"Hope for everything, expect nothing, and do your best."
2013
Darren's 26th Birthday - Feb 5, 2013
As our first OFFICIAL project, we hired a banner plane to fly over Paramount Studios with a personalized message for Darren on his birthday. Along with the plane, we composed an original song from replies to an online Q&A with fans as well as a slideshow presentation filled with messages from fans. Finally, we raised over $1300 for The Trevor Project.
2014
Darren's 27th Birthday - Feb 5, 2014
Our second project for Darren included an indoor skydiving adventure for him and 4 friends. We also sold calendars with exclusive Listen-Up Tour photos provided by Nicole Wiseman as a fundraiser for Trevor. This garnered us $700. Along with general donations, we raised over $2500 for The Trevor Project in total.
2015
Darren's 28th Birthday - Feb 5, 2015
2015 brought about multiple projects. For Darren's 28th birthday we created "Darren's Bitchin Birthday Basket." We hand selected items and put our unique touch to the standard gift basket. Items included funky t-shirts and socks, a premium bottle of Whisky and a custom made Blaine Warbler minifig. To top it off, we raised over $2800 for The Trevor Project as well. The basket included a custom made card with all the names of the fans who contributed, and it was hand delivered by one of our admins to Darren's management office the day before his birthday!
Gleeful Goodbyes
As a final farewell to Glee, we created "Gleeful Goodbyes" in a similar fashion to our annual DCED. We created cards, and during the week leading up to the series finale, we tweeted encouragements and thank you's to the Glee cast and crew.
Operation: Flower Power
To celebrate Darren's opening night as "Hedwig" in the Broadway smash "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," fans donated to purchase floral arrangements for both Darren and his Mama which were delivered to his dressing room before the performance.
2016
Darren's 29th Birthday
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For our birthday project this year, fans raised enough money to have an original piece ot atrwork made for Darren. He received a custom made piece of soundwave art taken from a clip of his mom's voice saying, "you're part of my world." Fans also donated to our annual charity fundraiser, raising $3041 for The Trevor Project.
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Operation Hedwig Homcomming
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To celebrate Darren's return as Hedwig in the travelling "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" broadway show, fans raised money to provide opening night flowers for him at his first show in San Francisco.
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DCED
Darren Criss Encouragement Days
To combat the negativity that can exist within the fandom, we created a special set of days dedicated strictly to encouragement. People purchased or made encouragement postcards from templates and sent them to Darren and his support team. We also had 10 days designated as #DCEncouragementDays Tweetfest. Each day we flooded the twitters of Darren's amazing support team with encouragement tweets, eventually including Darren at the end. The end result was phenomenal with over 5000 cards and tweets sent in 2013 & 2014. The response from the recipients was truly overwhelming, proving the encouragement days project a huge success and one we will continue to do.