Good morning, John.

Today in mere moments as I upload this, the Project for Awesome 2024 is beginning. This year because of various things, including just a ton of donations from the community, the matching fund is for the first time at a record over $900,000. So for every dollar you donate right now, $2 are being donated. Donate $125, that's $250 to charity. projectforawesome.com/donate.

I got my little buttons going right now, and I could just like shove a beanie right in your face. It's a good time. I'm ready! I'm read--whoops, didn't mean to push that one. [Laughs] The video the day the Project for Awesome goes live, traditionally our least viewed video of the year. I usually just talk about our tent pole donors: Partners in Health and Save the Children. They're amazing, and I will talk about them, but first I want to say heading into this year and considering all the other things that we have done in the last year, there is not a monetary requirement to be a member of this community.

John, we know this. Dollars can do real good in the world. A while back, you convinced me to help raise $25 million to build the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone with Partners in Health. That was very scary and motivating and it was the cause of a lot of ideas that we had, like the Awesome Socks Club and the Awesome Coffee Club, et cetera, and a lot of asks; Like we asked for things from individuals and from this community. Partners in Health took a chance on us and we delivered, but we did not deliver because every single person in this community gave. We delivered because there's a lot of us and the people who could or wanted to did. But I just really don't want people to feel like if you're not like contributing, then you're not contributing. Like 12 years ago, this has never left my brain, during a Project for Awesome, Ethan Newberry was on the stream and we wrote a song and created the song live on stream. It's called Look at Hank's Face. The last words in the song pretty much, uh, came from a comment left on the Project for Awesome that said, "It's a dangerous day to get paid." And that has become one of the slogans of the Project for Aweesome, but another slogan of the Project for Awesome is, "Please make sound financial decisions." You are your first responsibility. A lot of people now budget for the Project for Awesome when they're building their yearly budget.

The P4A is amazing because it is huge, it Is impactful, it is important, but it is not those things only because of the money raised. We've been doing this for long enough that every year, I see a bunch of comments that are like, "This is the first year I was able to donate," and I've started to ask myself why that comment feels so good to see. And it's not because that person is now able to donate. It's because they were always giving to and getting from the P4A long before they were ever donating and getting a perk, right. Part of the process of simplifying the Project for Awesome this year is we're having fewer perks, though we're still having a lot, but that means that we've raised the prices on some of the perks, particularly on some physical items because it's just harder to manage the distribution of physical perks. And also yes, the actual value of a dollar has decreased over the last few years. And of course I feel conflicted about raising the prices because I want the Project for Awesome to be something that everyone can contribute to in every way they want to. And also, I want the Project for Awesome to raise the most money possible, and I think there's always been some tension between those two things. But the dollars are only one of the ways that the work gets done.

In a real way, just being there raises money because it raises excitement, and the more excited people are the more likely they are to give if they can. I've learned this lesson in a very real way because like the biggest economic impact this community probably will ever have on the world is pushing to get Danaher to lower the costs of its TB test, which is not something anyone expected and not something that took money. It just took time and attention—attention paid to something that was a huge deal but no one else was paying attention to. That's your genius in this situation, John, finding the thing where no one had put the leverage yet.

True story: I recently created a spreadsheet to help me make decisions about what I want to do with my life and every activity was scored on a bunch of different categories with like a number score because I'm turning into my dad. And I had categories like, "Is it fun?", "Is it goofy?", "Is it good for my family?" Like, there's like 10 I think categories. And the Project for Awesome, of everything that I do or want to do, scored the highest, and not by a little bit. Like it is above vlogbrothers.

Now for clarity, this isn't a measure of impact. It's a measure of how much I feel like I want to do it. I love this thing. The money raised is a part of that, but it's just a part of it. So I want to say some words that we used to say a lot but haven't said in a while 'cause it hadn't felt necessary: If you want to be a nerdfighter, that's means you're a nerdfighter. And how much does it cost to sign-up? $0, and I don't love that sometimes it doesn't feel that way. And so I do want to do things that make it feel less that way; It's something I've been thinking about a bunch.

That all being said, the Project for Awesome is a time when we look at how the world sucks in a bunch of different ways, but we also look at how a lot of people are working hard to try and make it better. Both because those people deserve support and attention and also because, uh, being grateful is more productive than feeling hopeless. Save the Children and Partners in Health are our two Project for Awesome tent pole organizations. Save the Children works all over the world and usually focuses on the areas where children need the most support, which right now is of course in Gaza. They are on the ground there right now working to deliver aid, and they are also working in other places that have been devastated by war and natural disasters like Yemen and Syria and Ukraine. Partners in Health, we work with because they see crises where other people just see the status quo. And we love working with them because they stay focused on huge problems regardless of whether they are in the news, by helping communities build and strengthen their healthcare systems. And we have been so successful in working with Partners in Health that for the first time in a long time, the money from the Project for Awesome isn't gonna go to the Maternal Center of Excellence because that project is now pretty well supported. It will be direct toward the global fight against tuberculosis, the most deadly infectious disease in the world. What a thing this thing is to do. It is a dangerous day to get paid, so make sound financial decisions. And let us be in the room together celebrating this one life that we get to live, celebrating each other, and celebrating the helpers.

John, I'll see you at projectforawesome.com/live.

There are of course many dope things available this year. The digital download bundle contains my first time on stage doing stand-up comedy as well as a bunch of exclusive podcasts, John and I's TikTok drafts, the first couple of chapters of John's new book, and a bunch of other things. Also, because we weren't able to deliver on the Hank and John's Raxcellent Adventure perk last year 'cause cancer got in the way, we are making that one available again. If you're not sure if you got it last year, we just sent an email to people who got that perk. The email contains the word Raxcellent so it should be fairly easy to search for in your inbox.

This very lovely scarf is available. It's a nice one, don't have to worry about this being itchy on your skin. And scarves are great because they only come in one size. We are trying to simplify there are also a bunch of perks that are not online yet like my Hanklerfish fish and some very cool quote posters made by the artist Kenton Hoppas. Katherine's little arts and Sarah's collage art and stuff always gets added during the Project for Awesome. Also these zines that a nerdfighter named Alice made which are basically adaptations of vlogbrothers videos into art, and they're beautiful and I love them so much. She made one on her own, she just created it, and I was like, "I'm gonna pay you to make more of those so that we can have them as Project for Awesome perks," and I love them so much. Of course, also, the nerdfighter art perk where people make art and then send them to us and then we send them to it's like a giant art exchange, and it's amazing and you don't know what you're gonna get, but it's gonna be beautiful and created by a human with love.

If you wanna get a bunch of physical perks, we have the physical download bundle, and by download, I mean we're gonna ship it to you. It includes the scarf and the commemorative coin and the pennies and the pin and a sticker pack that will be designed during the stream by Drawfee. And also a signed thank you card from John. And that's not all. There's more. You can go to projectforawesome.com/donate to find more and to donate projectforawesome.com to vote on charities and projectforawesome.com/live to join us on the live stream.