RUSH: Folks, despite a website crash at the end of the program on Friday — and by the way, Koko, our webmaster was really offended on Friday when I intimated that the website that crashed was ours, and it wasn’t ours. Our site does not crash. We have a server farm that can handle any amount of traffic. What crashed was the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society server. Our site linked to theirs and that’s where you make the online donations. At any rate, they got it back up and running, but despite that little crash at the end of the program on Friday (that happened about a quarter of three with 15 minutes left), you all persevered and beat last year’s total.
As soon as we got off the air on Friday, as soon as we finished, I got a flash note that said we were up by, I think, $40,000, but it was still rolling in — and it continued to roll in throughout the weekend, despite this wretched economy. We actually had more donors this year, which is a record. We have a record number of donors this year, and in the tally so far we extended the streak of uninterrupted gains right through 2011. We’ve not had a down year. I don’t think we’ve had a down year. There might have been one in there. Yeah, I think after Hurricane Katrina there was a down year, but that was it.
We busted through our record on Friday — and I say “so far,” because we’re still counting. The people were still donating all the way into last night. In fact, there is still a small window of opportunity today for those who missed the chance to donate to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society over the weekend or on Friday. If you were one of those who got a crashed website warning on Friday and did not end up going back, you still can. For those of you who did participate and donate, everybody’s stunned and amazed and filled with thanks.
We’ve still got the donor page up at RushLimbaugh.com, and the phone number… Is that still up and running, H.R.? It is. It’s 877-379-8888. We are well over $3 million. That comes out to like a million dollars an hour. Stop and think about that. Once a year. There are programs… This is a testament to you all: There are programs that go their whole show, broom everything except the fundraising effort. Some of them go a whole week and spend weeks promoting it and do a lot of telethon. We are so unique. We do things in an entirely different way. Every dollar raised happened on that day.
Now, this is not to put anybody down. It was late in life when I learned this. I thought the Jerry Lewis telethon, for example, when they raised 24, 25 million I thought it was during the show. Most of that is raised in the year prior to the show going on the air. (interruption) You didn’t know that? Oh, no, they’re out there working tirelessly. The muscular dystrophy people are out there working tirelessly year in, year out throughout the year — and the telethon is the culmination of their effort.
I always thought they got that much money during the weekend. (I’m not being critical. It’s just the way they do it.) We do not pre-promote. You didn’t hear us talking a lot about this before we started and the days leading up and we didn’t raise a dime prior to it. So this is the epitome of generosity, the epitome of efficiency. Every dime, every dollar was raised on Friday and through the weekend after we started on Friday. So a heartfelt and sincere thanks once again to everybody who has made this yet another record-breaking year for our Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Radio Cure-A-Thon.
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.