Agents for Ukraine - Raising $9500 for charity

InvestigateXMInvestigateXM ✭✭✭✭✭
edited March 2022 in SITREPs

Like many others, agents were devastated by the news of the invasion in Ukraine and wanted to show their support to the people and agents there. The idea of a charity campaign came up quite spontaneously after I looked at my pile of badges that I still had left over from the NL-1331 and the Dronenet kit, and I wondered how much money people would donate for them.

I had previously tinkered around with Tiltify, a platform on which you can organize your own charity campaign with all the money going directly to the charity (meaning the organizers never even get their hands on it) and on which you can add incentives, like rewards for donating X amount of money. I put up the badges I had for $10 each.

I then started to slowly share the link to the Telegram channel and discussion group as a kind of controlled test, just in case something went wrong with the site or if I had forgotten something. After sharing the donation link within the group, it became clear very quickly that the original donation goal of $250 that I had set was too low.

The second goal was set to $750.

I also discovered that you can hold polls that you can vote in with your donation. Being 100% original, I decided on a poll that everyone will surely have no strong feelings about.

After about a day, I felt pretty confident that everything was going as planned, so I asked my friends at IUENG for a post about the campaign so the word can be spread. About 3 minutes after the post went live, we hit our second goal of $750.

The third goal was raised to $1500.

In the meantime, I was in contact with the amazing @NianticThia with the goal of getting some passcodes for the event as well. While she understandably couldn't promise me anything, she did assure me that a passcode for every single person that donated would be possible, giving agents another incentive to donate.

After IUENG posted about the campaign, people started pouring in and donating their own passcodes and Swag to put up as rewards for the event. In addition to people actively donating and me trying to send out codes ASAP, it took exactly 47 minutes until I messed up for the first time and lost track of the people that donated.

One and a half hours after the campaign was made public, we were at ~$1200.

The next day, I woke up to the goal being, once again, smashed with over $1600 in donations and a very nice message from Thia in my inbox. She got a hold of the Swag team, and they generously donated 40 Glider Gloves (20 for each faction) and 12 NL-1331 Engineers shirts, which were only sold for a very short time in the old Ingress online store.

(Psst, hey Niantic, if you could make those shirts available again, I'd 100% buy them)

The goal was upped to $4000.

I started to put up the reward that other agents had generously donated, which were all to be unlocked at the same time.

At that point, I have also slowly increased the amount needed to qualify for badges and upped the goal to $4500 (which was also shattered almost immediately).

As the days went on, I received messages from agents donating codes and Swag, and I messaged people ASAP to get them their code or Swag.

After a few days, the campaign slowly started to slow down with all the rewards being gone, and the group became quiet. That is, until I received another message from Thia in my inbox.

Niantic once again was amazing and donated 25 codes, each containing one Toast Beacon, 100 L8 XMPs and most importantly:

A Very Rare Link Amp 👀

This revived the group once again, and I once again received passcodes and Swag for one final round of rewards, the Grand Finale of the campaign. The goal was bumped to $8500 (later to $9000), and the rewards were set to unlock every 6 hours to give everyone around the world a chance to get them.

In the end, we closed out the campaign at an astonishing $9,500,62 raised for Project HOPE and their humanitarian mission in the current Ukraine crisis. This is 38 times the original goal I envisioned, and endlessly more then I ever expected

Thank you all so much for donating, giving us some of your codes or Swag as rewards and for sharing this campaign.

A special thanks need to go out to the folks at IUENG, without which this campaign probably would have never taken off, and to Thia, the amazing Community Manager for Ingress, and Niantic, who have organised the Glider Gloves, NL-1331 shirts, VR Link Amp codes and the passcodes for everyone that donated.

Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much.

Fun facts:

- The ENL Glider Gloves were immensely more popular then the RES ones, with the RES ones taking almost 7 times longer to "sell out"

- According to the people, Pineapple on Pizza is something that is absolutely needed (smh pay-to-win poll I swear)

- We have received 305 donations from 220 unique agents

- Each agent donated an average of ~$43

- The highest donation is a 4-way tie, with 4 agents each donating an astonishing $200

- At least 24 people have donated rewards for the campaign (likely a few more, but I lost count)

- I had three calls with Thia, which led to my social anxiety and insecurity about my English pronunciations to flare up three times

Post edited by InvestigateXM on
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Comments

  • Absolutely amazing job and congrats to everyone involved! 🥳

    Was following and sharing the campaign to other agents from early on and managed to get a cool acrylic card for my partner to match my own with my donation - (thanks to AnomalyShop for donating as a reward!!)

    $9500 is an incredible achievement, but for the record - NO pineapple on my pizzas tyvm 😅

    Had a great time and hopefully we've made a difference for a very worthy cause 💙💛



  • It was a joy to watch this happen.

  • The situation in Ukraine makes me sad. But I'm happy to see this great solidarity of the Ingress community. The character medals on my scanner will be there so that I never forget the war and its consequences.

    I am proud to have contributed to this collective moment of generosity.

    Congratulations to the agents who organized and those who donated to support this project


  • aai79aai79 ✭✭

    Let me inquire. What is the difference between an agent from Ukraine and an agent from Russia or Belarus? The fact that they allow themselves offensive statements against Russia, and you provide them with sponsorship. The more I observe this situation, the more certain that your company is biased towards certain nations. I'm sorry this is happening.

  • Even in times of displacement there’s always room for hope.

    Glad to see fellow agents and community leaders stand in solidarity with ProjectHope.


  • Happy to have been able to support the cause. Also happy that I was able to snag two rewards near the end, after being too late to grab anything for most of the event. Money well spent, cheers.


  • Em315Em315 ✭✭

    The amount of people who came together from all over the world to help is humbling to see. A good cause and a walk down memory lane (PA Chapeau!). Bravo.

  • NikaKorNikaKor ✭✭✭

    As a person from Russia, I regret that I could not help in any way with this initiative, but I can't help saying that it is over 9000!!!! 😁

  • InvestigateXMInvestigateXM ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    Do feel free to add that, us lowly agents cannot edit a post after 24 hours 😜

    Post edited by InvestigateXM on
  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    Cheers to all who were involved in making this happen and to all who donated, even those of you who somehow like pineapple on pizza.

  • Em315Em315 ✭✭

    That reminds me, what was the final tally on that?

  • InvestigateXMInvestigateXM ✭✭✭✭✭

    Dirty pineapple worshippers had a lead of about $500

  • InvestigateXMInvestigateXM ✭✭✭✭✭

    Now that I had some time to gather my thoughts, I want to once again give Niantic a big, big "Thank you". Never in a million years would I have thought that agents would donate $9,500, but even in my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined Niantic matching these donations and donating $10,000 to Project HOPE themselves, bringing us to an astonishing $19,500 raised.

    Seriously, once again, and on behalf of all agents, thank you. Personally, I cannot put into words how much this means to me.

  • Em315Em315 ✭✭

    Felt this spiritually. Being thoroughly impressed and emotional by the response, I responded with a heartfelt email to what was pretty much the automated distribution of codes, not realizing that it would indeed be a mass email. So, I’m, awkward and I will be hiding for the next 6-10 months or so from sheer self cringe.

    not sure if that can be added Ex post facto **facepalm**

  • Lindo el esfuerzo que hicieron todos

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