30 Hour Day Ushers in New Era of Philanthropy, Telethons
Portland’s living room is set to play host to a new kind of telethon. You know, the kind where it isn’t on TV and you don’t call in to pledge via a phone. On Friday July 2nd at 4pm, the “30 Hour Day” telethon begins broadcasting from Pioneer Courthouse Square for 30 straight hours.
As mentioned above, the event is different than your run of the mill telethon. Instead of broadcasting via television, the event will be live streamed on the internet at a variety of web sites. Viewers can participate via the 30 Hour Day web site, on Ustream.tv, via your iPhone, iPad or Android phone (using the Ustream app), or on any one of the unaffiliated sites that will be streaming the event. Heck, you can even go on down to Pioneer Courthouse Square and root on the hosts in person!
Though the technology is different, the telethon still provides the great entertainment you’d expect. Event organizers have lined up musicians, comedians, story tellers, talk show hosts, more music, a quizmaster, a web tv premier, even more music and maybe a pillow fight thrown in for good fun!
30 Hour Day is the brainchild of Rick Turoczy, Cami Kaos and Mike Gebhardt. The idea? Use modern media to raise money for Portland area charities. The organizations that will benefit from the event include the Oregon Food Bank, p:ear, and the Portland chapter of the American Red Cross. However, the fund raising doesn’t stop there. The creators of 30 Hour Day encourage others to use this event and its content to help raise awareness and raise money for charities across the country and the world.
Charitable donations can be made during the event or right now. All donations are being run through Causes to provide transparency, organization and even receipts for tax deductions. To begin your donation, start out at 30hourday.org or go directly to the 30 Hour Day page on causes.com.
If you are looking for another way to help you, they could still use sponsors to defray the production costs and volunteers to help on set. For more info on those opportunities, visit 30hourday.org/sponsor.
Finally, you can stay up to date on 30 Hour Day by following their official Twitter stream (@30hourday) or joining them on Facebook (Facebook.com/30hourday).
Thank you so much for helping spread the word about 30 Hour Day! We really appreciate it.