Merry freakin’ Christmas. It’s that time of year again, the most magical of all. That probably seems disingenuous in text, but just the thought of this holiday makes me giddy. I’m overcome with emotions too strong and glory of possibilities too great. Who couldn’t use a little Christmas in their lives? I don’t care if you’re jew or gentile, believer or unbeliever, this time of year brings everyone together. Now that’s something that I can get behind.
Each year (or so), I try to throw a party for my friends and dear acquaintances to share my love for Christmas. I usually feature a playlist about Jesus which I call the Christmas Rock Opera. It tells the story of my hero in an usual and provocative way. Unfortunately, I will not be doing my Christmas Rock Opera this year. However, I would like to announce that a year from now, I will be throwing it down deep with you all.
Date: First Friday, December 7th, 2018.
Time: 6:00 pm.
Location: TBA
Menu: Loaves and Fishes (and other wintry stuff :).
Music: An awesome mix to be announced later, yo.
What to bring: Bring whatever wine you’d like to drink. You may also bring water and pray for a miracle, but I make no guarantee that such will be manifest.
Seasonal considerations: Despite global warming, it will be cold as hell. While I will do my best to provide warmth and shelter, I strongly urge you to bring your coats, scarves, gloves, and hats.
Additional Details: Please like/follow my facebook page for additional details.
Over the years, many people have offered financial assistance to help cover the costs of this event. While I very much appreciate these kind gestures, I would like to decline such offers again. However, your generosity has inspired me with an idea. I would like to set up a foundation to accept your charitable contributions in the spirit of this blessed season. I’d like this foundation to be an integral part of the Christmas Rock Opera. Here’s a brief outline of the concept.
General Description
100% of contributions marked as “perpetual” will go into a sacred fund. Sacred simply means that the contributed funds, called corpus, will never be consumed. Only growth on the corpus will ever be spent on achieving the mission of the foundation. The concept of rolling corpus shall further increase the power of contributions by demanding that the corpus grows at a rate to outpace inflation, say 3% or greater (based on a major indicator such as the consumer price index).
Connection to the Christmas Rock Opera
Tickets to the Christmas Rock Opera will be issued free of charge to anyone who makes some minimum contribution to the foundation. The purpose of issuing free tickets to the event is that, let’s face it, I’m no miracle worker and I need to know how many people to plan on; fishes and loaves don’t materialize out of thin air.
First Year Goal
I’d like to raise $100k in the first year. This means that if 5000 people attend, $20/person would accomplish it, or if 1000 people attend, $100/person would accomplish it. It would be a shame if we can’t get at least 1000 attendees, but you’re all smart, you can do the math; if fewer people attend, we all need to kick up our level of contribution in order to meet the goal. (That is, if you want to; good hell, we’re not tyrants.) I will be creating a facebook event to assess the level of interest.
Mission
The mission of the foundation is to enhance the lives of the poor and underprivileged. This is intended to be interpreted in a broad sense. The purpose of the foundation is not to relieve specific individuals. I’m afraid that would be too error prone. Assistance shall be rendered in a manner consistent with the principles of the foundation.
Principles
- Perpetual Growth (see concept of rolling corpus above)
- Kindness and Generosity
- Independence
- Unaffiliated with any religion or ideology. God knows we have enough of that shit.
- Volunteerism
- Professional services may be retained in order to manage the event and the foundation, but never if it touches the corpus. Hence, only the generosity of people giving of their time and unmarked funds will set this endeavor to flight.
- Science
- When two or more projects to achieve the mission of the foundation are under consideration, the more scientifically based solution shall be given priority.
Board of Directors
If you’ve made it this far, you may very well be the sort of person that I’m looking for to direct this whole thing. I’m asking for five individuals to serve as the board of directors. Members of the board need to be unrelated and diverse in their backgrounds and thinking. Please contact me if you’re energetic, passionate, and interested in serving as a director of the foundation.
Minimum Corpus
No disbursement shall be made until $100M corpus is reached. If the sacred fund grows at a reasonable rate of 8% annually, minus 3% to ensuring rolling corpus, 5% of $100M is $5M. That is about where a fund can start to make a substantial difference in the world.
Merry Christmas, with love,
Ariel Hammon
Author of JACK
Source of image unknown. I will gladly remove if the copyright owner requests.
Love this plan! Put my name on the list to consider for directing the Foundation.
Excellent! Thanks.
No disbursement shall be made until $100M??? Wow shooting for the stars. Is this going to qualify as a charitable contribution?
No sense in aiming any shorter. Yes! This will be a charitable contribution.
Except the fact that it will take 5 generations to raise the base amount.
Help me get it done sooner.
Spectacular! Count me in!
Wonderful!
This is very ambitious, I like it! This is how amazing things can happen.