Donate £10 to Lumos and have dinner with JKR

[fromorbit]

JKR has made a very generous offer on Twitter:

J.K. Rowling
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1929113511004664078

I mean this, by the way. Donate £10 to lumos, I'll draw three names out of a hat and we'll have dinner. It could be KFC, but the wonderful JamesChiavarini has just suggested his restaurant, so it might be there instead (travel and accommodation on me if you're not in London).

Offer stands! Applications close at midnight on Monday. A £10 donation means your name will go into the draw.

https://wearelumos.org/how-you-can-help/donate/

If your name’s chosen and you’re outside London (or the UK) I’ll pay for travel and accommodation.

Once donations have been verified with Lumos I’ll select three donors’ names at random (can’t promise a literal hat, but who knows).

I’ll match the total sum donated to Lumos between first offer and midnight Monday.

And once my three fellow diners have been chosen, we’ll have a vote on whether we’re having KFC or going to Il Portico.

Additional offer from John Boyne:

John Boyne

£10 donated to Lumos. Whoever has the good fortune to win the raffle and have dinner with you, I'll donate £1,000 to the charity of his or her choosing.

This was inspired by JKR's ongoing twitter spat with Jolyon:

I've never sought to auction dinner with myself at a Michelin-starred restaurant with ‘a selection of wines from [my] own cellar’ as you have, Jolyon, but if anyone wants to bung Lumos £10, I'll draw a name out of a hat and we'll split a KFC bargain bucket.

@Delphin- sorry what was to be filled in? Donated and now there seems to be a faff about second section? Missed that- can you tell me what to do? I will be annoyed if I’ve missed some deadline!

There was a legal problem with the way the draw was set up first ("donate and your name is in the hat for the draw").
So JKR set it up again, legally compliant, on 6 June (X messages here:)
Lumos' X messages: nitter.poast.org/lumos
JKRs X messages: nitter.poast.org/jk_rowling

You should have 3 info mails from Lumos to the mail address you gave when donating (two on Friday, one on Saturday, check the spam folder).

Everyone who donated was asked then to just register again at a dedicated Lumos page (with the possibility of having your donation paid back). That evening the Lumos site crashed, and a Google form was created to take the load off of the Lumos servers. Some people were able to register via the Google form that night but there were still tech problems apparently, with forms not registering properly. I got a mail Saturday, asking me to register again via a special link if I doubted that my Google form had gone through on Friday. So I did Sunday morning, because I just got a blank page after sending the form.

The registration for the draw closed Sunday evening. If you only donated before Friday, you are probably not in the draw (if I understood correctly). If you filled in the Google form on Saturday or Sunday, you're in.

Could always do a drive thru KFC in a big stretch limo.

I'm quite sure securing a private dining room (well maybe not in KFC!) would be easy enough for JK. I assume she eats out a lot, and isn't followed around by TRAs all the time.
I don't imagine the date or location will be made public.
(though I do like the idea of some activists winning and then being completely won over by an evening with the Queen!)

When is the draw?! Not a hope in hell of winning but one may dream 💭

What a whirlwind! The clock has officially struck midnight and our magical prize draw for dinner with J.K. Rowling has now closed. We're absolutely blown away by the incredible response – thank you to everyone who entered!

The draw is now closed and we're bursting with excitement as we prepare for the next step. Our team will be working their magic behind the scenes over the coming days to conduct the draw and reach out to our lucky winners.

When will you know? We'll be contacting all winners before the end of this week, so keep an eye on your inbox (and maybe your spam folder too – we don't want any magical moments getting lost!). If you're selected, we'll be in touch with all the wonderful details about your upcoming dinner with our extraordinary Founder and Life President.

What happens next? If you don't hear from us this week, it means you weren't selected this time – but please don't be disheartened! Your continued support means absolutely everything to us, and there will be more opportunities to celebrate our amazing community in the future.

Thank you once again for your incredible enthusiasm and support. Whether you entered at the last minute or have been eagerly waiting since our first announcement, you've all made this draw something truly special.
Here's to a magical week ahead!

With heaps of gratitude and barely contained excitement,
The Lumos team

P.S. – Didn't enter this time? Don't worry – keep supporting our amazing work and you'll be first to know about future opportunities!

From their email yesterday:

The prize: Dinner and conversation with our extraordinary Founder and Life President

Your chances: Better than you think – and certainly better than zero if you enter!

Winners will be announced by June 14th.

@Delphin- bollocks and thanks. Missed the deadline to register and only donated which wasn’t enough. Slightly irked but fair enough- my fault for not being more on top of spam.

Thanks all HOW COULD I HAVE MISSED THAT EMAIL?!

I had to search it. Unless going to junk… 🤔

Will have to search for a lumos email when I check!

Best of luck everyone! 🤞🏻

I keep trying to tell my email thingy that the Lumos emails are not junk, but each time the next one goes in the junk folder!

😱

check your junk folder women!!

I missed this altogether and am gutted but I'd love a regular FWR poster to get a few chicken wings!

I’ve donated a few times so regularly get emails from them but I haven’t had one since my receipt for my donation when this all started. I didn’t get one about the change of plans nor this later one. And I didn’t get one when I signed up for the draw without donating. Nothing in junk either. Very weird.

Waiting for the results from this is more exciting than the monthly Premium bonds draw. I hope at least one mumsnetter is successful.

Sounds like an amazing offer, a chance to have dinner with one of my heroines while donating to a great charity, she's amazing! Incidentally, I've finally got around to reading the Strike novels, I've been a huge HP fan for years, read all the books countless times, but never read these for some reason, probably because they are so different to the HP books. I'm just finishing off Lethal White at the moment and thoroughly enjoying them, she's such a talented author though the HP books remain my favourites!

I had exactly the same experience- am hoping that means we still have a chance to be selected!

Oh well. I probably would have got pissed and made a fool of myself anyway.

I want to hear how many people donated!

That’s what I’m consoling myself with, too!

Yes that will be very interesting as I think it was quite a lot!

<Sobs in corner>

...but not for long as you quickly realise you now have ALL the Bargain Bucket to yourself, eh Boily?😂

Congratulations to The Six, I wonder are any of them 'of this parish', as we say here? Will we ever know??

Good point Marie

Mine! All mine!

Congrats to the winners!

I checked spam, did a little search for Lumos but definitely nothing here so it wasn't me sadly.

How fun to have been in with a chance though!

If she really enjoys it maybe she'll do it again...? <hopeful>