you I'd choose either SFaccountant or Kiroberos of Fimfiction since those two are vying for second place, and might get them going again.
405839
How? This kinda flew over my head.
405655
I don't think you do.
Can I contribute without having to make an account?
405582 I think you can post in incomplete story so long as it exceeds 150k words, the rules doesn't say no incomplete stories so you may be able to friend
Does the story need to be complete? I have a story I've been writing for four years and is still incomplete.
The Tournament has not raised nearly as much money as I had hoped for. However; we are coming up on the festive times of the year; in which most charities rake in the most about of money because people tend to feel more generous; making it a good time to try to breathe new life into a fund raiser.
Therefore, I have decided to lower my expectations, and increase my prize offer slightly.
So far the tournament has raised a total of $ 2,254 with the people who raised it listed below.
Matt McCulloch $814 Raised
SFaccountant $440 Raised
Kiroberos of Fimfiction $420 Raised
Humanity XD-385 $50 Raised
Beware The Carpenter $30 Raised
My original offer was that if the tournament raised more than $10,000; the prize pool would be increased from $500 to $1,000 American.
Now I am dropping it to $5,000.
If the Tournament raises more than $5,000 for Oxfam; I will give $750 to the author who raised the most money and $250 for the runner up; payable by paypal within the first week of January. (This new offer essentially negates my offer of $1,000 (total) if $10,000 was reached. I would still be honoring it, but this new offer makes it redundant. I will still honor my larger pledges of prizes up to $5,000 if the tournament raises $100,000; though I no longer consider that to be likely.)
I'd also like to announce that my own story/series Limits of the Horizon is no longer an official candidate. It will maintain a fund raiser page as an example; but if by some unexpected turn of events it does raise a significant amount, I will turn the prize over to the runner up.
$5,000 for the Syrian Refugees is now all I'm asking for. We're already half way there.
402715
Check here:
Just over 2,200; almost all of that among the top three stories.
Maybe you could make a few more blogs about it.
End of year/ christmas time is always a time when charity giving goes up, so when we get near there I'm planning one final push to advertise it, invite some new people, and
raise the prizeslower the milestones needed to unlock the prizes a bit.This tournament has been going on for nearly a year now and I haven't gotten a single donation to it yet. Have any donations been made yet?
395101
If this tournament goes well, someone else might try to do a repeat of it; but I won't. I'm hoping to be done with my series Limits of the Horizon by the end of the year, and when that's done; I'm going to be done with ponies, and start working on a series completely of my own.
If you write fast you still might get the word limit in time; and if you enter, and don't qualify for a prize at the end, you haven't lost anything and still might have helped a few refugees.