I Miss Doing Blogathons

I know I don’t post here much anymore, but the one thing I enjoyed at one point was the annual Blogathon event. I participated in 2005, 2007 and 2009 and found it very rewarding. One year I was even nominated for the “Most Enthusiastic” award. If you don’t recall what Blogathon was, it was an annual event in which people would raise money for charity by blogging continuously for 24 hours. It usually started at noon on Saturday and went through Sunday at noon. Participants were required to post at least once every 30 minutes. In addition to the bloggers there were monitors who would be assigned several blogs to check on throughout the timeframe, and encourage with comments. A couple hundred participants would managed to raise upwards of $50K for their efforts, which was fantastic.

I never raised a ton of money for my charities, but I do recall getting a couple hundred bucks that I used to buy supplies for a local animal shelter. And one year I think I had people donate to Heifer International. And I think the third time it was for a camp for disabled kids. There were other bloggers out there who managed to have THOUSANDS donated directly to their charities of choice, and some the writing by participants was raw and honest (i.e., bloggers raising money for RAINN and speaking out about their own painful experiences with sexual assault). Others would review books – one every 30 minutes. Some would play games – a new one every 30 minutes. It was always fun to see how people not only entertained others, but kept themselves awake.

We would all have GREAT content for the first 12-15 hours, but sometime around 4 a.m. it would devolve (for many of us) into 1-2 sentence posts every 30 minutes, just to prove we were awake. And then the second wind would hit around 8 a.m. and we’d finish strong as the 24 hours came to an end.

It faded out a couple years later – it was a ginormous endeavor for the organizers, and I think life just got in the way to the point where they couldn’t do it anymore. But I sure do wish they’d bring it back. My kids were very young when I did them initially, and now that they are teenagers I’d get them in on it and make them stay up with me.

Who knows, maybe I’ll just take it upon myself to do it – and just post the link on FB for my friends to follow and donate if they feel the compulsion. I’ll have to look at my calendar and see what weekend might be best. Maybe some weekend in September since August is mostly booked.

Hmmm…I’m kind of liking this idea….