This spring’s Bowl-a-Thon: record-shattering!

Have you been waiting for the other rental shoe to drop?

The total numbers are now in from this spring’s National Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon, and we are bowled over: In the largest event of its kind, activists this year went balls out, breezing past goals to strike Hyde: Together, you raised over $553,000 for abortion access!

That’s more than $50,000 over the initial goal, surpassing everyone’s wildest expectations–an additional amount that represents hundreds more phone calls funds can answer.

The 4th Annual National Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon, by the numbers:

• Individual bowlers, karaoke stars, and pool sharks: 2,008
• Teams of rollers, rebels, and rowdies: 415
• Cities that held Bowl-a-Thons, Triathlon-a-Thons, and Billiards-a-Thons: 29
• Virtual Bowl-a-Thons: 1
• Abortion funds that benefited directly from the Bowl-a-Thon: 27, including Mississippi!
• Individual donors: 10,843 donors making 12,588 donations
• Average donation: $44
• Percentage of donations $25 and under: 70
• Weekends that the volume of donations crashed the server: 1
• Smallest donation: $1.00
• Largest donation: $5,000, in the form of a matching gift that went to the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund and to one of the NEWEST funds, the New Orleans Abortion Fund in the Gulf Coast region!

That’s right: you raised over a half a million dollars in $25 increments. (Just imagine what the possibilities would be if Medicaid chipped in!)

There was no blue state / red state division: bowlers found support in Arkansas and California alike. From Georgia and Hawaii and yes, Alaska. From flyover country and from the coasts. And from around the world: people in places including Hong Kong, Ireland, Australia and Germany pitched in to help make this a bigger Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon than we could ever imagine!

Yes, there were LOLcats. There were gifs. There were rock stars, like The Mountain Goats, and award-winning authors, like Katha Pollitt. There were teams of activists from allied organizations, like NARAL Pro-Choice America, who know their way around a cue stick. There were bridesmaids, robots, and trophies galore. So many costumes! And the puns…oh, the puns.

But mostly there were the 2000+ bowlers who channeled their compassion and creativity into appealing to the best in their friends, their families and their neighbors. Appealing to their sense of justice, knowing that no matter what their bowling score was, or how off-key they sang, or how unlikely it was that they would ever nail a 7-2 split, that their efforts would mean that when a woman calls her abortion fund for help, that fund will have her back.

Thank you to everyone who bowled, sang, or donated for abortion access in the 4th Annual Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon. You made this the best Bowl-a-Thon yet!

Click here for photos from the events.