T-minus 24 hours

We're less than a day away from the rally, and Washington has turned into reddit central. We met a redditor on our plane, sitting right in front of us. We saw a group of redditors in t-shirts at baggage claim, excitedly exchanging QR codes. And the local football team announced that they're changing their name to the Washington Reddits. One of the preceding sentences is not true.

If you missed Wednesday's rally update, go read that first. It turns out that, despite its title, there are a few more things we need to tell you.


Achievement Unlocked!

First off, we made the $500,000 goal! It appears that redditor timdorr put us over the top with some last-minute campaigning and an especially generous contribution. In addition to the karmic reward of helping change the lives of countless schoolchildren, this means we'll be getting that Stephen Colbert AMA we were promised — and it looks like the reddit alien is now a part of the DonorsChoose logo!

We know you guys like statistics, so we've compiled some:

• We raised $500,000 (and counting) in 46 days
• Over $130,000 was raised in the first 24 hours
• Over $200,000 was raised in the first 48 hours
• The previous DonorsChoose group donation record was $400,320
• Over 10,000 redditors donated
• 189,000 students were reached
• The average contribution was $48.98
• The average daily total was $10,420.87

Thanks to everyone who gave, and to everyone who promoted the campaign, be it on a blog, Facebook page, or internationally-syndicated cable television show.


Friday Events

Team Reddit will be going to Buffalo Billiards for the Secret Santa meetup.

For other Friday events, see this thread.


Saturday Events

The weather report is looking great. A light jacket and your reddit t-shirt should be the perfect attire.

DonorsChoose is going to have a tent at the rally, and has generously given something back to the reddit community: territory. They've invited the reddit admins to hang out there and use it as our home base, and we intend to take them up on the offer. Come on by and say hello, sign jedberg's chest, and, while supplies last, pick up a special gift we're going to be handing out to redditors.

The spot in question is where 7th Street NW intersects the mall, between Madison and Jefferson Drives. The approximate GPS coordinates are (38.890, -77.022). It'll be one of only two giant 20x20 tents in sight, so we'll hopefully be hard to miss.

Redditor chop51 has written up a nice cheatsheet of public transit information and rules about what you can and cannot bring.

After the rally, we'd like it very much if reddit stuck around and helped clean up. If you bring a garbage bag, you can also sit on it during the rally to keep your butt from getting dirty.

Once that's done, we're going to be heading over to the official reddit afterparty with about 2500 of our closest friends. Since that's a few thousand more than the place can hold, there are a slew of spillover venues; see the preceding link for details. One of note is Local 16, which is giving out Peroni and Pizza on a free or pay-what-you-want basis, with all proceeds going to DonorsChoose. Details here.

For other Saturday events in DC, see this thread.

To see if there's a satellite rally near you, see this thread.


One last tip for iPhone users

The makers of the iPhone QR code app quiQR have made it free (instead of $1.99) from now until the rally. It's really fast and tolerant of things like blur and shadows, and I recommend redditors take advantage of this deal.