We're heartbroken that our dear Seth Swink has passed away, but we celebrate his life... and there's so much to celebrate! Anyone lucky enough to have met him knows what an amazingly loving, kind, and sweet person he was. He would always light up a room when he came in. He just sparkled.

Unfortunately, he didn't have arrangements already setup so we've started this GoFundMe to help cover his end-of-life expenses. I set an initial target goal of $10,000 as a gut instinct before fully understanding of the upcoming expenses and details, and because I knew people wanted to start donating.

I setup a separate bank account setup which we are using to carefully track all funds to make sure they go to legitimate needs to cover Seth's expenses. We'll post updates here as we go.

Please feel free to share this GoFundMe! You can share it via whatever social media apps you use. You can simply use the link shown in your browser. Here's the link if you want to copy and paste it into any messages for sharing:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/celebrate-the-memory-of-seth-and-help-with-endoflife-costs

Updates on 5/29/2024:

Celebrations:

There will be one celebration memorial in Nebraska and another one in San Francisco.

Sethebration! - A celebration of Seth Swink will be held in San Francisco on Saturday, June 22 from 2-6 PM. We created an event on Facebook, but you don't need to use FB in order to see it. Here is the link with full details:

Sethebration! event in San Francisco on June 22

Details for the Nebraska celebration are being announced separately.

Please note that donations to this GoFundMe are not required to attend either celebration. Attendance is free for anyone that we're able to invite.

Target goal increase:

This has (fortunately?) been the first time I have had to run something like this, and (unfortunately) I've been surprised at how many things there are to do and how long it has taken to do them.

When I setup this GFM I had to pick a target goal, so I just guessed $10,000. The money that everyone has graciously donated has been a huge help! Thank you so much! ❤️ We've been able to take care of some needed travel expenses, operational expenses (eg, cremation), planning for the celebrations, and so on.

Unfortunately, my original estimate was way too low. By this point (5/29) we have incurred most major expenses and have a good understanding of the remaining major expenses. Our budget is now pretty solid and there shouldn't be any surprises coming (hopefully!). I’ve known for a while that we would need to increase the target, but things have been very busy and I didn’t want to make an update until I was confident in the numbers.

After updating our budget it looks like I should raise the target goal to $22,000, so I've done that.

This feels like a big increase, but it’s all reasonable. Looking at the current budget and thinking back to my original $10,000 guesstimate, I'd say the reason for the needed increase is that I really just didn't have a good sense of what the costs would actually be. My original guess was very much made "in the moment" while still dealing with the initial shock of the news.

There really aren't any major expenses we're seeing that I couldn't have forecast; it's just that my original estimating was too low (and I felt bad about asking for money in the first place). I’m actually pleased that we’ve been able to minimize actual expenses, especially thanks to some other folks getting us good deals where possible.

I apologize for the delay in getting this updated and for sending "thank you" notes.

In any case, any amount that you could contribute would be greatly appreciated! And if you can't afford anything, that's fine, too — just think of a time with Seth and smile. ❤️