Good morning Hank it’s Tuesday.

I’m wearing a suit which can only mean one thing: it’s time to talk about money. Today’s video is like the Power of the Dog, except with much less Oscar buzz, it comes in five parts.

Part 1: TikTok.
Hank, did you know that it is possible to make a TikTok, let people see it for like 12 minutes and then private it? It’s the best way to use TikTok. And yes I realize that I have just invented Snapchat, but what a great invention! Anyway will anyone ever see the 120 TikToks that I have privated shortly after uploading in the last couple months? Including the bobsled one, and the hot tub one?

I don’t know. In unrelated news, there will be so many wonderful perks available to donors during the 15th Project for Awesome, our community’s annual 48-hour charity fundraiser which begins on February 25th at noon eastern time. Wait did I say the FIFTEENTH Project for Awesome? Goodness.

Part 2: Money.
In 2021, vlogbrothers earned just over $145,000, most of that came from Youtube ad revenue but some of it came from YouTube Premium subscribers or from super chats.

So where did that money go? Half was donated to our project with Partners in Health aimed at radically reducing maternal mortality in Sierra Leone; The other half was evenly split between a fund that supports educational projects at Complexly and a fund that supports emerging educational creators online–so this year we were able to give grants to educational creators like Tom Lum, and Alexis Nicole, and Flipping Physics. You can find links to all the educational grant winners in the dooblydoo. They’re all great.

We’ve organized vlogbrothers ad revenue this way for several years, but I want to be clear that we’re only able to do this because Hank and I have other jobs– mostly writing books for me, and for Hank having ten thousand jobs, including writing books. And those books wouldn’t sell as well if it weren’t for vlogbrothers, so it’s not accurate to say that we don’t keep any of the value created by vlogbrothers, only that we don’t keep any of the ad revenue.

So that’s the answer to the clickbait title, now let’s get back to the Bank of Nerdfighteria’s semiannual report. With part 3: The matching fund.
Every year, a group of nerdfighters bands together with Hank and me to create a matching fund so that money raised during the Project for Awesome gets matched. And that's a big reason why we were able to donate over $2.3 million dollars for charity last year. And if you can join the matching fund this year by donating $500 or more to the 2022 Project for Awesome, that would be amazing. There’s a google link in the dooblydoo below, thank you. And yes donations are tax deductible in the U.S. It’s like any other charity, except that it’s called the Foundation to Decrease World Suck. I mean, we maybe should have rethought the name, but here we are.

Part 4: How the P4A works.
I should note that the Project for Awesome is completely separate from our community’s project with Partners in Health Sierra Leone to radically reduce maternal mortality. They are different things.

During the first half of the P4A, we raise money for pre-selected charities–this year Partners in Health and Save the Children, two organizations we’ve worked with for many, many years. But we don’t raise money for a particular project, we raise so-called “unrestricted” funds, so the charities can spend the money wherever they see a need.

And then during the second half of the Project for Awesome, we raise unrestricted funds for charities chosen by you through your Project for Awesome videos, and your votes at projectforawesome.com. We do this so that people who want to give to charities they know and know well can donate during the first half, and people who want to give to charities chosen by our community can do so in the second half.

Part 5: Videos.
I really hope that you, yes you, person watching this–will make a Project for Awesome video in support of a charity you care about. Making such a video can help people learn about organizations doing good in the world, and also if your organization is selected for a grant, they could get quite a lot of money. Like last year, the Project for Awesome donated over $27,000 to each of these charities chosen by the community.

So I hope you will consider making a video in support of a nonprofit organization you care about and then submitting it at projectforawesome.com before February 23rd. There is a link to learn more in the dooblydoo. I am so excited for the 15th Project for Awesome!

Hank, I’ll see you on Friday.