Good morning, John.

Since 2007, we have been doing a yearly thing called the Project for Awesome and it's taken a lot of different forms during that time. Like there was that year where YouTube paid for us to do it in a live studio in Los Angeles and like a bunch of classic like--look, it's Smosh! And TheWillofDC! And then other years have been like, "John, we should rent a theater for 48 hours and fill the audience with people who can't leave the theater for the entire--" and you're like, "Hank, rein it in." But this year, since the last 12 months have been pretty weird, we're going to change some things and almost all those changes are just about simplifying, especially for the people who work on the Project for Awesome behind the scenes. Though, that does include you and me.

To start though, here's what stayin' the same. You can and should make a video promoting your favorite charity and then you can submit that video to projectforawesome.com between January 30th and February 13th. You can vote for charities featured in videos at projectforawesome.comand a portion of the money that we raised during the P4A will go to the charities voted on. There will be a weird live stream where sometimes we're being very sincere and talking to global leaders of international aid organizations, and sometimes we're spreading baked beans on our face or something. And there will be lots of cool perks, both physical and digital, that you can get in exchange for donating to the Project for Awesome. And finally fourth, just like last year, if you have the ability, you can donate to the matching fund so that your money can encourage other people to donate, but you have to do that before February 12th.

So that all seems very samesy. What the heck is changing, Hank? Number one: For the last few years, we have split the money raised during the P4A between in the first half, the money has gone to Save the Children and Partners in Health. And during the second half, the money has gone to organizations voted on by the community, and every year, that has worked out to within a couple of percent to 50% of the money going to Partners in Health and Save the Children and 50% going to charities voted on by the community. I think that the like first half, second half thing is a little confusing for people who are new. It's also complicated for a couple of reasons internally and it doesn't seem like it needs to be a thing. So this year's Project for Awesome, all the money from all of the time during the P4A will be pulled together. I know this might make like the meta gaming of the Project for Awesome a little less fun for some people, but there's always trade-offs, right? And then from that big pool, half the money will go to Save the Children and Partners in Health and the other half will go to charities voted on by the community.

Second, this is kind of a bummer, but like logistically it makes sense, like it's the right thing to do; We're not going to stream for all 48 hours. Just so that everybody on the team can have some downtime, there will be some early morning hours during which we will go dark.

And third, this is not something that we did, but Tiltify has introduced a new feature where you can actually like shopping cart up your perks. So instead of buying things one at a time, which takes forever, you can be like, "I want this one, this one, this one," and then check-out one time. This is great. Thank you Tiltify. That's fant--I love that. I love that you saw that we had this problem and you solved it. We're also doing a thing this year where in addition to having the digital download bundle, we're going to have the physical perk bundle which is going to be a bunch of stuff but you can get all of it for way cheaper because the way that getting one perk at a time works is that we have to ship each one out to you separately, but if you get the bundle, they all come in one package and that saves a lot on shipping, and then more money can go to charity.

The Project for Awesome is one of the most special and wonderful things in my life. It is wonderful. It is also very fun. I have plans. There's always a Banana Loca in that storage chest right there. I am just so grateful for all the people who work really hard to make the Project for Awesome happen behind the scenes. There's a lot of people who work super hard and we're just trying to take a little bit of lift off of them and also off of ourselves. Also, I just uploaded a video where I talk about to how make a good Project for Awesome video, so if you're interested in making a video promoting a charity of your choice, you can check that out. Project for Awesome grants tend to be like 20 to $30,000 so it can be a pretty big deal for a lot of organizations, and I'm glad, I'm so so happy that we get to do that work. Thank you for being a part of this community.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.