Editing The Pen Addict 732/transcript (section)

== Podcast-a-thon ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yes. It's that time, isn't it? It is that time. I'm pretty pumped. Shall I do my part? Let's do that. Let's do my part to start, and then we can get into your part. It is September. We're officially in the month of September, which means we're coming together once again to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. This is the eighth time that the Relay community has come together to support the work of St. Jude in these eight instances. I don't know if it's eight years. We've done it eight times. It's like how many times and how many years, but there you go. This is the eighth time. We have now passed as a community since 2019 $4.8 million. We're getting very close to $4.9 million. We will break $5 million raised this year. We've actually just passed $64,000 raised for this campaign this year, which is incredible work. Why do we do this? That's a pretty important thing, right? Because we love to support St. Jude and all that they do. And let me talk about one of the things for where the money is going to go. So you've heard us talk about St. Jude before. You know, the basics of St. Jude is they treat children with cancer and life-threatening diseases. They do about any cost to the family. They, if they, you know, the families have to travel into St. Jude, which is located in Memphis. They make sure they're fed. They make sure they're housed for the whole time that these children are getting treatment. St. Jude share their knowledge and research around the world. They share medicines around the world too. They are a research institution. They are a hospital to treat the children. And then they are a font of knowledge for helping tackle these terrible diseases, cancers in children. To do this takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of people, takes a lot of research. St. Jude is making progress on the construction of three new towers on their campus. Whenever we go, Brad, you've seen this now a couple of times in the times that you've been at St. Jude. There is always construction going on. And that has been the case for like the 10 years that I've been visiting St. Jude's campus. There's always construction happening. And they have a big project right now. There are two 15-story towers that are going to be outpatient clinics and clinical offices. And a new 17-story advanced research tower. The clinical towers are an over $1 billion construction project. It's part of the $12.9 billion St. Jude strategic plan. The clinical center tower is planned to open to patients in February 2027. It's a 44,000 square foot footprint. It's as large as a football field. Then they have the research tower, which will contain 130 lab modules with four floors reserved for future expansion needs. It is an $810 million investment that represents St. Jude's serious commitment to accelerating research capabilities. These towers enable St. Jude to expand its ability to treat more children and accommodate a larger workforce to find their next big discoveries. This is important stuff. These are the resources required to build the places needed to find the cures to save the lives of children. It's ultimately what we're doing here. And we are asking you to join with us to continue the support of St. Jude. You can help lead to more cures for thousands of children. We're inviting the Relay community to help us reach our goal of $700,000 this September for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. As always, there are multiple ways to support the campaign. You can make a donation at stjude.org slash Relay today. Your donation will unlock some fun rewards. And why not check whether your employer will match your gift by clicking the blue search employer button on the donation summary page. You can find out more information on employer matching as well as donor advised funds at stjude.org slash Relay. You'll find everything you need to know to start a fundraiser of your own. We're going to talk about that in a moment. Where you can then incentivize your community, your friends, your family. They can donate. You'll get some cool rewards for the, like I said, some incentives, I should say, for the amounts that you raise. This is all on the website, including what you can get for your donations. You can get Relay wallpapers for your computer or your phone. And then there's also a sticker pack bundle as well. There's loads of stuff available. You should go to stjude.org slash Relay. You should go there, actually, just to look at the incredible Western-themed artwork that we've got this year that we've got going on. There's a bunch of fun stuff going on, which is all leading up to the podcast-a-thon that me and Brad will be doing together on October 2nd this year. It's going to be closing out the campaign. So there's tons of stuff going on. But, Brad, why don't you talk about what we're doing here at The Band Addict?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, first, like, shout out to Jelly for this, the theming artwork this year. I mean, I know y'all work hand-in-hand to get this done. It's kind of amazing. There was already, on the broader Relay for St. Jude fundraising page, there was already, like, an incentive to give Brad his cowboy name. Yeah, we're all going to have cowboy names. We're all going to have cowboy names. And you're going to get to vote in that if you're a donor and you can make us have silly names. And I said to Myke, you know, I was first up, first to go. And my poll is live for the names. And I told Myke, you know, between my two names, it was Buckaroo, Brad, or Badlands Brad. I said, oh, yeah, Buckaroo is going to win. I say probably, like, three to one, 66%. Myke, have you scrolled down to the bottom of our funding page?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah, it's odd, isn't it? I feel like someone who's, this doesn't seem right to me, if I'm being honest, but whatever.

'''Jelly:''' Or someone really believed in it. So it seems like I very undershot how good the Buckaroo Brad was going to be by.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A total amount of donations assigned to the voting for Buckaroo Brad is at $15,586 against 4169. Maybe people just know you're not a Badlands kind of guy, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's true. That's true.

'''Jelly:''' So 99.7 of the vote is the Buckaroo Brad. It's interesting, isn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like I don't fully understand.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, here's a bit of inside baseball, right? I'm not involved in the planning of the event anymore. Stephen handles it. Like, the last few years, it's not really been feasible for me. And then with the new podcast launched this year, I didn't have the time. And so I found out about a lot of this kind of around a similar time that everybody else, like just a little bit before. And so it's like, oh, this is a fun idea. But I don't fully understand how it works. Like, I think people can put their money towards a vote. But I wonder if it's like pre-filled or something, because I don't know why.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, why is everyone so for this? It's interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's great. It's great. So we love, like, doing fun stuff for incentives for our fundraiser. And my part over at the Pen Addict, I've been raising money through the Pen Addict for St. Jude for years now, myself. I obviously since the beginning, since we started doing this. And starting last year, I integrated with our fundraising partner, Tiltify, to do some official incentives to, you know, help raise money. So if you go over to – we'll have a link to all this in the show notes. If you go over to my fundraiser page, you'll see the rewards. We kind of ran back a couple of the ones we did last year to where, you know, like a $25 donation. You get a postcard from me with this line art that I like to do on postcards for $100. We had a really popular incentive last year where I painted. And it's part of the Ink Pony Club. I painted a pony with different fountain penings with, like, a water brush. And it just turned out so cool. This year, we have Jelly's Art for – it's really – let's just be clear. It's Kathy's Pony. It's Kathy's Unicorn Pony. But we were allowed to use that for the Ink Cowboy Pony Club this year. So we have a little bit different artwork. Of course, we have all our great relay incentives. The new one this year, Myke, you gave me some grief last year. Rightfully so. I just want to go out and say it about doing the YouTube reviews. I still owe one more review that I haven't finished from last year. It's kind of become a joke now. But I still wanted to do something, like, video related. So I just had this idea. I was like, what if someone could donate and then tell me what their favorite stationery is, and then I would roast it and do, like, a one-minute Instagram reel or YouTube short or something like that. Love it. So this is going to be a blast. Like, I'm very excited about this. So people are already, like, scheming ways.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What's good about this is during the podcast-a-thon last year, and I think we're going to do it again this year, where people could give a donation to get a review, like, a quick review from you. Yeah. And, like, there's, like, a few different categories. But this time, it's, like, the roasts. That is really fun. I like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, this isn't a review. This is a roast.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. People are already scheming of how to get me to talk bad about my favorite products. I was like, you know what? I can do it. Like, let's bring it. So, like, I like to be put on the spot. And as last year, we tried to – all the live reviews went super well. Like, because I didn't know what was coming. It's like, okay, Brad, go. And I was like, oh, no. And it worked. So it was fun. So, yeah, go check out all the incentives. So, yeah, go check out all the incentives starting at $2,000, which we're less than $200 away from the first giveaway incentive. So that's kind of the big push that I'm doing this year with tons of participants, tons of makers in the community participating in this by donating goods, fountain pens. So you're going to see some amazing pieces from all kinds of makers. And we're going to go through, like, the whole month and just give them shout-outs throughout the month on all the cool products that we have to help us raise money for St. Jude. And, yeah, it's off to a great start. And hopefully, you know, by the time you listen to the podcast or shortly thereafter, the first giveaway will be up. And then I think the ball will just start rolling then.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so I'll put links in the show notes to the St. Jude page for everybody, but that's sttude.org. But also to Brad's page specifically because Brad has set it up like the fundraiser thing, which is great, right? So you can start up your own fundraiser so he can offer these extra things because we wouldn't put these on the main campaign because most people have no idea what's going on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And so you can go to Brad's page and donate that. And it all goes into the same total, which is great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's all connected. Yeah. All connected. So, yeah. One thing I just wanted to, before you wrap, I just wanted to say I've already had a question for something that you mentioned earlier, which I think is an important part of this, is the corporate matching. Someone emailed me. It's like, hey, I want to do this. And I know my company will match. How does that work? I was like, you just go through our platform and it gives you the information. So it's super easy. It just walks you through like what you need for the corporate matching there. So that's actually why we use the platforms that we do to do this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. There's like a button when you donate. Yeah. Big blue button. And it has all this stuff. You can search your employer. And if your employer is listed, it will give you the instructions or just do it. Yeah. And it just goes to where it needs to go. And basically, it's always worth checking. Even if you work at a medium or, you know, especially if you're a big company, you double your donation and you don't have to do anything extra for it. Exactly. So it's always really, really worth checking.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So, you know, hit us up with any questions you have about that. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're going to be hearing about this for the entire month. Yeah. You know, this means so much to us, this campaign, and obviously means a lot to our audience because of how much money we've all raised together. And, you know, we're going to have lots of stories throughout the month. But just thank you so much for anybody that makes a donation. We really, really, really appreciate it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And it's not just a thing that, you know, like me and Myke and Steven and all the other hosts are part of. This is a real community thing for Relay. And I love that everyone is a part of this and they feel to be a part of this. Like, I think that's pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's stretched out much further than just our shows. It's like every, you know, there's so many people that get involved in this now. It's really a truly wonderful thing to see. And we're so appreciative of it. Yep. It's kind of like just, you know, in the cowboy theme, we're wrangling everyone or trying to, corralling people into raising money at this time of year. It means a lot.