How I accidentally made $100 million… for charity!

Born from a single text message to my radio show in 2008, Dry July stands on the brink of raising $100 million! This is how it happened.

The $100m SMS

May 2008 and I had just wrapped up a radio show on ABC Sydney with a discussion on the merits of abstaining from alcohol.

While collecting my paraphernalia I looked at the studio monitor and a listener’s text message flashed up.

“Hey Adam, 3 of us are having a Dry July this year to raise $3,000 for Prince of Wales Hospital."

If the message had arrived a minute earlier, I would have read it on air and moved on. If it had arrived 30 seconds later, I would have already exited the studio. But its arrival in that 90 second window, had a ripple effect no one could ever have predicted.

The first campaign

Always hungry for content, we contacted the text messenger, Phil, and chatted to him to close the next day’s show.

Phil had come through a minor cancer scare. To say thank you to Prince of Wales Hospital, he and two mates had modest ambitions to fundraise a few grand to purchase a new television for the oncology waiting room.

Suddenly the phone lines were running hot with people offering to sponsor the boys and even more people offering to give up the sauce and raise funds themselves. By a wonderful coincidence, Phil was … a web designer.

A very quickly created, very 2008, website was launched. Three friends aiming for $3,000 became over 1,000 people raising – wait for it - $257,000!

Suffice to say, it was a bloody nice television.

So now it’s a thing

In 2009 we decided to do it all again. We broadened the remit of Dry July to supporting a range of services that support adults on their cancer journey: WiFi for chemotherapy chairs; outdoor furniture for a relaxation garden; a wig library for patients made bald by therapy.

I challenged ABC’s drive show host Richard Glover, and across the month 4,000 Dry Julyers helped raise $1,300,000 for six cancer care programs.

A philanthropic beast had been born.

Operation $100 million

So as we kick off DryJuly25, here is how it stands…

The previous 17 campaigns have seen 347,800 participants support 80 cancer organisations to provide over 1,200 projects.

In total this initiative has raised $97,408,950, thanks to people like you and the amazing team at Dry July.

And as we approach this weekend we already have $2 million in the kitty. This means that sometime in the next week or so, someone will donate our $100 MILLIONTH DOLLAR!

Pretty good return for a single text message hey!

If you’d like help us hit the hundred, and help us improve adult cancer services across Australia, you can still sign up at dryjuly.com.

Or feel free to sling a few spare bucks towards my 2025 campaign - http://bit.ly/449ADDo

Cheers (or not as the case may for me until 1 August!)

-Adam S