Charity blogging event stumbles but lives on

NEW YORK – Last year was a watershed for blogging. Online news, opinion and diary sites proliferated, readership skyrocketed, and a Pew Research Center study found that one in 10 Internet users posted to a blog at least once. While the blogosphere grew, one of its quirkier and nobler community endeavors, now scheduled for Aug. 6, nearly died.

Blogathon started in July 2001, when blogger Cat Connor rounded up 101 participants to raise money for charity by updating their blogs round-the-clock for 24 hours. It was a geek reinterpretation of the run/walk/bike-for-a-cause fund-raiser, with emphasis on creative writing, augmented by caffeine. The group raised more than US$20,000 for an assortment of organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

Spreading news isn’t hard in the blogging community; disseminating information with speed and frenzy is what blogs do best. Blogathon quickly grew, becoming an annual event. By July 2003, blogs attracted enough attention that the U.S. national media wrote about Blogathon. The event drew more than 400 participants, collectively raising $102,534. Organizers talked optimistically about a yearlong organizing effort and a technical infrastructure overhaul.

Then it all collapsed. Connor’s life got complicated, and as Blogathon grew, its organizational challenges multiplied. She put it on hiatus for a year, but pledged a full-strength return in 2005.

Blogathon’s contributors didn’t want to let the event fade. Several organized a fill-in event, Project Blog. Even more held their own renegade Blogathons. “It was very communist,” recalls veteran participant Catherynne M. Valente. “Everybody just sort of did it, and because the last weekend of July was traditional, that’s when we did it.”

Still, many eagerly awaited the return of the official Blogathon. In addition to the sense of united community the formal event offered, the Blogathon Web site’s infrastructure made it easier for bloggers to collect pledges and tally their collective total. Valente, who raised $1,000 during her first Blogathon in 2003 and even more during her informal all-night charity blogging the next year, started waiting early this year for an announcement of Blogathon’s return. And waiting, and waiting.

By early July, Blogathon’s Web site, Blogathon.org, was still dormant. Then Project Blog abruptly packed it in as well. With only weeks to go before its usual date, it appeared no one was organizing Blogathon. But at the last minute, Smith College student Sheana Director, who participated in the first Blogathon and later assisted with its management, arranged with Connor to take over the Web site and scramble together this year’s event, which will begin at 9 a.m. ET.

Director says “every aspect” of the resurrection has been challenging. Since 2003, the entire back-end infrastructure has been lost. The e-mail group that kept participants informed about plans died. Participants were given barely two weeks to do fund raising.

“A comedy of errors” is how returning blogger Shari Lipkin describes the affair. Still, she plans to participate this year. “Chaotic and frustrating as this is, and physically arduous as it can be, it’s worth it,” she said. “Many of us can’t do as much as we want for charity. One thing I can do is write.”

The rushed nature of Blogathon 2005 will take its toll. Right now, 235 participants are signed up, with $25,000 pledged — hardly an insignificant sum, but a definite drop from 2003’s peak. Valente attracted $150 in pledges, a disappointment after her previous efforts raised four-figure sums for the Global Fund for Women.

Nevertheless, Valente, a professional classicist and fantasy fiction writer, will put as much creative effort into this year’s Blogathon posts as she did before. For her first Blogathon, she wrote the final 30,000 words of a novel of connected fairy tales, called “The Daughters’ Tales,” which recently sold to Bantam Dell Publishing Group. This year she’s planning to write an adaptation of the Sumerian epic “The Descent of Inanna.”

Other Blogathon plans include a photographic tour of New England lighthouses, an interactive mystery game, a pit-bull awareness campaign, and postings from a blogger devoted to “creating something with balloons every hour.” Participants agree to post at least every 30 minutes and to write on the fly. Prepared content is banned. Monitors keep tabs on sites and drop Blogathon’s links to those who fall behind on updates.

Blogathon has also attracted a business owner who uses blogging to publicize her pet-care products and services business. Aspenbloom Pet Care owner Kim Bloomer, who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, started Bark-N-Blog.com to share information about natural pet care in an entertaining way. “Written” by her pet Mastiff, Shadrach, the site features animal news, care tips and stories. Bark-N-Blog.com will raise money for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Blogathon organizer Director says she’s unsure what will happen with the event next year, but she is hopeful for its future. “When you organize an event like this, the community really comes out to support you,” she said, noting that even with its late start, the event quickly drew a full staff of volunteers.

Valente is committed to the idea of an annual charity blogging event, whatever the fate of Blogathon. “The idea of Blogathon is out there, and a lot of us are pretty devoted,” she said. “I think that as long as I’m on the Internet, it’s something I’ll be doing.”