TLDR: We’re making changes to the leadership structure of Desert Bus to enable us to potentially do new & exciting things in the future. We don’t have anything to announce yet and there are no big changes to the event for 2023. Also some folks are changing hats & Serge is officially retiring. Desert Bus rolls on!

Alright friends, Andrew here. Y’all still with me? Interested in hearing all of The Deets? Great, because I am writing to you as I drift through a sea of neon light halfway around the world and I have a hilarious amount of text to share with you on behalf of the DB Organizing Committee. We’ve been working extra-hard this year and we’re happy to be able to start sharing a glimpse of where we’re at with everyone; Earlier this year, the OC went on a pair of two-day working retreats in order to figure out ‘what’s next?’ for us as an organization. So, let’s dive into that!

The First Summit

Over the course of one weekend in February, all thirteen of us got together in Victoria to start intentionally figuring out what the future of DB could be. Desert Bus itself often operates on a system of ‘same as last year, but better!’, so we wanted to take a longer view and tackle harder questions like ‘what will Desert Bus look like in five years?’ and ‘what else could we do as part of Desert Bus?’. We wanted to give real thought to what we thought could be great for our community, what could be great for Child’s Play, and what could be great for ourselves.

As Desert Bus rapidly approaches the legal voting age, it felt appropriate for each of us to evaluate our own relationship with the event too. We’re all in very different places in our lives from when we originally started (or joined) Desert Bus, and so is our audience! For some of you 2022 was your first ride on the bus, but there are so many of you in our community who have been our friends for nearly two decades now.

We decided to have an enormous greenfield brainstorming session together, thinking of everything we could possibly do; No dream too big, no rule too sacred. Absolutely anything and everything was on the table. As we started to move from idea generation into talking through potential logistics and what folks were excited about, we started to realize that the existing leadership structure for the event was designed for a committee to lead a single recurring project and didn’t adapt well to some of our ideas: How could new projects take shape? How could we better interact with our external partners? How could we make space for more volunteer participation and nurture future leadership?

So, we pivoted towards rethinking our leadership structure and how it could enable new possibilities.

Leadership Structure

In order to build the future we want, here’s what we’ve come up with: What has been traditionally known as ‘The Desert Bus Organizing Committee” has now become the overall Desert Bus For Hope Society Board, who will oversee & advise on all things Desert Bus. In recent years, we established ourselves as a non-profit arts society in British Columbia and following a more formal structure has proven beneficial to us, and we’re continuing to follow that model. While some of us do have more official ‘titles’ in this structure, we are continuing to lead things forward as a collective. We’ve always worked great together in a flat structure at the highest level and we’ll be continuing to lead with that for all decisions we make. We just need to designate folks to chair meetings, take notes, or do money things as needed. Heck, the new titles can’t be that serious; I won my title from James in a game of Rock Paper Scissors.

Under the umbrella of this overall Society Board, we now have working groups to manage individual projects. So we’ve taken some of the folks who were previously on ‘the OC’ and established the Desert Bus Prime Working Group. They’re tasked with focusing on the Desert Bus For Hope event we all currently know & love. We’ve slimmed the group down a bit to keep things simple, to help folks explore new ideas, and to give folks space to contribute at their level of availability. This was also where we each asked ourselves where we wanted to be and what we wanted to do. From the existing thirteen members of the organizing committee, some of us are in both groups, some are in new groups (more on that later), some are moving to be solely part of the society board, and one of us has taken this opportunity to retire.

As some of you may have seen earlier this summer, our own beloved “nomordinator” Serge Yager has decided to step down as an organizer and take this year off. It is impossible for me to overstate Serge’s many contributions to the event as an organizer for over 11 years, helping keep us fed, helping keep us organized, leading our many site managers & volunteers, and providing so much joy as an entertainment volunteer on Dawn Guard. Each and every one of us who’ve worked alongside him have so much love for Serge and we can’t wait to see what he’ll be working on next!

For the remaining folks in the Desert Bus Prime Working Group, we’ve had a few changes there too:

• Graham, Ian, & Paul will be less active here so they can focus on leading at the Society Board level
• With Serge retiring, James will be taking over as our new Logistics Coordinator, sharing more responsibilities with our site managers Sarah, Brett, & Paxton.
• Matt will be moving into a new role as our Entertainment Coordinator, helping manage our entertainment volunteers, our stage friends, and assisting the shifts in sharing more ideas, talent, & tech with each other
• Kathleen will be moving to take on the Guest Coordinator role, taking over from Matt
• Ashton, Beej, Erika, Fugi, Andrew, & Johnny will all continue to lead the same departments they have in previous years
• Well, technically Johnny and Andrew traded departments as a goof, but it wasn’t as funny as they thought it was, so everyone else made them trade back

The Second Summit

With an idea for our new leadership structure sketched out, we took time before the second summit to think it all through on our own and evaluate our many ideas with the new structure in mind. Between taking the time to do that and the general difficulties involved in scheduling anything with twelve busy adults, it was suddenly July when we met in Nanaimo for our second summit. We reviewed our previous ideas, added some new ones, checked in with each other about our new roles, and formally adopted this new model to move Desert Bus forward. With our leadership structure problem solved, we focused in deep on what new possibilities the future of Desert Bus could hold.

Additional Working Groups

For our first new working group, we will be establishing a Resource Sharing Working Group under the leadership of Graham Stark to look into ways we can share our knowledge & tools with other folks outside of our organization. As the world's longest running internet-based fundraiser, we have a lot of experience in this area that we’ve gained over the years. This group will primarily be looking to use our skills, our reach, and our knowledge to help marginalized folks in either establishing or improving their own charity fundraisers.

We’ve been working hard to prioritize diversity & inclusion within our event over the last few years, and this is a way we can also prioritize those values externally to help uplift other groups. While it hasn’t been previously formalized, this is an idea we’ve been talking about for years. We had to put it on the backburner a bit while we adapted our own event for the global pandemic, but now that we’ve got a handle on things we’re very excited to get back to moving this project forward.

Our last two working groups come with an important disclaimer: These two ideas are in the earliest of stages, exploratory work on them won’t even really start until 2024, and even then these things may never happen. We are excited though and we want to look into what could be possible, and what we would want to do together.

We will be putting together a Virtual Event Working Group under James’ leadership to explore the idea of doing a second, smaller & fully online, event that we would run at a different time in the calendar year. We’ll also be establishing a Live Event Working Group under my (Andrew’s) leadership, to explore  ideas around having more of a Desert Bus presence at conventions, as well as, potentially, even a future Desert Bus event we'd run with a live audience in attendance.

These aren’t the only working groups we’re looking into, but they are the three we're ready to share at this time and the three that we’re the most excited about. We may eventually decide to do neither of those two new ones, for any number of reasons, but right now we absolutely want to explore what possibilities those ideas might hold.

A big reason we were in favour of this new working group focused structure was that it felt like a way for more of our existing internal volunteers to become a bigger part of Desert Bus as well, if they have the interest & capacity. As these groups get established, those volunteers will be stepping into bigger roles in helping make our future ideas a reality. We want a clearer path for folks who, like myself & Serge, once started out as volunteers in some small capacity many years ago and now want to do more. To help make this weird & magical little cavalcade of generosity become something ever greater, as we continue to strive to help those in need.

What’s Next?

So, this has been a lot of words to put together and then end with ‘To Be Continued…’, but we do kinda have to end it that way because we’re only just getting started! For now, our focus is on our upcoming event in just a few short weeks (!), but for 2024 & beyond we here at Desert Bus For Hope are hoping to do even more and build on what we’ve all created so far together.

With all this in mind, we can’t wait to see you in chat for Desert Bus For Hope 2023, starting Saturday November 11th, 2023 at 2PM Pacific Time. On behalf of the new Desert Bus For Hope Society Board, I want to thank each and every one of you for your endless love and support. The spirit and generosity of our incredible community is what inspires us to reach ever higher and dream ever brighter than we thought possible.

As always and for ever,

For The Children.

Every year there are many amazing crafters that take part in the Craft-Along. Many return year after year but there are also new crafters every single year, and it is always a delight to see them bring their own unique crafts to Desert Bus.

This year, we wanted to highlight a couple of the newer crafters, and to show off the breadth of crafts that people make each year. Our hope is that these posts inspire people who might be on the fence about submitting an idea to take the plunge.

The second crafter we wanted to highlight is Tess LeNoir. DB2022 was Tess’s second year contributing to the Craft-Along. Their craft for DB2021 was a triptych of Zagreus, Thanatos, and Megara from the game Hades. These drawings were a combination of hand drawn and inked line art, embellished with letterpress titles and patterns.

Their craft for 2022 was a custom deck of playing cards based on the game Inscryption. This functional 52 card deck was letterpress-printed from a combination of handset type with custom linoleum cut prints featuring beasts and characters from Inscryption.

Tess learned letterpress while working in her mother’s letterpress shop, and now runs her own printmaking and letterpress business. We are delighted and flattered that she has chosen to share this family trade with Desert Bus.

You can find more of their work on their Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, and their Etsy store.

We accept crafts in a wide variety of mediums, so if you are thinking of submitting an idea but don’t feel like it fits, go ahead and submit anyways! Your idea might resonate with us, the way Tess’s crafts did. Our desire is for the Craft-Along to be a diverse showcase of the amazing skills of our audience. And all of the money raised goes directly to Child’s Play Charity to help children through difficult times.

There are still nearly 36 hours left to submit your ideas for the 2023 Craft-Along. Head on over here to submit your ideas to us before the end of Sunday, May 28th (that's tomorrow!).

-- Erika

Every year there are many amazing crafters that take part in the Craft-Along. Many return year after year but there are also new crafters every single year, and it is always a delight to see them bring their own unique crafts to Desert Bus.

This year, we wanted to highlight a couple of the newer crafters, and to show off the breadth of crafts that people make each year. Our hope is that these posts inspire people who might be on the fence about submitting an idea to take the plunge.

Our first creator that we wanted to highlight is Levi! Levi is a transmasc crafter from Mohkinstis (AKA Calgary, Alberta), and even though he has watched Desert Bus since 2009, DB2022 was his first year participating in the Craft-Along. He originally took up beading in 2021 as a way to connect with his Métis heritage & thought that he could potentially bring that skill to the table for DB.

His idea was for a beaded pendant and earrings set inspired by Omega Shift. It incorporates elements of the four shift banners, including the Z of Zeta, Alpha Flight’s wings, the rising sun of Dawnguard and the waning moon of Night Watch. All of this done in incredibly small and delicate bead work.

We were delighted to accept this prize, as this kind of bead work is not something we see very often during the Craft-Along. The pendant and earrings both look amazing and we are incredibly flattered that Levi chose to share his expertise with us and with all of you!

If you want to see more of Levi’s work you can check out his Instagram.

We do accept crafts in a wide variety of mediums, so if you’re thinking of submitting an idea but don’t feel like it fits, go ahead and submit anyways! Your idea might resonate with us, the way Levi’s craft did. Our desire is for the Craft-Along to be a diverse showcase of the amazing skills of our audience. And all of the money raised goes directly to Child’s Play Charity to help children through difficult times.

There are still a few days left to submit your ideas for the 2023 Craft-Along. Head on over here to submit your ideas to us before the end of Sunday, May 28th.

-- Erika

Update: It's Been....

The Desert Bus For Hope 2023 Craft-Along is now open & accepting submissions until 11:59pm Pacific on Sunday May 28th!

Hello, Crafters!

This is Erika, your intrepid Prize Coordinator. We know many of you are eagerly anticipating the start of this year’s Craft-Along. We’re pleased to let you know that submissions for the 2023 Craft-Along will begin May 8, 2023 at 10:00am Pacific. The submission form will be open for three weeks and closes at 11:59pm Pacific on May 28. So make sure you have your ideas ready to go. I’m so excited to see what you all have planned for this year. Seeing all of the amazing crafts that you lovingly create and then generously donate is one of the highlights of my year.

If you are a newcomer to Desert Bus for Hope and don’t know what the Craft-Along is, or perhaps you have watched in previous years and want to know how you can contribute your own awesome crafts to Desert Bus, then read on!

About half of the prizes we auction and giveaway each year to raise money for Child’s Play Charity are created by our amazing audience. Every year we host the Craft-Along, a chance for viewers to make an awesome, one-of-a-kind, handmade prize to be donated to Desert Bus. We use that prize in either a giveaway or an auction to raise money, all of which goes directly to Child’s Play Charity.

If you wish to participate there will be a submission form to fill out. You will give us a little bit of info about yourself, including your experiences as a crafter and examples of your work, along with an idea of a prize you would like to make for the Craft-Along. It does not have to be something that exists now, but it does need to be something that can be completed over the summer. Once the submission period is over I will review all of the submissions and select the prizes that I would like to have as prizes for Desert Bus 2023. You will be notified about a week after the submission deadline if your prize has been accepted or not.

If your prize was accepted, after you have finished making it and completed some administrative work (taking photos and writing a description) you will mail the prize to us. All of the prizes have to be in our hands by September 30, 2023, so plan the scope of your prize accordingly. Make sure to allow for shipping time, especially if you live outside North America!

If this is your first time with the Craft-Along we have a few tips and suggestions for making a great submission. The better your submission, the more likely it is to be accepted. Here are some of the things we look for when evaluating a submission:

• Have a single clear and concise idea for what you want to make. Do not suggest multiple ideas or themes for the item. Just settle on one idea and commit to it!
• Include photos of your previous work! This is super helpful if you have participated in previous years as it speeds up the review process but it is critical if this is your first time! Your proposal will not be accepted if you are a first time crafter and do not include photos of your previous work. We have to see what you can do!
• Plan for shipping. Think about the size, weight, and fragility of your prize. Your prize may be shipped internationally twice so take that into account. Items should ship in a package that is under 1m in length and weighs less than 15kg. They must also be able to stand up to possible rough handling as the postal system is not always gentle on packages!

Those are some of the key points you should think about as you are getting your submission ready. Also be aware that we cannot accept all of the submissions each year. We can only handle a limited number of prizes, and as a result we have to turn down some wonderful ideas from talented crafters. But even if you are not accepted this year you are always free to submit ideas for next year!

We are very excited to see all of the wonderful ideas you have in store for us. Check back here on May 8 to get your submission in!

Chat, you did this. No really, YOU did this! By donating, watching, and spreading the word, you are the reason we are able to do this year, after year, after year. Without your amazing generosity, we wouldn't be able to keep this bus on the road. We really can't say enough, but what we can say is that this year...

WE RAISED $1,133,895!!!

We bussed for 166 hours!!!

We're all going to have a cathartic happy cry... I mean, clean the Moon Base, but it's okay. You'll see us next year. What exactly Desert Bus For Hope 2023 will look like, we have no clue. We likely won't until about half-way through DB 2023, to be honest. But we look forward to finding out right along with all of you!!

Even though the bus finally pulled into the garage, you can still relive your favorite Desert Bus moments on our youtube page, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram to keep up to date on what's happening during the year before we get back on the road!

Every year our amazing friend M Lunsford draws and continually updates the poster of all that year's goofs and other shenanigans. And just the same every year we do a live auction for the special, one time printing of the poster in EXTRA LARGE SIZE! Do not miss out on your chance to have the perfect Desert Bus 2022 keepsake.

To bid on this item, you'll need a Desert Bus for Hope donor account that is connected to your Twitch account. Once you have that, join us in Twitch chat to cast your bid on this one of a kind Desert Bus paraphernalia!

Emily's Desert Bus ugly sweater giveaway has come and gone! But that doesn't mean you will miss out on your chance to have one! If you're a knitter, or have a knitter friend, you'll want to read this blog for more information on how to get access to it!

Emily has told us that she will be making the pattern available AFTER the run. To get it, send an email to irreverentyarns@gmail.com  with the subject line "Desert Bus Sweater Pattern" and a screenshot of a donation to DB of at least $6. It'll be available in chest sizes of 35-52 inches, with the possibility of more sizes. She'll include a digital download code for when it goes up on Ravelry!

We hope you're ready...for the end. Of Desert Bus for Hope, anyway. Thank you all so much for helping us raise so much money for the children! These are your last chances at silent auctions, so get your bids in and keep an eye out for snipers. Both of these end at 10am PST!

First up is this adorable Desert Bus dice vault! Made mostly from maple hardwood, this bus is plated on the front with a bus-like facsimile made with walnut, maple, and cherry, and on the back with a slab of yellowheart for that desert flair. Just...don't look too closely at Creepy Doll. Harry doesn't like to be perceived.

And last but certainly not least, the Animal Crossing Frog-Themed Plant Stands! Nook's Cranny has an exclusive deal for one week only - SO exclusive that it's one-of-a-kind! This is your opportunity to bring home the Mush Log, the Lily-Pad Table, and the (all-powerful) Froggy Chair from Animal Crossing in real life with a single donation! (...donation!)

Yes that's right! Once again, thanks to the intense generousity of our loving and beautiful fans, we have hit 1 million raised in a single year!

How is this possible?! We are blown away by how much you do for us each and every year we run the Desert Bus! Thank you yet again, and we look forward to seeing you next year....FOR THE CHILDREN!

We gave the call and yet again, Heroic Replicas answers! They've made us this absolutely BEAUTIFUL Diamond Sword from Minecraft to giveaway, yes GIVEAWAY, to one of you lovely humans! This one is made from aluminum and acrylic gems. It's a little too large to be practical for killing creepers, but it is just the right size to make a fantastic display piece!

So make sure you're ready, paying attention to the stream, and have your calculators ready to donate in increments of...whatever money amount we choose later!! Seriously, you do NOT want to miss out on this!!! Heroic Replicas work is immaculate as always, and we love everything they do for us every year!