Subject: Avalanche Center Update - Oct 30 NEW - Enter our ongoing raffle - free Fall Fundraising Auction New Items in the Avalanche Store Misc news on the website Volunteer Can you help promote the CSAC by distributing some paper bookmarks to your local club(s), retail shop(s) and other places? The site will only help people if they know about it and use it! If you can do this send us an e-mail at bookmarks@csac.org -- NEW - Enter our ongoing free raffle -- Our latest new feature is a free online raffle. Right now we are testing this out by drawing for a CSAC t-shirt every 25 entries. As the season progresses we plan to hold drawings for other prizes, including avalanche beacons. For every drawing from all entries we will hold a second drawing from those who are project contributors. The odds on this second drawing will probably be significantly better, so this is one more incentive to support our avalanche safety efforts financially. (Benefits other than bulletin mailing lists are for contributors of a mere $15 or more. Mail lists for advisories are available to contributors of any amount.) For a description of how the raffle works see: http://www.avalanche-center.org/Other/raffle.html The entry link will appear on certain selected pages and will show up on those pages on certain page views, not every time. HINT - Right now the link is on several of the main section pages, towards the top but below the sponsor graphics and text banner. -- Fall Fundraising Auction -- We are now putting a lot of our time and effort into preparing to hold our third annual fundraising auction, online of course. The first two have been popular and successful and we hope to build on that this season. A few companies have already contributed auction items. You can see what we have lined up as we receive things, go to the auction page at http://www.avalanche-center.org/auction/ There was recently a big article in Outdoor Retailer magazine about how industry is mobilizing to support and promote avalanche safety. We've just mailed a flyer to over 400 companies, and we'll do a second fax to these companies prior to the auction opening. So now we'll see who in the industry is willing to offer some support to this cause. Please take note of who does offer real support and not just rhetoric. We would like to seek contributions of items from retailers also, but there are too many of them for us to pursue. Our one effort at faxing 600+ retailers attracted little interest. If you would like to help out the auction and the project you can suggest to your local retailer that they donate some of last years new items still in their inventory to us. We have charity status and they should be able to benefit from doing this. -- New Store Items -- The other night we finished incorporating most of the new products our store manager, Jeff, lined up for this season. Our list is getting quite long now, and the vast majority of avalanche safety equipment available can be purchased through our store. All proceeds go back into running the project, so your purchases through us help promote avalanche safety. You can also place a single order for a collection of items from different manufacturers and avoid looking around for who carries what lines. Look for the "New" graphic by items most recently added. We have also entered into a couple agreements to help support our work. One is a "mall" run by MrGoodbucks.com, which you can get to from a permanent link near the top of our store page or a banner which rotates with sponsor logos. When you go to an online merchant via a link in our "mall" we get a percentage of what you spend. Your cost is no more than it would be otherwise (sale prices still return a percentage to us!). So some of the money you were going to spend anyway can be put into avalanche safety and education. Consider this when you shop online. There is also a link on the store page to Shawn Emery's skiing videos. These are not sold directly through our store, but the proceeds from online sales of these are contributed to us by Shawn. His videos are "Skiing the Ring of Fire" and a "Skiing History of Utah". We have a "volume" plan for t-shirts this season. It is designed for retailers but we'll give the same low price to anyone wishing to purchase 12 or more, whether it is to resell them or it is for a group of friends. Follow the "Retailers" link on our main store page. -- Misc news on the website -- Fall info - We've had a couple of files on spring avalanche hazards for a while. Now we have one on fall and early winter hazards. See the Education section. Bulletins, lists - We've run a test message through almost all lists now to see that all is working well and to introduce the 2000-2001 season. If you would like to sign up to receive any of North Americas bulletins or those for Switzerland automatically by e-mail just go to our mail lists page: http://www.avalanche-center.org/Bulletins/maillists.html Clean-up from server move We moved to a new server environment over the summer. This was lot of work, which was why we had not done it sooner. Everything is working out pretty well and we are happy with the transition so far, although we are still finding a few relatively obscure bugs now and then. Please report any problems you encounter! -- Volunteer -- We have had interest in volunteering in the past, and this year we hope to be able to mobilize volunteer efforts better. There are small things that would help cut down on loose ends on the site which can be done in a couple hours a week. People who have specialized skills or backgrounds and wish to help out are welcome too, contact us about what you are interested in doing. While we have some things we would like to get done we are always interested in new ideas as well. Contact our new volunteer coordinator at rob@csac.org Work on the project continues and we hope to have more new things to announce before too long. We will probably send another update in a few weeks as the auction gets started. -- *********************************************************** Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center (CSAC) 131 NW 4th St Suite 397, Corvallis OR 97330 #343 - 3495 Cambie St, Vancouver BC V5Z 4R3 (877) 457-0913 (530) 509-7840 Fax http://www.csac.org snow@csac.org ***********************************************************