Kicking off the FundMySmile fundraiser!

Recently, I've started to have a hole in one of my molar teeth. I've looked into how much it would cost to get it fixed, and it's a significant amount of money. So two days ago, I made this post on Facebook:

In just under 48 hours, I've gotten a few monetary gifts!

First of all, thank you to everyone who's gifted money to my PayPal account so far! You guys are fantastic! I really do appreciate it so much, I'm smiling already, and I haven't even seen the dentist :D

I was pretty happy with this idea, and, frankly, proud of myself for doing it (even though crowdfunding isn't really a new idea). I even met some tourists on the tram and gave them a link to my fundraiser and explained that it's for fixing my teeth. But then I spoke to some friends about it, and they told me that people will be more likely to contribute if they feel like they get something out of it.

I thought about that for a bit, and now I just finished reading the Wikipedia article about crowdfunding. In the majority of cases, it's a win-win situation. In this scenario, however, where I'm doing this fundraising for the improvement of my own teeth, the winner is mostly just me. So I thought, how can I make my friends who contribute winners as well?

At first I told myself I'd just smile more at them. But I already smile a lot as it is. Maybe I'd only smile at people who contributed to the fundraiser, and stop smiling to everyone else. Yeah! That's it; win-win! But what about all those people who I don't see very often? Well, I'd just have to post more selfies with me smiling and showing off the beautiful teeth they help put in my mouth. But I'd have to use the privacy options and filters on Facebook so only my friends who paid up get to see me smile.

It didn't take me long to realize that this idea wasn't really going to cut it. After little more than an hour of consideration, I'd decided that if I made this the "benefit" that people get out of contributing to the cause, a lot of people just wouldn't be interested. Plus, all that selfie posting would just be misconstrued as vain and narcissistic. Which I definitely am not, obviously.

So I sat and thought about a way to make the crowdfunding of my dentist trips be a win-win for everyone, so it's not just me asking for money on Facebook. That was totally my original plan, which I'm fine with. But I thought that a win-win would be so much more fun!

Sitting and thinking, of course, is sometimes fruitful. Here's what I came up with: First, the fundraiser has to have a clear goal. So far I've only vaguely described what I want to go to the dentist for. You guys should know where your money is going. With the money you contribute to the fundraiser, I will get this hole in my tooth filled with an inlay (that shit's expensive, and not covered by social security), get braces (those are even more expensive. And not covered either), and once they're all straightened out, get them whitened.

There, that's the main objective of the fundraiser. Now that that's clearly established, I have to find out the target funds to be raised. I will go and find out from the dentist how much all of that will cost, and whatever that amount is, will be the amount when the fundraising should stop.

Then, I use that money to go get all those things done to my teeth that I mentioned above. So that's one win so far. For me. But for all you lovely contributors, there's a lot of win too! Let's go through them now: First off all, I'm pretty sure the complimentary health insurance I have should cover like, 80% of the dentist fees. I won't keep that money. Instead, I'll use it to spend time with all of you who contributed.

Not everyone all at once together, because the logistics of that would be a nightmare.Plus, not all of you want to be friends with each other. Heaven forbid. But perhaps in groups, and with some of you, individually ;) You see, we could use that money to do fun stuff, like lunches at restaurants, or trips to places. Or I might buy you a present or something. I don't know the details yet. I'm not even sure how much money we're talking about here. It's in the thousands of euros though. Toothcare ain't cheap. The red squiggly lines are telling me that "toothcare" is not a real word. Oh yes, it's called dental care. It's expensive.

I'll find out exactly how much all this is; a few friends have told me that filling the hole in my tooth for example, should cost around 400 - 500 euros, if I choose to get inlays instead of a crown. They'll scan my tooth, and then 3D-print a piece that will exactly fit the hole in my tooth ever so precisely and they stick it in there. Frikkin technology, right there. But it's expensive.

Once I've got the numbers figured out, I'll keep all of you posted. And that's the other win you get! All the updates about my oral situation. I'll tell all of you about all the various things the dentist will be doing in my mouth, in mouth watering detail. Literally mouth watering, because my mouth would probably fill up with saliva while it's all agape and being prodded with the dentist's tool.

See, you're having fun reading about it already. Imagine updates like that, but on a semi-regular basis. I'll give updates about how the braces feel, and all the nonsense that goes along with having them in your mouth for 18 months. That's a long time. You could have like, at least two babies in that time. If you had twins, you could have like, three or four. And if you were a guy, well, you could have as many as you want!

But I digress. The point is, you should contribute to the fundraiser so I can get all these things done and tell you all about it, in interesting ways. I'll write, and post pictures, and make videos.

See, so go now. click this link and help me fix my teeth :)