We will now interrupt the regularly scheduled program for this Good Old Blades Micro Podcast. The Good Cause Raffle or GRC. Um, one thing I think that is really beautiful about the knife community is how willing all of its members, makers, enthusiasts, everybody, is towards uh helping their fellow man and woman or family. Um, and we see this a lot in good cause raffles. And I say a lot because really honestly, it happens so often in the knife community that if somebody's in need, uh, everybody just bands together. I think a portion of that is probably because um there's a lot of full-time knife makers that use knives as a way to support their families, and as a result, they don't have insurance um on themselves, like health insurance. Uh, if things happen that are bad, like their shop burns down, or somebody gets sick, or somebody uh loses a family member or something like that, that it's difficult to absorb those financial uh hardships. But by and large, the majority of us don't have the ability to accommodate catastrophe. And that's where the knife making community is just, again, so beautiful is that um if there's somebody that's truly in need and that ruin is is on their doorstep, then we band together, we find knives that are sitting that we can sell, or ones that are in collect our collection that we don't use, or EDC items, or you know, mats or things like that. Whatever we can do to raise money uh for another in the auspice of helping them out, um I rarely see situations where people uh turn that down. And there's always somebody that's willing to uh sacrifice a little of their own uh their own goods in order to help others out. Now you might be asking, um, when do they occur and what do you do if you need one, uh so on and so forth. And uh a lot of that has to do with who you know. Um, there are lots of places uh on the internet to circulate good cause raffles, and there's lots of makers that are willing to pop up and do what they can to help, but it really is kind of like that perfect storm of finding uh the cause that is just uh people who can support it and uh sharing it out so you can make giving accessible to everybody. Now, I've seen people use like auction sites like Gollibid if you want to do an auction uh for somebody. Uh you can set it up if somebody can babysit it and organize it, where you can do like Facebook raffles where uh you know there's an initial donation pool uh and you try to get people to to uh buy those knives uh with with a certain amount of spots or win those with a certain amount of spots. Um there's others where you do a few knives or something to give away or to raffle off, and then you allow dog piling, which is basically just anybody can come in and say, This is what I have, and I'm putting it uh towards this good cause raffle. Uh, and it's uh, you know, I don't know, it's uh if a spot is ten dollars a piece and they say, well, 40 spots gets it, then sometimes a good cause raffle will run and they'll get actually more spots than the $10 are are paying for, or the other $400 are paying for because they buy that piece and they invest a lot of money. Um I've seen tens of thousands of dollars uh raised for various people in need. Um and my my uh uh I'm myself the recipient in some ways of a good cause raffle because when my when my stepdaughter's um uh daughter had passed, uh she uh gave birth prematurely, um I had gotten a bunch of knives together to sell to raise money for her and her partner uh to try to ease the burden off the finances of getting everything done with uh you know funeral expenses. And um the community really uh came uh around for us and you know donated some beautiful knives like uh Jeffrey Mitchell, John Lloyd, um uh Alex Harrison, uh there I there's too many to name uh that were just there and and raised us up and uh you know donated their their their time and their and their goods. And we ended up raising quite a bit of money for her. And there's been other ones that I've been involved with too that have raised a good amount of money, and you can fill some of those gaps in a time where uh grief or pain or stress, for especially financially, is just um it's par for the course, and maybe a little bit of money um helps them to stabilize things while they grieve. And I think that's the most important thing is um while people are going through hardships, the money is not really the point. It's to try to take a burden off of them so that way they are allowed to do the things uh that you just don't normally get to in a stressful situation. When your head's down, you just gotta like kind of go to work, you're not gonna be able to have the same kind of emotional outlet and and healing um from an event that if you know if you if you could take the time. So um some caveats to good cause raffles are that um I really feel that the good cause raffle is the most poignant when it's person to person. As in somebody has a need and then somebody fills that need or a group of people surround them and and just let them know that hey, this sucks and you matter and your suffering matters, and so we're going to try to help you out somehow. Where I feel it kind of falls a little bit flat is when uh there's like organizations, like you know, there's churches burned down, or you know, something like that happens, and people try to ask for money for an organization uh that really doesn't need it because they have insurance, because they have you know parishioners or things of that nature, and they do have the support uh as a community. Uh really I think good cause raffle should be for individuals as a kind of like an insurance policy, is that you have people who love you, who care about people, and that they want to donate their time and energy for it. Um so be careful, like don't don't assume that when you throw something out for a good cause raffle that everybody is just going to rally around it. The most poignant expression of a good cause raffle, I think, is is just to to the person or to the family or somebody that who like who actually needs it, uh not so much to organizations. So kind of keep that in mind. Um it's the idea is is obviously you want to raise money, obviously, it needs to be something uh framed in such a way that people understand the gravity of how much a person is is suffering. Uh, because if it's just that you know somebody broke their finger and they can't typewrite and they're gonna be out for a week um from work, or maybe they, you know, they have headaches regularly and something, I don't know. Like, I mean, I I don't want to marginalize people's individual suffering, but losing a kid or uh losing a spouse or your entire like you're a full-time knife maker and your shop burns down, or you have somebody in the hospital, or you know, somebody's you know somebody's parent is is dying from Alzheimer's and you know they have to take care of them full-time, and so they really you know they lose two incomes and it's everything that they can do to try to make things work. Um I mean I think that those are uh you know concepts in suffering where it's like, man, if we could just give them a few weeks' break, if we could just give them the ability to pay for a casket or cremation, if we could just uh allow them in some ways to be able to take off work on unpaid leave so that way they, you know, if if they need to, because they uh they just need to be there. Those are uh situations especially where I think uh I mean it moves me because I I've been in those situations before where I've had to keep my head down and work because there wasn't money to grieve. And that's uh uh there wasn't money to um to just say I need a I need a break and I really do uh identify with uh that kind of suffering and those causes. So um, you know, get a pool of friends together that you know are are giving people and try just make sure that you keep them close and then if there are uh causes that we can rally around that we do those things because I think that's important. We we are a community of love and understanding as much as we are artistic rivalry, and there's collectors that are you know believe in the same thing, and there's uh enthusiasts who believe in the same thing, and together, I mean crowdsourcing is an incredible um uh element of power that we as individuals have when we get together. A few dollars here and there can make an us an insane amount of difference in volume, and it's the same way with uh with doing good cause raffles. So there's a ton of resources out there on how to start these things and uh and get your your wares out for auction or for uh you know raffle, and you just have to look around if you have any uh questions on these things or you have a a situation where somebody's in need and you want to reach out. I have quite a few resources. I've done several of these before. I know lots of people who run them, and maybe collectively we can help give you some advice and uh and you know uh just return the favor in in terms of knowledge. I hope this helps.