Steve Ross / Bob Ross GoFundMe
Announcement
A few days ago, Marjorie and I watched the Bob Ross documentary on Netflix. To say the least, we were outraged by the deception and greed of BRI which is run by the Kowalski family. During this time, I searched Twitter to see if anyone shared the same sentiment. To my surprise, this was already starting to trend. People were furious! In a tweet, I stated that we should start a GoFundMe to help with the legal costs associated with filing an appeal. If you watched the documentary, then you know what I am referring to, but for those that didn’t; Basically, Steve indicated that he filed a lawsuit against the Kowalskis to be proactive in trying to use his father’s name for his business. He lost his lawsuit. In the documentary, he indicated that he wanted to file an appeal of the decision but was told that it could cost about $90,000.00 to do so. It is in this, where the idea came to start this GoFundMe. But I tweeted such, not in jest, but also certainly not intending to start this GoFundMe on my own. But I did want to contribute. I was nudged a few times to get it going. So the first thing that I did was reach out to Dana Jester on Instagram. I told him about my tweet and the positive response. He indicated that he would pass my information to Steve Ross. So I went ahead and got the GoFundMe going while I waited to hear from Steve. I really wanted to get this going while interest was high, which would make for a more successful campaign. The intent was to definitely relinquish control of the GoFundMe to Steve once he made contact. Now to date, we are about 4 days from starting this and I have not received a response. I sent Dana another message and then I followed up with a detailed email on August 27th. To date, I do not have a response.
Currently, the GoFundMe is a about $3,000 and continuing to grow. The more that it grows the more I feel a desperate need to reach Steve. I need to make a few things clear though:
- I have not set up a withdrawal account on the GoFundMe campaign. The message on GoFundMe indicates that if a withdrawal account is not set up in 90 days from the first donation, then all donations will be refunded automatically. I will not assign my personal account for the withdrawal account.
- If the hesitation from Steve Ross is that there is concern about losing the appeal, personally, I would understand and would still want him to have this donation as a gift of love from his father’s fans and supporters of Steve and Dana. I will immediately update the campaign details to indicate that this money can be used at the sole discretion of Steve Ross that way there is no issue with accepting the gift in fear that it is for a specific purpose. Now, we would love for you to stick it to the Kowalskis! But we will leave it 100% up to Steve on how these funds will be used.
- If I am never able to make contact with Steve Ross to transfer these funds to him or he refuses to accept the donation, there will be no hard feelings. I will request that GoFundMe send refunds to all contributors.
- Lastly, I have no interest in any of the funds. Any donations will be 100% relinquished to Steve Ross. GoFundMe has a fee associated with withdrawal transactions. This is the only thing that will be taken from the funds. I will not touch any of the money.
I have done my best to show full transparency here to make anyone that wants to contribute feel comfortable with me being the steward of your donations. It is an intimidating task. I am only doing this out of respect for Bob Ross and the outrage I feel about what happened to Steve Ross. It is apparent that the world shares the same feelings as me. So Steve, if you are reading this, please accept our gift to you. We support you and want you to know that the world wants you to have control over your father’s name and image. It is your right as his son and you should not be barred from his legacy!
About Post Author
I’m Rick, husband to Marj and father to 3 awesome kids. I will be sharing my love of cooking, home projects, repairs and my opinions on various products.
