The Virlanie Foundation has rejected our fundraiser😓

Hey everyone! As you may recall I recently got 3D body scanned. On January 8th, after the body scan was done, I contacted Virlanie- a charity in the Philippines. I introduced myself, gave a link to my Wikipedia page so they would understand what I was about, explained that I wanted to sell a 3D model to raise money for their charity, and gave them a link to the Instagram page that contained photos of the scanning process and renders of the final 3D model. They responded immediately, thanked me and provided a PayPal address for me to send the proceeds from the sale of the 3D model to. I announced the model to my followers, and quite a lot of you bought one- which was great. Thank you so much.

00:56 - Virlanie then followed up on January 20th with a request, I fill in their online fundraising form. Not a problem, I immediately submitted the form as requested, with a link to the fundraiser and also replied via email, letting them know the funds were on their way. Over three thousand dollars was sent in my name, and accepted, with no issue. A short while after that I became aware that people were saying something shady was going on. As it turns out, Virlanie was sending this email out, claiming I was proceeding without their knowledge or consent, and they had no way of getting in touch with me.

01:51 - I immediately froze sales of the model and contacted Virlanie to find out what that was all about. They informed me they’re rejecting the three thousand dollars raised so far in order to, “protect the image of both the organization and the children”. Look, some people are uncomfortable with me. I get it. This is zero issues these days- I move on and work with people who are comfortable with me. I have no issue with a charity declining a donation.

02:25 - If Manila street kids are doing so well you can afford to take food off their plates because a girl in a bikini offends you, that’s on you and up to your organization. Just say so when I contact you, I’ll shake my head and move on to the next charity on the list. If you miss the first email from me, hey- no problem, these things happen, tell me it’s unwelcome when you email me again, or when I submit the form you ask for, or when you accept money sent in my name with a reply email address. What you don’t do is start emailing the public implying I’m up to something shady. Who is going to risk donating to an organization that weeks later might go and stab them in the back like that? It’s horribly unprofessional to accept the funds then accuse a donor of misconduct when they asked permission first, disclosed everything, and followed the organization’s procedures every step of the way.

03:33 - No matter how much who I am offends someone if I treat them in an ethical, professional way, they can do the same for me. So Virlanie is returning the funds. I’m not going to get into that, I have many Filipino friends and online followers. The Philippines is a wonderful country, and one of deep faith- and I think it’s very important to respect the faith of others. That’s why I choose a secular charity and was completely transparent in advance to avoid this problem. But everyone has a right to their beliefs.

04:14 - I’m not going to push people from another culture to accept something that’s unwanted. My problem now is, what to do with the funds. There are a lot of very worthy causes, but people donated for a very specific cause. Now that Virlanie has made these allegations, if I redirect those funds and it’s not an exact one to one match to what I said that money would be used for, well, that’s a fraud. That’s something that can be used to undermine any charitable work I do in the future.

04:52 - I’ve got enough problems without that sort of accusation. So I’m working with MyMiniFactory to refund everyone’s purchase price. It may be minus a little bit because of the PayPal fees. If that’s a problem let me know and I’ll make up the difference out of my own pocket. I’m very sorry about this, I really do my best to be respectful of everyone’s beliefs and not intrude where I’m not welcome, but I really was blindsided this time.

05:27 - Please give MyMiniFactory and I, a little time- we have to manually process almost 300 refunds. A big thanks to MyMiniFactory for their patience with all of this. As soon as I find a new charity willing to accept the funds, and I am sure nothing like this will reoccur, the model will go back on sale. Again, very, very sorry for all this- I’m just trying to do the right thing. .