Fundraising

Gamers for Giving 2019 marks the beginning of a new decade for us here at Gamers Outreach, and we couldn’t be more excited!

Since the founding of our event in 2008, Gamers Outreach has grown into a community of video game enthusiasts eager to make a difference for hospitalized children and their families. Hospitalization can often be a lonely, isolating, and scary experience – especially for young people. We’ve seen it firsthand, and we’re doing everything we can to ease those burdens. Our intent is to inspire and heal patients through interactive play. Our annual fundraiser, Gamers for Giving, is a celebration of gaming culture and the good we’re capable of doing together.

Through the years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with hospitals nationwide. We’ve noticed healthcare professionals face two primary challenges:

• Many hospitals are not equipped with entertainment devices that make gaming content readily accessible to patients (e.g. consoles, controllers, monitors, games, etc.)
• When technology is present, it can be difficult for hospital staff to manage entertainment due to a number of factors (unfamiliarity with equipment, existing responsibilities, ease of mobility, etc.)

Gamers for Giving generates funding in support of two initiatives we believe help produce joy and minimize trauma for patients, while solving the above challenges:

Project GO Kart: Gamers Outreach constructs portable, medical-grade video game kiosks called “GO Karts” (Gamers Outreach Karts). These kiosks enable nurses to easily provide bedside activities to children unable to leave their rooms in hospitals. Each GO Kart is equipped with a gaming console, monitor, and assortment of games. The carts provide a safe, flexible, and efficient way to ensure kids have access to entertainment and coping mechanisms during long-term hospitalization. Each unit also has an internal lift mechanism, which allows healthcare staff to adjust the GO Kart to a patient’s bedside, accommodating a variety of medical scenarios which may limit a patient’s mobility.

Player 2: Player 2 is a program where gamers have the opportunity to apply the knowledge they’ve acquired through gaming in a manner that supports patients and staff within hospitals. By volunteering, gamers become “digital activity managers” and serve by managing equipment, providing tech support, and playing games with patients. Many hospitals receive game donations, but without proper staffing to manage inventory at a mass scale, it can become difficult for tech donations to properly serve patients as intended. Player 2 helps address this issue by ensuring knowledgeable individuals are present to distribute technology and exercise its positive benefits.

So how much progress have we made?

At this time last year, Gamers Outreach programs maintained a footprint in ~42 hospitals. We estimated as many as 452,000 patients were benefiting annually from initiatives like Project GO Kart and Player 2.

As of this blog post, we’ve quadrupled our list of supported hospitals, and tripled our capacity to support patients.

Gamers Outreach initiatives are rolling into nearly 200 facilities across the United States. Collectively, our GO Karts being deployed (500 units) have the capacity to support as many as 1.1 – 1.4 million patients per year!!

You can read more about the incredible progress our donors have helped pioneer in our recent annual report.

As you can see, the next several months will be quite busy for our team, and much of our growth can be attributed to Gamers for Giving. But even with the dramatic expansion of supported patients, we’re barely reaching the incredible volume of children hospitalized annually. Each year, millions of kids are treated across hundreds of hospitals around the U.S. alone. We want to help them all!

Gamers for Giving 2019 is going to help us make steps to do just that. With your support, we can help ensure all children going through hospitalization have access to modern forms of recreation. It’s going to take the collective effort of the gaming community to make a difference in every single hospital nationwide. Here’s how you can get involved:

• Fundraise: This year, we’ve partnered with Tiltify.com, a fundraising platform which allows gamers to stream in support of Gamers Outreach programs! You can start a general fundraiser, or even rally your community to construct GO Karts for a hospital of your preference. Not a streamer? No sweat! You can still use the platform to reach out to friends, family, or colleagues. Launch or support a Gamers for Giving campaign here.
• Donate: Any amount helps! Donations can be made on our Tiltify portal here!
• Watch: We’ll be streaming the event on our Twitch channel, where you’ll be able to catch tournament action from our HCS Grassroots event and updates from the show floor! We also have a whole bunch of wonderful content creators fundraising in support of the cause!
• Spread the word: Help share Gamers for Giving hype on social media! Sharing our cause with friends or plugging the stream broadcast can go a long way in building support! Be sure to use our event hashtag #GFG2019!

Whether you’re streaming from home, or joining us at the EMU Convocation Center, we look forward to having you be a part of this year’s efforts!

We’ll see you on March 23rd & 24th! Let’s help others level up!