Raffle Winner Bellen!

This is Bellen Drake's family portrait, she was one of 2 winners from my Japan charity raffle.  I had a lot of fun doing this.  I would like to thank everyone who participated and helped promote the raffle.  I was amazed we raised so much money!  I hope you like your family portrait Bellen :)

I got quite a few emails about how I did the raffle.  I actually got in some trouble with Paypal for doing it.  I would not recommend doing what I did... It's sad there's really no alternative.  If you're raising funds through Paypal, they require you to be a certified non-profit or you formally represent the organization you're raising funds for.  I was neither, I just wanted to do something and I couldn't think of any other way.  They also strictly prohibit raffles and lotteries... but hey I'm a monkey wrench.  I thought they would let me slide for charity sake, but I was wrong.

Paypal contacted me 2 days after the raffle was over and suspended my account.  They asked me to prove that I was either a non-profit (401C) or a representative of the non-profit.  The alternative was to refund all the money!  I had already wired the money to the Japan Red Cross so a refund is out of the question.  All I could do was email them my wire transfer paperwork and hope they'll accept it.  In the end they restored my account, but gave me a stern warning against doing something like this. 
*warning heard guys!*

A few other artists and friends were not so lucky.  Paypal suspended their account right in the middle of their charity fundraisers.  It was a big nightmare for them!  I'm so sorry I sent them down that path.  If only there was a way to donate directly to a charity via Paypal and have Paypal notify me that someone has donated on my behalf.  Am I making sense???  There's no way to do that now.  I think a lot of good can be done that way... it's almost like a micro-loan situation.  We're more likely to make donations through a friend's request than marathon drives and TV commercials.  Being able to raise funds as an individual gives it a personal touch, it's grassroots and I feel it can really pull a community together.  With that being said I'm not a professional fundraiser and I don't do this a lot. 

Paypal is a wonderful way to do business online.  The only other option is Google Checkout, but they're still relatively new.  I know their policy is just to protect the consumer against scammers and frauds. I think the market is big enough we need a few more alternatives to Paypal.  

If I ever do this again I'll probably sell E-cards (along with the chance to win a set of crayons :P).  It'll have to be a "sales" type exchange instead of "gift".  That just means Paypal takes 3%, but in the scheme of things 3% isn't bad.



Now back to Bellen's crayons!  This is Bellen, she's a photographer in Seattle.  She requested that I carve her with a camera.  I modeled her camera after the Canon 1D & 5D series. 


Charles the father.  I tried to capture his wonderful mustache/goatee thing.  I also really like his shirt.


Eben the son.  He's a soccer player!  I think I've had a lot of practice with soccer players by now :P


Delphi the daughter.  She has a cat that she loves.  This was my first time putting an animal into the mix.  It was a good challenge, I'll do doing more combos like this.