Thanks and progress update

Special thanks to http://www.indepthwraps.com for the graphics provided for our vehicles this week! John and Torri, 40wells loves your work and thanks you!
Met with the UPS Foundation this week and while they didn't say "no" to a grant, they can not provide a large grant as their Clean Water focus has shifted to Clean Air (makes sense).
Also met with Adedgetechnologies.com VP - meeting was excellent! They are doing great things in the area of water purification (based here in ATL but a broad customer base). Hopefully they will sponsor at least one well in the near future through charity: water. (Thanks for the advice and contacts Greg!)
Still need small donors who want to share in the excitement and success: http://www.40wells.org

40wells.org progress to date . . .

Met with charity: water Director of Development for lunch today. A real live staff person - and it proved that they are as cool in person as they are on their website and tweets. Carrie had lots of great advice and answered some questions I had.
Thanks Carrie! (FollowFriday: @charitywater and @40wells )

40wells.org has over $6,300 raised so far. More than 300 people will receive clean water as a result.
Goal for end of August - $10,000.
Check out more http://www.40wells.org

Next phase for 40wells.org

The main website has been launched and already over 700 visitors have stopped by. About 200 have come from Twitter (wow!) and a handful from search engines (imagine that - they work). Now we move into the off line fund-raising phase and eventually (hopefully) selling some merch.
Looking for some folks out there to setup/run their own fundraisers. Small or large - it can be a garage (tag/yard) sale or a concert - every bit helps! We're setting up an Ultimate Disc (aka Frisbee) Tourney in a couple weeks.
Thanks everyone! This has been a fun and exciting "crowdsourcing" project! All for the most important cause - human life.

Thanks again!

- Gil

Updated the site - waiting for week 1 stats

Modified the content on the landing page today. Already tired of the theme - ready to revamp the site - but no time. Added video to the charity: water link page. Added direct link to email for feedback (so far no spam). Google Analytics puts unique visitors at about 50 a day so far.
Check out video (embedded YouTube) added on http://www.40wells.org/fyicharitywater.htm

40wells.org is live

What it's all about
Hi, my name is Gil VanOrder and I launched www.40wells.org on my 39th birthday (June 14, 2009) to kick off a one year campaign to raise enough money to build 40 water wells by my 40th birthday. I hate the fact that I'm turning 40, but what I hate even more is that over a billion people are still without clean water. I'm just an average guy who wants to have some small impact on the world. So I did some research and found this amazing non-profit called charity: water.

One of many cool things about charity: water is that 100% of every penny donated goes straight to building wells! Their administrative costs are covered by other types of donations. They can build a well for about $5,000 bucks (less than other organizations I checked out). But even cooler - they use modern stuff like Google Earth and digital photos to show you exactly where each well is built right down to the GPS coordinates.

So I am hoping to raise $200k to build 40 wells. The money goes straight to charity: water. I am donating some of my own money to this. It will only take 5,000 people donating $40 each to reach the goal. The wells won't be built by my 40th - but it would be awesome to raise the money for the wells by then. I also pledge to keep this site up indefinitely in order to document each and every well.
Thank you for your time and giving.

Preparing to launch

Launch date June 14!