Bumperactive Charity Dollars Awarded!

It's been quite a ride on the Good Ship Bumperactive -- looking back through the catalog at those early sticker timestamps, it's hard to believe "The World's FINEST Bumper Sticker Cooperative" dates to June 2002. In The Beginning There Was Don't Worry Be Hippie....

You know our line about awarding a 22.5 percent share of sticker revenue to various causes, charities and sticker designers? Well -- 'til yesterday -- we never did it. The reason mainly was we hadn't accumulated enough scratch to make payments large enough to be worth a cause's time and expense to process. But could you also say we we've been a buncha half-asses with nothing close to resembling our shit together? I bet a jury would let you get away with it.

Still, since Jan. 1 of '06, the site's actually gained some momentum: We've moved 423 stickers for revenue of $1,613 -- or close to half of our total revenue since this thing started. As of Sunday, we owed sundry parties $615.00 in back royalties. High time we cut some checks.

So Monday we made donations to all charity/cause beneficiaries with back royalties exceeding $5.00. It worked out to 16 organizations in all, which combined had earned $355.67. To date, 22 of our sponsored causes have earned less than $5.00 (with seven earning $0.00). Sending checks to those groups would almost certainly be more trouble than it's worth for 'em -- but we are keeping track of the outstanding balance.

Since the payout is overdue, we upped each cause's donation by 20 percent -- basically, we figure we owe them the juice on the loan. The juice is a one-time thing, however, between us and the causes, not you and the causes. Therefore, it isn't included in our running total of earnings on the Causes page. After the "Continued" link below is a table of the groups we paid, and how much, and the ones we didn't, and what their outstanding balance is. Also included are links to screencaps of the donation transactions so you can more or less verify we did what we said we did.

PS: If you're one of those who likes to examine the seams of things, the screencaps might be worth a gander in their own right. You can learn a lot about a multimillion-dollar institution by the way it hits you up for cash:

Over at the Sierra Club, little blonde children are falling from the sky like satellite parts ... Nice to get a personal email from Howard Dean, though you'd think he'd have better uses for his time ... The NRA takes the prize for Most Aggressive Sales Pitch: "No organization has the muscle and might to win this war" (y'all mean the friggin' guns, right?) ... The VFW allows you make your donation in someone else's name, and then sends them a letter. We thought that sounded cool, so we made our donation "in honor of bumper sticker designers," and kicked them an extra five bucks to cover the cost of the rigmarole -- we'll post it when we get it ... To my eye, the Heritage Foundation logo is downright atrocious. Like a Laura Ashley pattern or a bad oyster, it defies notice at first -- then you vomit your spleen. What is it about that two-tone "h" that evokes such aesthetic outrage (in me, at any rate)? ... Finally, the astute observer will notice I clicked "Yes" in the box allowing the Republican National Committee to use my name and hometown online to show my support of President Bush. A bounty of 10 bumper stickers to the person who delivers a screencap of that happening ....