GoFunMe

No really.

There seems to be more than enough cash out there to feed wanton request for dollars.

Think about your taxes.

You pay your fair share and for what?

So social media starting popping up sites for all kinds of good causes to separate you from your precious dollars and everyone fell for it.

Used to be funding to ‘save the whales’ or ‘help our vets’ or ‘little Timmy’s dog is sick’ or….. Well you get the idea.

Now I see them pop up asking for donations so ‘Sally can have a really swell birthday’.  I don’t know Sally and why should she have a good birthday on my sawbuck? Sally, it’s time to grow up and stop asking strangers to buy you a Chatty Cathy.

Our compassion takes over when we see puppies and sad children. Then we are exposed to families who have burnt out of their town and after the news feed moves on, they are off the front page.

We all assume that the government will step in and give them our tax bucks to rebuild and everything will be right again. Really? Those bucks got other destinations than to be empathic.

The NPOs can step in but the Red Cross and your local worship establishment live off of donations as well. Hand out some blankets, bottles of water, a hot meal or two, give some comfort and then move onto the next disaster.

So I figure while all you kind folks out there are looking for a spot to toss your greenbacks, I’ll get in line too. Never miss the opportunity with a sucker.

What should I call this GoFunMe?

#HelpAnOldManOut? Nah, that sounds like a pathetic cardboard roadside sign. #BringJoyToThisGeezer? No, that is what I used for Tinder. #DoubleYourLoveWithCash? Sounds like a bank and I’m not giving any of it back.

Oh I got it!! #WasteYourMoneyHere.

At least it is honest.

So I build a site and start promoting it with pictures of horrible injuries, abandoned animals, starving children and some flash videos of people running and explosions (Note: make sure it doesn’t look like the Super Bowl halftime entertainment). Cover it all with some weird music like Philip Glass or something classical that no one will understand, then maybe a slicked back haired preacher crying about the misery. No, that’s gone too far.

How about a travelogue of wanderings through the Tummy Temple, for realistically, that is what all this money will go to. No grandchildren college funds or bail bondsmen fees.

It is familiar and relatable and if only filming the store brands looks desperate. Cut to puppy face for effect.

So let’s see, what do I have to do?

1. Start your campaign

·      Set your fundraising goal

Hummm? Let’s see. How much coin should I expect those suckers to send me? $5,000? No, that would not buy much of nothing. $100,000? Well, that would be a nice home improvement, but let’s think long distance. $500,000. That’s a nice round number. Not to audacious and a good philanthropy institution could just cut a check.

Should I go higher, like a million? What would I do with a million dollars? Do I have enough time in life to spend a million dollars?

Think I’ll stick with $500,000.

·      Tell your story

What would the sad sacks out there go for? How can I pull their heartstrings? What would they believe to part with their hard earned cash?

I’ll try this…

“Dear Friends,

He started after the big war, but has never lived without war. As a child was migrated from place to place until there was nowhere else to escape the threat of the Cold War.

Trained in basic survival tactics and taught enough to write a name on a social security application, he went through the shock of the 60’s with it’s drugs and loud music and long hair and the 70’s with it’s double knit fluorescent clothing and disco and the 80’s with the powders and crashing market and the 90’s with digital reformation before the Y2K threaten to end the world until bubble burst.

Where is your empathy?

Failing to understand dangling participles but getting enough paper to avoid the draft, he spent nearly 40 years in an established conservative news media drawing pictures until he was unrepentantly cut loose.

He lived through the War on Poverty, Segregation, Equal Rights, Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, recessions, monetary depression, 9/11, and the introduction to gangsta rap. Presidents shot, students killed, traffic jams, gentrification, white flight, credit cards, foreign cars, fern bars, craft beer, gender fear and the return of polarizing politics all happened to him.

Never drove on a highway or traveled to Paris or New York City. Doesn’t have an air conditioner or a drone or a gun or a passport. Hasn’t had a haircut in years.

Are you getting the picture yet?

Barren without child and abandoned by one marriage and widowed by another, house downsize move to the north side of the river in an ancient neighborhood where neighbors came and went like the wind. Orphaned by both parents dying.

Oh woe is he.

An old man left alone without an automobile and living in a small-dilapidated house in the woods of a war torn city. Barely able to read without glasses this scruffy hermit lives meal-to-meal cooking over an open fire alone and forbidden.

He doesn’t have a working television and his phone is sporadic. His only relief is to wear his shabby ragged decade-old flannel into the sunshine to feed a few seed and nuts and berries to his neighbors.

(Put a sad faced puppy here)

A donation to this fund will give a few of God’s graces to this poor soul and his pathetic life before he meets his maker.

For his remaining years he only wishes for the simple life of strumming his old guitar and listening on an antique radio the news of the world. Have pity on his decrepit soul.”

·      Add a picture or video

2. Share with family and friends

·      Send emails

Reply: All

·      Send text messages

Note: See #1

·      Share on social media

HEY WORLD!! Send some dough!! Hurry!!

3. Manage donations

·      Accept donations

Francs, Euros, Lira, Pecos, Yens, Kronas, Shillings, Yens…. All accepted, but no confederate money please.

·      Thank donors

“To one and all, my most heartfelt thanks for you and your entire generous donations to this most worthy fund that will bring sunshine to a miserable existence and fill a bank account.”

·      Withdraw funds

Small bills, in various denominations, in paper bags and cardboard boxes that can be easily carried in a rented truck and the rest wired to an offshore account.

 DON’T WAIT!   
TIME IS A’WASTIN’

DONATE TO THIS NOBLE CAUSE 
FOR THERE IS NOT MANY MORE YEARS LEFT

LOOKEE THERE!  
 YOU GUYS ARE DOING GREAT!!

J U S T  A 
L I T T L E  M O R E…