Building Community: Creations for Charity
Posted by MeganL,
Since Huw wrote about the start of the annual Creations for Charity fundraiser, Holly and I had a chance to talk with Nannan Zhang to learn more about it. Here’s a cause perfectly suited for a pandemic, because you can create something at home, donate online, and the only thing more that may be required is a trip to the post office.
So how exactly does Creations for Charity work?
Creations for Charity is a small, non-profit, all volunteer organization. The fundraiser takes place every year for a limited time from October through November, ending in December. We really encourage anyone to participate. Anyone can donate a creation by filling out the donation form on the homepage of our website. It's pretty straightforward, you just put in the description of your creation and a little information, add a picture, and then we list it for sale on our website. Then when it sells, we notify the builder to ship it directly to the buyer. It's a very easy process and we offer to reimburse for the parts of the creation or shipping costs. That way people who don't want to part with their bricks feel like they can recuperate something and essentially just donate their time, which is still valuable.
A sampling of this year's offerings
We update the store as we get donations, so we encourage people to check back often. New creations are constantly being added and we tend to lower the price on ones that haven’t sold as time goes by. Ultimately, the goal is to sell them all at a reasonable price and raise money for charity, so out of respect for the builders we don’t bid for a really low amount. Since we're a nonprofit organization, all our donations are tax deductible in the US.
We’ve had some unique donations over the years. We’ve known kids to donate their creations with a parent's approval. We've had builders who are very well known in the community donate some of their creations, we get donations of sets, and also donations of MOCs from the LEGO Company. Each year the LEGO Company has provided MOCS from Inside Tours where LEGO designers have built creations with the participants. Mark Stafford of LEGO has coordinated an effort to get those creations donated to us at the end of each year, so then we are able to sell the creations designed by LEGO designers for our annual fundraiser.
Several creations donated by LEGO designers
It’s very flexible. Instead of a defined creation, we've also had people list that they’re willing to do commissions. So whoever purchases that item, then I put them in touch with the builder and they create something to the buyer’s demand. This year, we have people donating custom instructions and we don't limit the number in stock. When someone buys them they can download it right away. That's very easy for us.
(Holly has donated the instructions for this Coraline Brickheadz for this year's fundraiser.)
Who benefits from this cause; how far reaching is it?
We've always been a web based organization so we’ve never really had a geographic location. Although, back when I was based in Dallas and one of the other coordinators was based in Michigan we initially donated in Michigan and Dallas. But as we expanded to other cities we donated to other locations.
How it works: our distributors buy LEGO sets and they find a local organization to which to donate. It can be anything. Hospitals, orphanages, and schools are some of the popular places that people have picked. There are also specific local organizations that benefit a certain population of kids. We leave it up to the discretion of our coordinators to find an organization that appeals to them. Sometimes our distributors want to donate directly to the kids and even build with them. That's what happened with our distributor in Brazil. There's an orphanage that he donates to every year and then they build with the kids on the spot. It’s very fun to see the photos that he posts on our blog.
Each year, we donate anywhere from hundreds to upwards of over a thousand LEGO sets. So imagine that's the number of kids who will be getting them. I think all together, we've donated almost $200,000 cumulative worth of LEGO sets over a decade or so that we've been running. Each year we’ve raised on average about $15,000 to $18,000 and that's holding pretty steady. The nice thing about all of us being LEGO fans is that we know where to buy discounted LEGO sets, so we're all able to stretch our dollar in order to be able to buy more sets.
How long have you been doing this and how did it get started?
We started the Creations for Charity fundraiser back in 2009. It started as an idea for a group of builders to use our talents to make custom LEGO creations and then auction them off and use that money for charity. We began asking around for other participants and found a handful of builders to join the cause. Then we put our creations up for auction on Bricklink and raised $2,000, which we used to buy LEGO sets to donate to kids. That idea was pretty popular so we’ve continued that over the years, and now we have eight, nine distributors across different parts of the world who are helping fund LEGO sets for kids.
How many volunteers are involved?
Right now we have 12 volunteers, and that's about the most we've ever had. About nine of them are distributors, and the others are myself and people coordinating the website. We have coordinators in Brazil, a few in Canada, one in Hungary, one who's new in Austria, and also one in Australia. We always welcome new people who are interested in helping and distributing sets.
Beyond the Brick hosts an annual 24 hour marathon on YouTube for Creations for Charity. This year it’s scheduled for the weekend after Thanksgiving, November 27th-28th. Be sure to tune in!
How long have you (personally) been involved in LEGO?
I never outgrew the hobby, so I played with LEGO even in high school. Back in 2004 is when I discovered Brickshelf, MOCpages, and all the AFOLs who make nice, elaborate work. I worked up to kind of a massive collection and I started building my own MOCs.
How has this activity been affected by the pandemic?
My job has been affected, yes, but in terms of the organization, not so much because we're entirely virtual. We don't rely on any kind of physical storefronts where there are in person meetings, since all of our donations and processing are virtual. We never get our hands on the creations; it's all kind of direct from donor to recipient, so we haven’t really been affected by the pandemic. Our distribution will depend on which locations our coordinators want to donate to. Certainly if they have restrictions on incoming products then that may be an issue, but I anticipate most places may not. They'll probably just clean and wipe down the boxes. It shouldn’t be that big of an issue.
Do you have any other plans for further research and development?
Well, certainly if we had the manpower it would be great to expand. I've been the one running this organization year after year. I'm a physician, so right now time is an issue and you know, this a hobby. If people are interested in helping out we always welcome those who have vision and ideas on how they can make this organization grow. We have quite a few distributors in the US, but it would be nice to have more volunteers in a few new countries. We're always looking to expand to other locations, especially in Asia. Because of the language barrier, it's hard to find coordinators over there who can help us donate.
Thanks, Nannan! For more information, check out the Creations for Charity website.
Do you know of an individual or an organization who should be featured in Building Community? Let us know.
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3 comments on this article
This is fantastic, particularly this year when a lot of people need to find ways of helping out while staying fairly isolated. Love it.
Great to learn more about this, I had seen the name on Beyond the Brick but hadn't looked into the details.
Thanks for the feature Megan and Holly. We encourage anyone to participate in the fundraiser!