Advertising and Partnership maybe (Day 50)

Hello all, and congratulations for making it to 50 days! We are now advertising the book club in many more places including other libraries and some religious centers. We also have an informational page on the Borders site. The link will be below, so don't forget to click on that! As for partnership, we may be partnering with Green Scene for Metro-Detroit, so stay tuned for more news about that! I also just added a countdown widget courtesy of Widgetbox. Enjoy!

Information about the book club

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Bookmarks (Day 38)

I created some bookmarks advertising my book club and dropped them off at the Canton Public Library. Hopefully that will spark some interest in people to come. I'm also trying to get permission to invite the Plymouth High School Girls Gymnastics team to come. I'll let you know if that works out!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Book Club (Day 33)

Hi everyone, and sorry for the delay in the blog. On Tuesday, August 24th at 7 PM, we will be hosting a book club at the Borders in Canton. The book is Do Hard Things, as we had mentioned before. Please come and mention this to all of your friends and family! Thanks so much for supporting us!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

A reply at last! (Day 20)

We just received a reply from the Executive Assistant to Michael Pritchard. As they are located in England, it will be difficult to help us. However, they have partnered with Operational Blessings, and they suggest that we try to donate through that. We will post information about the book club later today, so stay tuned for that. The link to the Operational Blessings site is at the bottom of this post.

Operational Blessings

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Book Club (Day 15)

Hi everyone, and sorry for the delay. This is just to let you know that we will probably be able to host a book club at our local Borders sometime in August after the 20th. This hasn't been finalized yet, but the book will be Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris. Hopefully you will all be able to attend!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Success! (Day 10)

Our talk with the lady from Borders was phenomenal! She gave us the information for Benefit Day, and she really wants to help us! However, for Benefit Day, we need 500 supporters, which we obviously don't have. However, we can start a monthly book club, as long as we tell her what book by July 10th. I will post more information later, but I will be out of town until next Thursday.

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

High Hopes (Day 9)

Today, we're going to talk to the lady at Borders. Hopefully she can help us set something up-- whether it is a Benefit Day or a book discussion. We'll let you know what happens soon!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Progress (Day 8)

We talked to the guy about becoming 501 (c)3, and he said that all we have to do is fill out a form and submit it to the IRS. Tomorrow, we will be able to talk to the lad from Borders-- we have high hopes for that!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Talking (Day 7)

As you all know, we will be talking to someone today who can help us become a 501 (c)3 organization. We'll let you all know how that goes probably tomorrow.

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

The Perfect Advertisement (Day 6)

As you know, we have been having trouble getting the word out about our project. So today, I thought of the perfect advertisement. Door hangers! Hopefully, soon you will see door hangers with information about our organization coming to you!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Same Old (Day 6)

There is nothing new to report today. We will be talking to someone tomorrow about becoming a 501 (c)3 organization, and we will talk to the lady from Borders on Friday.

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Slowing down (Day 5)

Something came up, so we can't go talk to the lady at Borders today, but I will probably talk to her tomorrow (Tuesday) or Friday. Unfortunately, we still haven't gotten a single reply from anyone else that we emailed, except for the other district library, who called to let us know that they can't do fundraising either. I'm going to try and personally talk to someone who can help us become an official 501 (c)3 organization. It's personally very frustrating for me to see everything slowing down like this. We can't let it hold us back though. We have to keep going no matter how frustrated we get. Like I have said before, people need us.

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

This could be the start (Day 4)

We called the Borders, and they want to speak to us personally tomorrow. They have Benefit days, where a percentage of the sales in the store go to a charitable organization like ours. However, in order to be able to do that, we have to be a 501 (c)3 organization, meaning that we have a status as a non-profit organization. We will talk to the lady at Borders tomorrow to see if we can work something out. We are so close to being able to do this, but it might not work out. In the meantime, we have emailed a lady who recently became a 501 (c)3 organization, so she might be able to help us. We also emailed Debbie Kiddle of the Lifesaver Bottle organization asking if what we are doing is ok. Hopefully she can let us know soon!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Publicizing (Day 3)

We called Borders, but the lady we want to talk to won't be in until tomorrow, so we will call her again in the afternoon. We are slowly gaining followers-- we have four now. Hopefully we will gain more soon. If you are following us, please invite your friends to follow us as well. If you aren't following us yet, please do so! We need to get the word out about the project, and we need to do it soon. People all over the world need us.

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Further Steps (Day 2)

We created a page on cantonwiki.org (our city's wikipedia) about the project. The link will be at the bottom of the entry. We also added this blog to the cantonwiki blog listing. Hopefully people will be interested in this!

Canton wiki Lifesaver Bottle Project Page

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Moving Forward (Day 2)

We received a reply from our local library. Unfortunately they cannot help us since this is a fundraiser and they are a non-profit organization. Undeterred, we replied to them and asked for additional suggestions that they may have as to where we could speak to people. We emailed the other nearby library in case they can help, and we called our local Borders bookstore in hopes of doing a program there, even if it has to be a book club based on Do Hard Things. They told us who to contact, and we will be giving her a call tomorrow. Hopefully something works out, and hopefully we hear from Mr. Pritchard soon!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Getting Started (Day 1)

Not wanting to put off the project for later, we started the same day as we were inspired. We contacted our local library in hopes of being able to fundraise there and give a talk, and we emailed Michael Pritchard, asking for ideas and support with our project. We even created a simple plan that we will base the project off of. Things seem to be going pretty well so far!

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.

Inspiration (Day 1)

Our inspiration to start this project stemmed from two places. A book called Do Hard Things, and a TED talk given by Michael Pritchard. I had seen the talk a year or so ago, and it amazed me at what such a simple device could do for the world. However, I didn't decide to pursue the idea until I read the book Do Hard Things. It inspired me to try and make a difference in the world, and I realized that I wanted to raise money to buy more Lifesaver bottles. At this point, everything is a gamble and completely theoretical, but we have begun to take some action. The links below show you exactly what inspired us in hopes that you will be inspired too.

The original TED talk by Michael Pritchard

Do Hard Things

The Lifesaver Bottle

If you have any questions or comments, you can always email livesaverbottle@gmail.com.