As we are beginning the push to fund Hobo's List, let me say without reservation that I know you have a lot of great and worthy organizations competing for contributions. I understand that, and it's a big part of the reason that I want to get Hobo's List up to full speed.
Once we are fully funded, it will enable us to feature various charities, to help you to understand what they are doing, as well as to steer needy individuals to their resources. The website redesign will include features on some of the various charities.
Through the time I have researched for Hobo's List, I have been overwhelmed by just how widespread the support network truly is. But a lot of these resources go unused because people do not know about them. Recently, for instance, I drove a hitchhiker to a medium sized community, where we drove around and looked to find a shelter for him for the night. There was none listed on the Internet, or in the resources we were able to find, but in the morning, he found that there was indeed a shelter. It would have served both him and the community better if we had that information at our fingertips the night before.
Once the startup funding has been obtained, it will be my final crowdfunding campaign for Hobo's List. We have a plan going forward to keep the ball rolling through merchandise sales and contributions, a little bit at a time. But first, we need to get to the point where full time attention can be devoted to that cause.
I really don't like fundraising a great deal, but this is a very important project to me, and I'm coming to grips with the reality that the only way it can survive is if I can get the word out to more people. There is, I believe, a great deal of organic support for what is being done; what I need to do is go out and find it.
And so I ask you to share this to everyone you know. Ask me questions. Make suggestions. At this point, I am very open to new ideas about how to help people understand what it is that I am doing and while it is so important. In the meantime, look at the website we have in place. The forums link is broken, but that is something we hope to fix. Download the pdf's on the site and look at the resources we have available. Our goal is to complete the resource gathering, and have resources available in all 50 states. But we do need help to continue.
Our fundraising site can be found at: http://www.gofundme.com/Hobos-List. The goal of $25,000 may seem ambitious, but the startup cost includes hiring out marketing and web development so that I can personally concentrate on resource gathering and research to create a more complete catalog. I ask you to share as you are able, and could use some suggestions for incentives that might drive donations more reliably.
If someone can crowdsource money to make potato salad, I'm sure I can crowdsource this!
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