It’s my favorite time of the year: Blogathon!

Blogathon is a blogging marathon for charity where I make a new post every 30 minutes for 24 hours, with no pre-writing or autoposting allowed. Just like someone can pledge money to support someone running in a marathon, people can pledge to support a caffeinated, deliriously sleep deprived, and (hopefully) entertaining blogger. Like the last three years, I’m raising money for the Secular Student Alliance. But this year there’s a twist:

I’m not alone.

This year Blogathon will include 18 other bloggers who have pledged to devote their time going just as crazy as I am. From June 9^th to June 16^th, at least one blogger will spend their day furiously typing away. Instead of me running this blogging marathon on my own, it’s a relay race! We’ll be passing the e-baton, or something. I don’t run, so these analogies are hard. The current schedule is here, including bloggers like Greta Christina, Dale McGowan, JT Eberhard, Ian Cromwell, Natalie Reed, Ed Brayton, and more! I’ll be blogging from 6am PST June 16th to 6am June 17th.

Even more exciting, Blogathon is the main player in of SSAweek, a larger campaign to fundraise for the SSA. The goal of SSA week is to raise $100,000 to support the Secular Student Alliance.

Unholy crap.

So why is this fundraising all for the SSA? As a founder of an SSA affiliate and current Vice Chair of the Board of Directors, I’ve seen that amazing work first hand. The SSA provides speakers or other funding for groups that are organizing events, and has successfully combated administrators who illegally stonewall high school students from starting SSA affiliates. But most importantly to me personally, our affiliates create a community that many non-theistic students lack – especially if they’re from religious households or areas. My group at Purdue kept me sane when faced with pervasive religious privilege and anti-atheist discrimination, and many members are now my closest friends.

That’s where you come in. In order to keep supporting these student leaders (and to keep outpacing groups like Campus Crusade for Christ), we all need to help out. To support Blogathon, you can donate here using the SSAweek widget (which will be on FtB before Blogathon starts). Every little bit helps. Forgo a fancy coffee or beer and pitch in 5 bucks. The SSA current has a $250,000 matching offer going on, so whatever fundraising Blogathon can accomplish will be effectively doubled. I can’t even explain how freaking excited that makes me – and you all know it takes a lot to leave me speechless.

I’ll even make a special offer. The top ten donors who donate before June 15th will get to choose a topic for me to write about. If you want your topic to be in the running, donate and email me (blaghagblog at gmail dot com) a topic. Last year the lowest donations that got to choose a topic were $100, just as a reference point.

Even if you can’t donate, you can still show your support. Share the news about Blogathon and SSAweek everywhere you can – facebook, twitter, semaphore – whatever. Email me or comment here with blogging ideas. Or at the very least, keep me company during the blogathon! It gets lonely when it’s 5am and I’m blogging into the void.

I’m super excited for this upcoming week, and I hope you are too! Let the sleep deprivation-fueled entertainment begin :)