TeamJS Wrap Up

The Mozilla Firefox Challenge celebrity fundraiser contest has ended, and the JavaScript community's entry, TeamJS did amazingly well:

• We raised $25,000 for Feeding America, a US charity that collects surplus food on a massive scale and distributes it to a national network of food banks that in turn distribute it to hungry people.
• The $25,000 we raised will enable Feeding America to obtain $400,000 worth of food, which works out to 200,000 meals for people who might otherwise not eat.
• After spending a week or two in first place we ended up 8th in the contest, behind 5 of the original celebrity entrants, and ahead of 7 of the celebrities. We raised more money than Barbra Streisand, Sean Penn, Will Ferrell, and four others, all of whom had a $5,000 head start courtesy of Mozilla.
• I'd like to believe that we also strengthened our JavaScript (and web developer) community, too!

$25,000 is a lot of money and it will do good for a lot of people. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who made this happen! You know who you are, and if you don't you can find the names of the non-anonymous donors at the TeamJS page. Look for the scrolling list, or use view-source to see the complete list more quickly. (Incidentally, even though the contest is over, you can still make donations to Feeding America through that page, so if your name isn't on that list, you can still make it appear.)

There are a few people and organizations that I'd like to single out for special thanks:

I started TeamJS on a lark (okay, because I was bored with my programming project) and I really can't take much credit for its success. I am proud of myself, however, for getting Chris Williams involved. As I said to him in my first email, "I think this might be your kind of crazy". It turns out I was right. Chris kicked things of with a big crazy donation of $5,000 from JSConf and then whipped the JavaScript community into a giving frenzy by offering a conference discount to anyone who gave $100 to TeamJS. Without Chris's early generosity I don't think TeamJS would have ever reached the $5000 mark. But it isn't just Chris's financial generosity: he's a natural leader and community builder and has the chutzpah to tweet outlandish statements like "the most important thing you'll do today is donate to TeamJS". It just kind of makes sense when Chris says it. Oh, and also, the black and yellow JS logo that TeamJS used was Chris's gift to the JavaScript community. Thank you, Chris, for all that you do!

I also want to thank the team at Jupiter JavaScript Consulting for a $1000 group gift. If I recall correctly, it came near the end of that first crazy day of donations after Chris kicked things off, and propelled us past $10,000 and into the big time.

As the contest drew to a close, TeamJS was languishing at around $14,000 All our momemtum was gone, and we were slipping down the leaderboard into 12th place. Out of the blue Cody Lindley matched Chris William's awesomeness and donated $5,000. (Cody is the author of JavaScript Enlightenment, which, by all reports, is an excellent book.) Cody inspired me to increase my own donation, and his big give really brought the excitement back. Thank you Cody! Your $5,000 donation put us within reach of our $25k goal and brought in almost $5,000 in smaller donations: on the last day we had about 60 new donations that brought us up to $23,780 just before the contest ended at midnight.

But the story, and the thank yous, don't end there. At 7 minutes to midnight, Peter deHaan donated $1,220 to bring us to exactly $25,000. How perfect for a team of geeks: we met our goal to 5 significant digits and finished exactly on schedule Thank you Peter, for closing out the contest in style: it was a perfect ending!

What a ride! Thank you everyone for being so awesome!