In this blog, we’d like to invite you to support the fundraising efforts of our upcoming event, Gamers for Giving 2016. Please consider making a donation by visiting the home page of our event’s website, GamersforGiving.org!
It’s been eight years since we started Gamers for Giving (as well as Gamers Outreach) and boy, what a ride it’s been!
For those who’ve been with us from the beginning, you no doubt remember the early days. We started as a group of high schoolers with a passion for playing video games. After a couple years of hosting events, a few of our team members began volunteering at our local hospital. Through that experience, we learned firsthand how video games could make an impact in the lives of children coping with long-term treatment. We also became aware of a greater hardship. Every year, there are thousands of children in hospitals across the country who need access to bedside activities, therapy, and treatment.
We wanted to make a difference in the best way we knew how. We applied our knowledge as gamers, and started working with our local hospital to create something unique: portable gaming carts that could be used as tools to provide children with easy access to bedside activities. These gaming carts have become affectionately referred to as “GO Karts.”
Our first GO Kart was delivered back in 2009, and the response from our friends at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital was incredible. For the first time, hospital staff had a medically friendly, safe, and durable piece of equipment they could rely on to provide patients with bedside recreation. That GO Kart is still in use at the hospital to this day.
Slowly but surely, we began delivering more GO Karts. In a pre-streaming world, it was thanks to funds raised at Gamers for Giving that we delivered a few more GO Karts each year. Year by year, what started as a one-off project for our local hospital eventually grew into a program that currently impacts thousands of children’s lives across the country. In fact, in the span of just 2015 alone, we’ve nearly tripled the reach of Gamers Outreach programs. Much of that has been possible because of Gamers for Giving.
Here’s where we are now: Gamers Outreach supports children and families in 16 hospitals nationwide. If 8 children per day use a single GO Kart, collectively, we estimate that approximately 80,000 children per year currently benefit from the GO Kart program. We believe the time has come to expand that impact. There are nearly two hundred children’s hospitals around the country. We’re only in 16 of them. We need your help to reach the rest.
We’ll be chasing down a $100,000 fundraising goal at Gamers for Giving 2016. If we hit the target, it will be the most we’ve ever raised from a single event. It’s an ambitious goal for us, but we know it can be reached with your support!
If you plan to attend the event in-person, your participation alone will have an impact in the lives of the families we hope to help! If you’re unable to join us, we invite you to participate online by making a donation on the Gamers for Giving website, or to spread the word about our efforts by writing a tweet, or sharing this post on Facebook.
We see ourselves as platform builders. Our goal is to create sustainable experiences that produce joy and minimize trauma for patients, all through the power of video games. We also believe our programs provide donors with a tangible opportunity to make a difference. As we look forward, we believe 2016 is going to be a year for incredible action. We hope you’ll make a contribution, and aid us in our quest to provide kids in hospitals with recreation and therapy.
Let’s help others level up.