T4 Things 4 Good

It began with a wooden-wick candle. I bought one at a market, loved its crackle, and by early 2020 had a box of supplies from The Wooden Wick Co. and was making my own. By the end of that year I had a Wicky Thing Candles page with named scents like Lit, Cake Eater, and Man in the Pants. In September 2021 each family at Olson Family Vacation won a custom Wicky Thing candle in Tammy’s scavenger hunt (WT194).

That fall our family turned the candles into a fundraiser. The first Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser, on 2021-11-06 and 07, sold 134 Wicky Thing Candles in four scents, along with the first Jiggy Thing Puzzle, Four Bees Honey from Tammy’s sister Angie, and cookies Tammy and the kids baked. It raised $4,757 for four nonprofits, one picked by each of us: Tammy, Mazie, Tyler, and me, with buyers choosing how to split their donation. The name plays on our family name: four Things, four causes. “All four of us ‘Things’ are working away,” I wrote as we got ready. That November I also set up a crypto donor-advised fund named Things 4 Good on Endaoment and made its first grant, to the Internet Archive.

It became a tradition. In 2022 we made 180 candles and sold 172, raising $5,217. Totals grew each year, to $5,755 in 2023 and $7,010 in 2024, when the first day of the sale moved to the Mount Olivet Holiday Boutique. The 2025 sale, marked with a “5th Anniversary” POAP, sold 321 candles and raised $9,048, for $31,787 over five years. Each year I post the results and a look at the sale’s data. The candles now go by the Things 4 Good name, and every candle is still a $25 donation.

In 2026 the fundraiser got its own site, things4good.xyz, with the sale, every organization supported, and the numbers by year, all calculated from one dataset of sale events. The 2026 sale, the sixth, is set for November 7 and 8, with a new Maker Night where six guests pour their own candles.