Hydrave Results - Good News!

Wow! Sorry it's been such a long time since we last updated our blog! We juniors are getting pounded with AP tests lately and we just barely have time to do anything else...

Anyways, we have some updates! More specifically, we got the numbers back for how much we raised at the Hydrave dance a couple weeks ago. An astounding $870!

But that's not all... World Concern, the organization we will be working with to drill the well, provided matching funds, so the total money raised is $1740!

We're super excited about the results of Hydrave. It's quite amazing how that much money was raised in a mere 2 hours. It also showcases Benelab's approach to philanthropy very well - to bring it to the norm and make it cool. We always like to innovate new, effective ways to raise money to donate to meaningful causes that we can easily relate to. We are happy Hydrave turned out super well!

HYDRAVE!!!

Last Friday Night, King's ASB and Benelab hosted the Hydrave dance, a rave to raise money to drill a freshwater well through World Concern. Benelab kindled the idea back in September last year, and it finally happened! Our chapel theme at King's HS this year is "hydrate", and the idea was that we would raise money to physically "hydrate" others in need of fresh water. Cool, eh? :)

Even more awesome, we were able to get funding from the school, so that 100% of ticket donations would go directly to the well! It costs around $3000 to drill a well, and World Concern has matching donors for our donation.

Anyways, the dance was awesome (pictures to come)! The event was completely student-run, which was super cool. Even the DJ was a King's student!

Even if we're short on the money collected, we'll go out of our way to make up the rest; all that matters is that this well is drilled. We'll keep updated on Hydrave, so stay tuned!

new Benelab.org - beneDROID

Did you see the big news yesterday? We released a press release stating we are ceasing operation of the current search engine Benelab.org and launching a new site. Here's part of the press release:

4/1/2012 - Edmonds, WA. Benelab announces plans to cease operation and development on its current search engine Benelab.org; private beta for new search engine beneDROID released. Benelab spokesman Jack Kim: "there comes a time when a web startup simply needs to step back and rethink its product. [we have] reached this stage today. beneDROID. Search and Destroy."


And he're a sneek preview of the new beneDROID site we're currently launching in private beta. Tell us 
what you think!

P.S. - happy april fool's!

Update on March's results, April's goal

March was a big month for us, having gone through a complete search function remodel. We're back with a stronger, more profitable search platform powered by Yahoo now, but we are still working out the little kinks to make Benelab.org the single best charity search engine in existance. We also went though a monthly charity change during the month, and which might have confused some users too. With crazy stuff like our remodel and monthly charity confusion, we have been unable to fully meet out goal of $400 in March. So we decided to carry over March's charity and goal into April. Hopefully this month we can finally reach the goal!

Radio Ad Recording!

We finally recorded our Spirit 105.3 radio ad today! It was really cool, we'd never been in a recording studio before! We were handed scripts to read off of, and Mckayla and Devin took turns recording. Once our producer adds the background music, our ads should go live within this weekend in Seattle and Austin, Texas! Thank you CRISTA for everything!

P.S. - Wonderful photos cred goes to Ms. Tonie Duchemin!

New March Cause of the Month

For the past two weeks we have been supporting the KONY 2012 movement to help put a stop child soldiers in Uganda. However, due to the large amount of controversy and opposition to the cause, we have changed our cause to World Concern with a goal of providing 5 children with hearing aids.

We are sorry for any confusion we may have caused, and please don't hesitate to contact us with any comments or concerns! Thanks!

Benelab on Spirit 105.3 FM

A couple weeks ago our VP of Marketing Mckayla and I had a meeting with the Marketing Director at CRISTA, our school's parent organization. CRISTA also happens to own one of the most listened radio stations in the Puget Sound, Spirit 105.3! McKayla thought they could help us out, and set up the meeting, where we showed them our video and introduced the whole idea. They loved it, so much so that they are willing to give us free ad space on the station as well as its sister stations! We got the script for the 30 second voice ad and we'll be recording next Monday, just in time for it to air starting next week!

If you're a resident in Puget Sound tune in to 105.3 to see if you can catch our ads!