Please contribute to relief efforts in Japan! Together, we've raised $20,000 and counting!

As all of us know by now, on March 11th the largest earthquake in the history of Japan struck its northeastern coast.  Over 10,000 lives have been lost and thousands more have been left wounded and homeless.  
Even now, millions are without food, water, or electricity. 

  



Last year, in the wake of the horrific earthquake that devastated Haiti, NikeTalk members stepped up to help us create a charity auction that raised over $1,000 for Doctors Without Borders.  Our staff then donated $2 for every dollar raised by that auction.  We came together in 2010 to help Haiti and we will come together now to aid the people of Japan.  

Please join your fellow members in donating to the relief effort via Mercy Corps.  We've set up a special fundraising page, http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/niketalk, to accept your donations directly.  

As I write this, there are over 2,000 people browsing NikeTalk.  Most of us are very fortunate.  Each night, we sleep in a bed that is clean, dry, and comfortable.  We have fresh water to drink at our convenience and we rarely go hungry.  We even have money to spend on luxury items, on things we don't need like sneakers, movie tickets, video games, and electronic devices.  Some of you dropped over $500 on new iPads this week without a second thought.  Each of us can afford to sacrifice $10 or more to help Japan recover from this terrible disaster.  

Many of you like to talk about how influential and powerful NikeTalk can be, how we supposedly launched the careers of celebrities, popularized certain jokes or phrases, etc.  Well, now is the time to prove it.  Let's see what we can really accomplish if we work together as a community, when we get our friends and family involved, and each of us pulls together for a common cause.  

If you can help us raise $1,000, NikeTalk will donate an additional $3,000 from its advertising revenue.  

Let's go, #NT. 

Click here to donate now.

* Please note that only donations made directly to the site via credit card will count towards our total displayed.  Paypal and other forms of payment will not be included, but are, of course, still helpful and welcomed.

UPDATE:  3:38 AM EST  3/14/11   

Wow, you all are amazing.  Together, we've raised over $1,000 to help Japan in under SIX HOURS.  Now let's go for $2,000!







UPDATE:  8:10 PM EST 3/14/11

Congratulations, everyone!  You've now raised over $2,000 for Japan in less than 24 hours!!   It's threepeat time!

UPDATE:  4:35 AM EST 3/15/11

We've now exceeded $3,000 in donations after less than 36 hours, but the growing urgency of the crisis in Japan demands that we continue to step up our efforts.  




Even if you've already contributed, you can continue to help by encouraging others, getting friends and family involved, and raising awareness.

** Starting now, if you donate more than $10 and leave your NT screen name in the comments section, you'll get a special NKETLK Japan badge below your account name, just like the one you see above my NT staff badge.  




If you already donated and would like to receive a badge, forward the donation confirmation email to [email protected]




Let's keep those donations coming, everyone.   Japan needs us!







UPDATE: 4/5/11




In honor of everyone's generous contributions thus far, the NikeTalk staff and I have just donated $13,005.70 - everything we're owed in ad revenue from our former hosting company - to Mercy Corp's Japan Emergency Fund.  This brings us to a combined total of $20,000.   

We appreciate your continued support.

 

You know how it goes.  People tend to ignore pinned topics, so we try to build a little momentum by tossing these things into the mix first and letting them gain some traction.  

 

You guys are great; we're already almost 1/3 of the way there.  I may have underestimated #NT by setting the bar at $1,000!  
Let's do it!

I like that a lot.  If we ever do a charity t-shirt or something I may need to borrow that.