As we said in our closing message at the end of this year’s auction, 2020 has been a year of tremendous change—change that we had no control over and change that we made with our own hands. Many times this year—and the past four years under the Trump administration for those of us in the U.S.—we’ve felt helpless in the face of terrible upheaval. But rather than forcing us to give up, the calamities we’ve witnessed and experienced galvanized us. We’ve seen people volunteer to drop off groceries for immunocompromised neighbors during the pandemic. We’ve seen people donate generously during the worst global economic crisis in modern history. We’ve seen people become more politically active, taking to the streets to protest and voting in record numbers like they are tonight.
And we’ve seen that same passion, that same desire to make change and help people, fuel all the MTH participants this year.
We weren’t sure what the turnout would be like. Would people have the time or energy to sign up as creators? Would people be willing to donate, and would they have the means to do so?
Our worries proved to be baseless.
This year, 273 “Marvel”-ous creators came forward to offer 416 auctions.
And this year, we raised…
That’s just over $11,000 more than the MTH 2019 total. 😮💖🎉
We’re going to channel Beast here and exclaim, “Oh my stars and garters!”
The race started off with a bang, with bids racking up quickly on the first day. Even so, we were shocked when we matched last year’s total, which we weren’t sure we could do ($27,193.91 was beyond our wildest expectations), and then just ran right past it before the auction even ended!
It’s been an incredible journey, with the mod chat pinging at all hours with excited gifs, effusive heart emojis, and inarticulate keyboard smashes as we expressed our love for the wonderful people in our fandom. It’s been very hard not blurting out the milestones as we reached them when we desperately wanted to share these amazing results with you all.
Creators, we couldn’t have started this auction without you. We loved seeing so many veteran creators sign up again and were pleasantly surprised by how many new faces showed up to the party.
Bidders, as crazy as it sounds, most donations were small ones (including some of those crazily high winning bids—several were the result of people pooling their five dollars together!). This has been consistently the case since MTH began. It just goes to show how much of an impact you can have when you’re part of something bigger than yourself. Each donation has a ripple effect, and enough ripples can cause a wave. You matter, and you can make a difference.
We also owe our success to our amazing signal boosters. There can’t be an auction without any participants, so to every fandom community Tumblr that agreed to reblog our posts, every Discord server mod who let us post announcements, and every person who shared our posts and encouraged their fandom friends to sign up and/or bid, thank you so much! Together, we reached hundreds of fantastic creators and bidders from all corners of the Marvel fandom, many of whom we didn’t know and some who were hearing about us for the first time.
Thank you all. We’re so touched by the massive number of people who donated above and beyond their pledged amount, creators who took on multiple auctions and offered multiple winner slots, and bidders who accepted their second-place wins with such eagerness! We also had people make donations in the spirit of MTH even though they didn’t win an auction, which was beyond generous.
We’ve already seen how our donations are changing the world for the better. To name a few examples:
Partners In Health is on the ground testing, providing care, assisting local government response, and mobilizing community health workers in countries where the mortality rate is expected to be much more severe than those with well-resourced health systems
The Southern Poverty Law Center raised $10 million to fight voter suppression in the South, with some great successes in Florida
World Central Kitchen has purchased over 10 million meals from small, independent restaurants in 400 cities, putting $105 million and counting directly back into the economy and helping both struggling businesses and people who need food the most during the pandemic
We’re sure that in the months and years to come, we’ll see even more wonderful results.
In addition to the astounding amount of money we were able to raise for charity, MTH was successful in other ways. We strove to be as inclusive as possible, determined to make this event a fandom-wide effort. Considering that the auctions covered over 369 unique platonic and romantic relationships (if we include “all ships/gen”-inclusive relationships, this number is even higher) across 31 universes within the Marvel multiverse, we can safely say that we accomplished our goal.
This spirit of inclusion also applies to our auctions and charities. Every one of 416 auctions was bid on, and every one of our 30 supported charities received donations. We’re in awe of your commitment to supporting all our creators and charities and thrilled that you spread all the love around, bidders!
Here’s our breakdown of the donations (click to enlarge the image and hover to see the donation amount per charity):
We’ve also listed the amount raised per charity on our 2020 auction results page.
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for helping us turn our third Marvel Trumps Hate auction into such a fantastic experience. We cherish every single message of love and support that we received and continue to receive on our Discord server and through DMs, Tumblr messages, emails, tweets, etc. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!
To remember or learn why we created this auction in the first place, please check out our 2018 “thank you” post to all of our creators, bidders, signal boosters, and supporters.
If you’d like to stay updated on all of the 2020 Marvel Trumps Hate fills, follow us and/or check out the “mth 2020” tag on our Tumblr. You’ll also be able to find works posted on AO3 in our Marvel Trumps Hate 2020 collection and links to fills in our Discord server, which you can join to brainstorm prompts, chat about fills, and find out about other fandom events.
Thank you once again to everyone who volunteered their services, time, money, and platforms to spread the word. Though we may sometimes wonder how much of a difference we can make, it’s moments like this that show that every bit helps, no matter the size of our contribution. With that in mind, we’d like everyone to keep the following quote close to their hearts as we move forward and find ways to make the world a better place, to remember these words when they’re feeling lost or small.
Purpose is the essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill.“
— Chadwick Boseman
Think about your purpose. Think about what you can do while you’re here. Know that you matter.
And with that, MTH 2020 has officially come to a close. We’re so beyond grateful to you all and can’t wait to see all of your fanworks over the coming year!
Lots of love and gratitude,
Your 2020 MTH mods
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
stormborns
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
prguitarman
