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Pledging explained
If you want to follow the Blogathon way of donating, simply click on my Blogathon pledge page and follow the instructions. This will tally your pledge via their database, but you're not donating any money yet—just pledging. I will receive an email with your name and the pledge amount (you can choose anonymous if you don't want me to know who you are), but still, no money is changing hands here.
On the day after the Blogathon, an email will be sent to you with the amount you pledged, and instructions to donate to Magen David Adom that I supply to Cat. Still no money changing hands. It is then up to you to fulfill your pledge and send in the money.
Now. If you want to ignore Blogathon procedure—and I have no problem with that—then you can click right here to the link on the Magen David Adom contribution page, and ignore the email at the end of the month. The director I spoke with suggested that I send you to the page where you can choose your method of donation. But no matter which way you donate, it is crucial that you let them know you are part of the Blogathon. If you use a credit card to donate online, you must put "Blogathon" in the comments field of the form. The comments field shows up when you click on the "checkout" portion of their form. It may seem a little confusing at first, as it's a shopping cart program. (Note to Emperor Misha's readers: write "BLOGATHON" and "MISHA" in the comments field to be counted for the matching fund.) Here's a quick how-to:
Click on "Secure Online Donations"
Enter the amount
Click on "Submit donation"
If the amount is correct, click on "Continue shopping"
Click on "Checkout"
Fill in the required fields. (Note: Magen David Adom does not keep your credit card information. They dump it from their database after a short amount of time. That's why they're using a shopping cart program.)
PUT "BLOGATHON" IN THE COMMENTS FIELD.
Uncheck the box putting you on the MDA mailing list unless you want to be on it. If you're curious about their privacy policy, here it is.
DO NOT FORGET TO PUT "BLOGATHON" IN THE COMMENTS FIELD.
Click on "Continue"
If your amount is correct, click on "Order now"
Enter your credit card information and click on the bar that says "Click once to process secure credit card."
When you click on the "finish" button, you'll get a thank you page that shows the fields you typed. "Blogathon" comes up at the bottom.Notes: If you put in a bogus email address, you won't get your receipt emailed to you. And if you forgot to PUT "BLOGATHON" IN THE COMMENT FIELD, I shall never forgive you. No trees were slaughtered to bring you these instructions. Yes, I did make a donation to MDA in order to get all the pages necessary. I donated chai ($18).
If this is too confusing, you can mail or fax this contribution form to MDA. I don't think they'll be able to track checks as easily as they can pull a field out of their database, but write "Blogathon" in the memo field of your check, and put "Blogathon" somewhere on that form (there is no place for it that I can see). You can also call them and charge over the phone, but again, somehow, you have to mention the Blogathon and get them to note that in your donation.
The why of "Blogathon" in the comment field: It's a simple matter to write a SQL command that will cull all records with the word "blogathon" in the field named "comment" and total up the donations. We want to raise $60,000 so we can donate an entire ambulance to Magen David Adom. If you forget "Blogathon," although MDA gets the money, it won't be tallied with our donations and earmarked for an ambulance.