A Message From Damian

Unknown

Hello people,

It's me, Damian, in Australia. We're getting ready for a short little tour here, which is exciting because, like absolutely everyone, I'm super into marsupials, and it's a rare chance for a boy like me to watch the toilet flush backwards.

I'm writing to ask for your help with a little good old-fashioned world-saving. My close friend and former band-mate*, Oliver, is one of the brains behind DonorsChoose.org, one of the coolest non-profits I know of. They're finalists to win a huge grant from the American Express Member's Project and they need your vote -- it'll only take a couple minutes of your time, and it'll do a lot of good.

Vote Here

DonorsChoose.org is a website listing public school teachers' best ideas for classroom projects. Public school teachers, who are so chronically under-funded that they often have to pay for books and materials out of their own pockets, submit projects they need money for, and real people like you and Jorge and my mom (bless her heart) can browse the various submissions and choose to directly help fund the ones that strike a chord. It's an ingeniously simple system that actually helps the people who need the help; 100% of the money ($13 million so far!) goes to classroom projects, unless donors specifically earmark their donation to help keep the lights on at DonorsChoose.org.

The AmEx grant is huge (up to $5 million), and chosen by an online vote open to all AmEx cardholders. If we vote DonorsChoose.org to victory, every penny will go to fund the more than ten thousand classroom projects in their database; DonorsChoose.org won't keep a dime. Which is pretty cool.

Right now, our heroes are in 2nd place behind a project that's semi-secretly funded by Procter & Gamble (a $68 billion pharmaceuticals/manufacturing mega-corporation with 140 thousand employees), who want the grant money to help distribute their "Pur" water filtering system. This affiliation isn't mentioned on the site, but the NY Times wrote about it last week. Here's the article, and here's another one from Consumerist.com.

So, if you have an American Express card (or one of these other ones), do me (and 250 thousand public school kids) a favor and vote for vote for DonorsChoose.org.. And if you don't have an AmEx (or an advanced Hogwarts degree in computer hackery), forward this email to people who might.

In any event, you should check out DonorsChoose.org and see what it's all about. We found a few projects that seemed particularly awesome and put them in this registry. Browse those if you like, or search for your own. Only good things will come of it.


Thanks all,

Damian

PS: If reading a whole post about things that are good and positive and completely wholesome messed with your brain, sorry. To set it back to normal, here's a photo of the creepiest person I saw during our visit to Taiwan. Oops, here he is again

*Wiki-nerds, start your engines. We were called Calixto Chinchile, and we existed for about 3 months in 1996. Or maybe it was 97. Somewhere out there, there's a recording of us playing the very first version of "Hello, My Treacherous Friends."

Unknown

dami is my hero for this

i hope they can get alot of support for there cause from this

dollarflame6

ooo, this is such a wonderful cause. Thank you so much for everything you do, Damian.

walk2sock

That's really awesome... I'll get my parents to vote.

You guys are so great for doing this.

dollarflame6

oh, man. Just realized I don't have American Express. I only have MasterCard...I will have to ask my mommy for hers...

firexpert6

QUOTE (Mr. Mr. Mr. Jorge, Whom I Adore, Whom I Adore, Whom I Adore @ Jul 31 2007, 06:56 PM)

*Wiki-nerds, start your engines. We were called Calixto Chinchile, and we existed for about 3 months in 1996. Or maybe it was 97. Somewhere out there, there's a recording of us playing the very first version of "Hello, My Treacherous Friends."

Nothing. Nada. Not. a. thing. And I like to think of myself as a damn good researcher. Then again, I am no 'IHave7Stars.'

Surfer Rosa

So, we have to have AmEx to vote? someone explain please...

"Calixto Chinchile"... hmmmm I'll look into that...

dollarflame6

QUOTE (Surfer Rosa @ Jul 31 2007, 10:29 PM)

So, we have to have AmEx to vote? someone explain please...

Yes, you need to be an American Express cardholder in order to vote (or have one of AmEx's subsidiary stuffs' cards)
That's because American Express is the company actually giving the grant.

But if you don't have AmEx, says Damian, you can ask somebody who does.

boydeer22

QUOTE (toiletdog @ Jul 31 2007, 06:34 PM)

Nothing. Nada. Not. a. thing. And I like to think of myself as a damn good researcher. Then again, I am no 'IHave7Stars.'

archive.org has HMTF, but it was just added earlier this year (Feb. '07) but no mention of Calixto Chinchile. I'm going to guess, based on history, that it was on Napster - the OLD Napster - and may have been purged, except archive.org only shows Napster starting in 1999

...No results found on present day Yahoo (which was the search engine du jour at that time) or AOL

...but I'll keep looking

I don't have AmEx, sorry - but I will be in Costco tomorrow, maybe I'll get one

Surfer Rosa

Thanks for explaining Sally

If anyone has time to spare, you could try looking at some of these search engines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines


Rosa

Unknown

Damian, you and all of OK Go are such wonderful people. I wish so much that I could help, but alas, certain conditions do not permit.

I will be sure to tell everyone of your charitable superawesomeness and spread the news!


P.S. You writing about Hogwarts made my day.

DJRose

QUOTE (Tapegrl =D @ Jul 31 2007, 11:55 PM)

P.S. You writing about Hogwarts made my day.

Seriously. I'm wondering if they read the latest book.

Damian, I don't have an AMEX, but I shall speak to friends/family members who do have them and try to get them to vote for this worthy cause!

mumblo

As a teacher, I want to thank Damian, his friend Oliver, and Donors Choose for supporting public education. If any of you have read in your local papers about there being adequate budgets for education, don't believe it. (California residents, this means us.) District budgets dictate how the money can be spent, in my district at least. For example, my school has surplus funds earmarked for textbooks; however, we cannot use any of that surplus for other needs, such as staffing. (Why would we need an extravagance like a librarian at a middle school, right?) And don't even get me started on how much money is wasted on administration... or tutoring services who are getting rich from No Child Left Behind...

firexpert6

QUOTE (mumblo @ Jul 31 2007, 10:00 PM)

As a teacher, I want to thank Damian, his friend Oliver, and Donors Choose for supporting public education. If any of you have read in your local papers about there being adequate budgets for education, don't believe it. (California residents, this means us.) District budgets dictate how the money can be spent, in my district at least. For example, my school has surplus funds earmarked for textbooks; however, we cannot use any of that surplus for other needs, such as staffing. (Why would we need an extravagance like a librarian at a middle school, right?) And don't even get me started on how much money is wasted on administration... or tutoring services who are getting rich from No Child Left Behind...

As a future teacher, I second this.

yak63geese

I don't know if it already occurred to everyone, but I don't think we'll be looking for a song by that title, seeing as it was named HMTF later on in the game, and the earliest version we already have was called "A Christian, Two Friends and Some Spiders"--and we don't know what the title was before that version. Quite the challenging treasure hunt Edit: Also, it might not be an mp3; a lot of music was in the form of Real Media (.rm, .ram) back then, and other file types, so ...

target35ghost

Not just a pretty face, that Damian bloke.
He's so lovely for this

LolaBert

This is brilliant.

If only I had and AmEx card, or knew anyone who has one.

It's interesting that this is such a widespread problem. Here in Aust. we have the same issue with school funding, especially public (state) schools.

Good to know that Damian and OK Go are using their fame (and rocking powers!) for good!

jorge

Did you vote today, or get someone you know to do so? Hmmm? Here's that other nytimes article to get you motivated.

DJRose

I actually posted Damian's letter to my blog and my friend Stefanie posted this in response. It's copied from www.tomatonation.com

Thanks at least in part to your votes, Donors Choose has made it into the
final round of the American Express Members Project — one of five
finalists.

One of the other five finalists, though, isn't so much a non-profit
organization, it seems. Sure, drinking water for children is a concept
everyone can get behind, but the problem in this case is that "everyone"
is actually Procter & Gamble, which is a for-profit corporation. P&G and
Amex have both tried to claim that the project is the brainchild of a P&G
employee, who is working in concert with Unicef, so the entry violates
neither the letter nor the spirit of the contest's terms.

Uh…no. Not buying it. First of all, the text of the
clean-drinking-water
proposal(http://www.membersproject.com/Health_Fitness/1250) is nearly
identical to the text found here (http://www.psi.org/csdw/), which touts
P&G's PUR water filters. Amex has stated in an official message that "the
project idea Cardmembers are voting on is not the P&G's clean water
program with PSI," but given that the Amex/P&G web sites are for all
intents and purposes indistinguishable, this is hair-splitting — if
you're feeling generous. If you're not, it's merely absurd.

Second of all, even the appearance of impropriety is something Amex
should strenuously avoid. If Amex is trying to reward a legitimate
non-profit, P&G of course does not qualify, and Unicef is a fine
organization, but it does not need the extra help, methinks. Why P&G
can't just write a damn check if it wants to address the
clean-drinking-water issue, or give away the PUR filters FOR FREE if it
feels that strongly as a corporation about it, I don't know, but I do
know that this entry's presence in the contest is hinky, and Amex really
shouldn't allow a large retail company to muscle in on the territory of
real non-profits who genuinely need this prize money. I'm all for
co-opting viral-marketing strategies to try to move your products, but
not at the expense of charities.

So. Amex isn't booting the P&G project out of the finals, and the guy who
posted it isn't taking it down. A hundred thousand P&G employees read
about the project on his blog, and a lot of those people might vote for
it, and again, I've got nothing against clean water or the kids who might
drink it, and I don't wish to slander the guy who entered the water
project, or P&G — I don't think this is an evil plot. But I do think
it's unfair to let a big for-profit company game the system, and I would
ask that you please vote in the final round for a quality organization
that played by the rules AND that will let you spend the prize money if
they win: Donors Choose.

hail9fat

This is such a great cause, I wish I knew someone with an American Express card.



I can't find anything about Calixto Chinchile, besides the mention of it on Wikipedia.

manx9shrine

o this is sooo cool! at least they're using their awesomeness and fame to do good! yet another reason to love OK Go!!!!!

i think my parents have an AmEx card. I'll ask them to vote.