That's nothing, you should have heard my rendition of "My Heart Will Go On"

Today’s recommendation is perhaps a bit crass, in a way, but it is crass with good intentions and in a selfless way. Today, I recommend donating to my autism walk.

I will spare you the statistics, which you likely have already heard countless times and can look up easily anyway. The fact of the matter is, this is a disability that we really don’t understand as much as we should. It has a huge effect on those who live with it, and for the number of people diagnosed with autism, it’s truly puzzling how little funding is available for research.

I have been working with individuals diagnosed with autism and other developmental disabilities for nearly nine years. About six years ago I first became involved with N.A.A.R., which later merged with Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is currently the nation’s largest autism awareness and advocacy organization and is the major sponsor of the autism walk.

As you can see from the page, I have set a high fundraising goal for myself, but I believe that I can do it with your help. I also wish to call to your attention my two incentive campaigns. The first campaign is a donation-matching campaign; I will submit my personal donation to match the largest single donation I receive from any individual up until the evening before the walk. It’s pretty straightforward; I’m putting my money where my mouth is. Note the qualifiers: single donation and individual. Corporate donations, including employer’s matching charitable gifts, do not apply to this campaign, and a series of small donations will not be aggregated for these purposes.

The second incentive campaign, from my point of view, is the interesting one: if you donate to my fundraiser, I will play and sing a song for you. Any song that you like. I will compile all these songs onto a CD (or, hopefully I will have enough donations to make it a double-CD or even a box set!), which will then be distributed as a gift to everyone who has donated. This is my third year running such an incentive; two years ago, I covered songs at open mic nights for donations. Some of the songs I played included “Fire in Cairo” by The Cure and “Sexyback” by Justin Timberlake. Seriously, this really happened!

Last year, I recorded two EPs of cover songs. Covers included songs by Coldplay, Okkervil River, Shearwater, *Nsync, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and Phil Ochs, as well as The Most Unwanted Song. I believe I still have a few copies of these EPs lying around, so if you want one of these, please let me know in the comments. Those requesting old EPs will waive their request for this year’s set, unless they make another donation.

Note that I do reserve the right to set a price on certain songs; if a song is ridiculously difficult to learn/perform or has the potential to be highly embarrassing, I may need a more substantial donation than the minimum in order to fulfill the request. Also note that multiple donations will give you multiple request credits.

So go! Donate! E-mail me your requests (I’d prefer to keep the requests a secret so people are surprised when they get their CDs, so I ask that you do not leave requests in the comments)! Help me reach my fundraising goal! Earn your good Samaritan points for the day!

Hopefully I will be back with a real recommendation tomorrow!