Our donation drive's grand total of $607 has been donated to CRS to be used expressly for Haiti relief!

Here’s the story, in brief. In late January, we started a ChipIn donation drive to raise money for the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti. We surpassed our initial goal of $500 quite quickly thanks to your generous donations! However, on our way to our new goal of $1000, the account was locked by Paypal – they said they needed some documentation from us to (basically) prove we’re collecting for the charity. Sounds simple, right? Wrong! It took us weeks of calling and emailing the charity and Paypal before we were able to get the right documents sent to the right people. It was pretty dang frustrating! Fortunately, things are in the clear now, and Matthew paid CRS the full amount using his credit card.

We’d like to apologize for this delay in the donation procedure. We wish we’d been able to continue the donation drive as planned because we’re totally sure we could have reached $1000 by the end of the drive. In retrospect, we probably should have contacted the charity before starting the drive to see if we needed to do anything special to collect money without a hitch. But hindsight’s 20/20, eh?

Thank you to everyone who donated! Your donation has gone to a great cause and is helping people who are desperately in need.

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(older update) Paypal has put Matthew’s account on hold while requesting additional information about this donation drive. Any donations made on Jan. 28th or later have likely not gone through as a result. We will post updates in this space when we receive them. Unfortunately, the drive is on hold until then. If Paypal forces us to cancel the drive, all donations will be refunded and we will encourage everyone to donate via other means.

The nation of Haiti has been devastated by a massive earthquake. We’re donating our money to the relief effort, and we’d be honored to have you join us.

CONGRATULATIONS! We’ve met our initial goal – thank you all so much for helping us achieve this! Since we met our goal so quickly, OPERATION SUPER BITF CHARITY CHALLENGE is now in effect!

Our initial goal was to raise $500 by February 5th. We at Brawl in the Family put up the first $100, and we were blown away by the response – you helped us reach our goal in only a few days! That’s why we’ve raised our goal to a new OPERATION SUPER BITF CHARITY CHALLENGE level of $1000! Can you help us donate this staggering amount to the Haiti relief efforts? Just click the “ChipIn!” button above to donate!

Every penny donated will be given to the Catholic Relief Services organization, which is an outstanding relief organization that makes excellent use of charity dollars. You can read more about them on their website or at the Better Business Bureau. The goal of CRS is to get help to those who need it as efficiently as possible, and in this, we wish to support them.

We are using Matthew’s Paypal account to collect the donations. At the end of the drive, the full amount raised will be withdrawn and donated. Photographs of the check and the act of donating it will be posted here on BitF (note: this was changed to a credit card payment to meet the needs of Paypal and CRS - see above photographs). The money will be donated through Matthew’s church, St. John’s, which is collecting donations for CRS.

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Thank you for lending a hand to those in need.

Matthew Taranto and Chris Seward
www.brawlinthefamily.com
BitFinity LLC