Before you give a dollar
Three honest answers
If you landed here from a link someone shared, you probably have the same three questions everyone else does. Here they are, answered as directly as I can.
Who are these people?
My dad grew up in a small Oregon town, one of four kids, in a house that for a while had no indoor plumbing. Paper route as a kid, four years in the Navy, then about 40 years in a plywood mill. After all that, he still coached nearly every sport we played and picked up the kids whose parents couldn't drive them.
My mom was born into a family of 13 and spent much of her childhood in foster care. She ran a daycare out of our house for years, cared for seniors after that, and today — still — works as a nanny.
Where does the money actually go?
Every contribution goes toward one thing: giving my parents more freedom in the next chapter — more time together, more travel, and the ability for Mom to choose to stop working.
Payments are processed by Stripe. Stripe's processing fee is deducted before anything reaches us; nothing is skimmed off for salaries, staff, or marketing, because there aren't any.
What stops this from being a scam?
This is personal crowdfunding, not a charity. It is not tax-deductible, and I will never claim otherwise. Saying that plainly is the point.
The running total, the number of people who joined, and every milestone are public on this site and update in real time — you can watch your own dollar land. Updates get posted as the experiment unfolds, including the parts that don't go well.
Still in?
The ask is one dollar. One person, one light. That's the whole experiment.