Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday, and I'm wearing a suit,
which can only mean one thing. It's time for the bank of Nerdfighteria's
semi-annual report. So, like a lot of us, the bank of Nerdfighteria has two arms,
the Good Store slash dftba.com arm and the Project for Awesome arm.
But today, I will argue that there might be a secret third arm, which does not
involve the spending or receiving of money and might be the most
important arm of them all. But let's start with Good Store.
So in 2019, our community began supporting Partners in Health in
their efforts to radically reduce maternal and child mortality in the Kono District of
Sierra Leone. Since then, a maternal and infant care center has nearly been
finished at Koidu Government Hospital. I mean, they're painting right now.
Some of the wards will open this year. And as part of this commitment,
we were like, we're going to need some ongoing funding sources.
Like, long-term ongoing. And that's how the Awesome Socks Club
got started. It's a subscription for socks. And since then, we've launched
good.store, which has not only socks, but also excellent coffee
and soap subscriptions. So in 2019, were able to donate about $268,000
across all our merch projects. And in 2020, were able to donate
$598,000 for the year. And it just kept growing from there until there was
a huge jump last year. And last year alone, we donated almost $3.5 million.
Now, maintaining that growth is going to be really challenging, mostly because
both the company and Nerdfighteria received a ton of media attention last year
because of a thing that, just to be clear, we do not want to repeat.
But still, these have become quite successful businesses.
How does the money break down? Well, most of it still comes from
the Awesome Socks Club, but both coffee and soap are growing.
And last year, Pizzamas grew as well. And this has meant that we're able to
support not just the maternal and child care project in Sierra Leone,
but also others. Like this year, Hank's cancer socks raised over
$350,000 to support better cancer care in impoverished communities.
And we're able to support increasing access to tuberculosis care as well.
The whole idea here when we started was that if we worked with a team of
really talented people, we could potentially raise more money by starting
these businesses than we could ever donate on our own. And that's happened.
So that's one arm of the bank of Nerdfighteria. And then we have the second arm,
which is the Project for Awesome It's a completely separate project.
Since 2007, Nerdfighteria has organized an annual charity fest called
the Project for Awesome that has raised about $12 million in total for charity.
Some of this goes to preselected charities, usually Partners in Health and
Save the Children, and then some of it goes to charities chosen by Nerdfighteria
through their votes on Project for Awesome videos at
projectforawesome.com It's really wonderful.
It is my favorite time of the year to be a nerd fighter. This year we already have
$100,000 in the bank from people who've donated throughout the year,
and we've started to build a matching fund which is now at $227,000, which is incredible.
But we want to grow it even more so that every small donor to
the Project for Awesome can get their donation matched by someone who can
donate over $500. So if you're such a person who can donate over $500
to this year's Project for Awesome, there is a link in the doobly do and in
the pinned comment below to go let us know about you. And yes,
your donations are tax deductible because we have a real charity called
the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, which sounds like it's not a real charity,
but it is. And then there is the secret third arm
of the bank of Nerdfighteria, whose power was really unleashed
in the last year and which doesn't involve the spending or donating of any money.
I'm talking about advocacy. So in 2023, our community
helped convince the corporation Johnson & Johnson to abandon all
secondary patents on the critical tuberculosis drug bedaquiline.
And that's already resulted in lower prices, making bedaquiline more accessible
in the communities where it's most needed. TB fighters in our community also
pressured the conglomerate Danaher to lower the price of their critically
important tuberculosis tests, an effort which is ongoing but has already resulted
in a price reduction for the standard tuberculosis test and a pledge
from Danaher not to profit from that test in impoverished communities.
Now, there's still a long way to go in these advocacy efforts, and
just to state the obvious, we are not the only or even the primary driver
behind them, but we have played a really important role.
The Global Fund recently estimated that the Danaher price reduction alone
will result in a $32 million savings over the next three years, allowing
millions more people to get accurate, fast tuberculosis tests. And of course,
not all of that savings is attributable to Nerdfighteria. Partners in Health
and Doctors Without Borders and the Treatment Action Group
and so many TB survivors have been working for these changes for years.
But let's say our stake in that change was 20%. That would mean that
advocacy created a bigger financial win for global health equity than Good Store
and the Project for Awesome combined. And that's a reminder to me that how we
spend our money isn't the only thing that matters. Although of course it does
matter very much. How we spend our time and our attention also matters.
And because so many people in Nerdfighteria have gotten involved in
advocacy for those living with tuberculosis,
changes that we could never have bought or sold have nonetheless become possible.
So when we say regardless of whether you want to buy awesome socks
or can donate to the Project for Awesome, thank you for being part of this.
We mean it. We really mean it. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.
$32 million in savings from the Danaher thing. Wow.