11/22/2025
Wow, our first experience doing the yesterday was WILD.
We are finishing our 21st year of reptile rescue at Forgotten Friend Reptile Sanctuary, and we have always had terrible luck with fundraisers and grants. Our educational shows are a hit, and a lot of people pay us good money to do that. So I put most of my energy into doing hundreds of shows and videos every year. But I've always been lousy with fundraisers. Could the be any different?
The is a 24-hour coordinated fundraiser that happens every year in Lancaster County to support local nonprofits, so I thought about trying it years ago. They have raised over $100 MILLION for local nonprofits in less than two decades, so it definitely got my attention. It's an awesome thing. But to keep everything legit, nonprofits are required to provide a financial audit or review, which is an expensive accounting report. Just signing up to the was going to cost us THOUSANDS for the entry paperwork, so I never did it. People asked us every year if we were doing it, and I always felt bad saying no. But I didn't want to risk spending thousands to raise hundreds.
But then this year, we had a donor that really wanted us to do the . Jenny offered to cover the cost of the required paperwork. Our accountant ended up doing it for only fifteen hundred anyway. We were in! After 21 years, we were finally going to try the ! Now what do we do??
Eventually our accountant finished our paperwork around the time I was paralyzed with a rare disease. By the time I got out of the hospital and got caught up on normal work, I realized the was only a couple months away!
I won't try to explain all the moving parts, but there are A LOT of things you can try with this fundraiser. It's exhausting and never ending and complicated. I clean up snake poo and tell jokes for a living. I didn't know where to start, so I called friends. It turns out I know A LOT of people who have been part of the for other charities. I spent hours getting coached and encouraged by great friends who convinced me it was going to be fine. I spent hours watching the video tutorials and figuring out the website.
On short notice, we managed to line up some awesome event partners for the day of the .
Our volunteer team stepped up to the challenge, even on a weekday/school day. It was going to happen. Whether or not it would raise actual money though, I had no idea.
After doing all the million details I could think of in the weeks leading up to the , it was time for one more sleep before the big day. I had emails and FB and IG posts scheduled to go out to thousands of people at midnight, the minute the fundraiser started. We had even lined up two different matching grants to double our first $1,000 in donations. It was the most nervous I had been about an event in years.
The next morning I woke up around 5 AM. To my surprise, we had been receiving donation emails all night long! $10, $25, $100! Wow. This fundraiser thing is working!!
The rest of the day was a blur. We had events scheduled and media hits and volunteers arriving, and the donations just kept rolling in. We had to update our FB and IG and thank donors and post photos with donors and feed the iguana and strap a GoPro to the tortoise and say hi to people whose lives Forgotten Friend has impacted, and show someone how to spin the prize wheel, and adopt out more snakes. It was a full day, to say the least.
By the end of the day, we had over 100 donors help us raise over five thousand dollars online, and many more donors who came out to our events and gave cash. The entire event raised over ten million dollars for hundreds of local charities! And our little piece of the pie seemed huge for us. That amount of money makes such an impact for our little reptile rescue. And it may sound cliche, but the support we felt from so many people was truly priceless.
The expensive paperwork we needed to join the will allow us to participate for at least 2 or 3 more years before we have to pay for another one. So we are definitely going to participate again next year. We already have ideas. But overall, it was such a great day. So many of you helped support us yesterday, or helped support hundreds of other amazing nonprofits. From the bottoms of our hearts, THANK YOU so much! Thanks for giving reptiles a chance, thanks for being our friends, and thanks for being there for us!
-Jesse
