Public Libraries Featured Charity

I would like to thank Donald Dennis for sharing this article. Donald is a librarian, small press game publisher, and the producer of the On Board Games Podcast. In his widely varied career he’s worked two table top game companies (Iron Crown Enterprises, & Green Knight Publishing) and been a UI Designer for one AAA video game release. (Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath)

Since 2008 he’s been a special librarian for the Georgetown County Library system where he has managed the Bunnelle Youth Technology Experience Series (BYTES) where he crafted a games program which integrated games and technology to engage area youth in a proliteracy setting, encouraging scholastic achievement while building a game community at the library.


Introduction

As libraries strive to find continued relevance in a modern era where the internet has made information more accessible than any time in history librarians are focusing more on community support and service with fewer resources being dedicated to curating dead trees. While we are still years, or even decades, away from paperless libraries many branches now offer electronic or audio books, online access points, and most importantly: programming and community space for activities.

The situation in the Georgetown County Library System in South Carolina is unique; our four libraries are very disparate in social demographics as well as each having distinctive geographic circumstance. Our main branch is in the city of Georgetown, while our other branches are isolated. One library branch sits in the parking lot of the grade and high schools, a second is within walking distance of the projects, and the third is in a significantly more affluent area with very low foot traffic.

Playing games at the library!

Requirements

There is no requirement for patrons to participate in board games, or educational activities, we don’t even require them to show IDs. Conversely, to participate in video games we have specific requirements; school aged patrons must check out 4 items a month from the Georgetown Library, at least two of which must be books. For that they get 2 hours a day, on days the room is open for games, that they can come play games.

Special Programs

Besides our ground breaking video game activities and tournament initiatives, the Georgetown County Library System has offered game design activities for both video and board games, as well as community games days, and even taught game literacy classes helping patrons to discover sources they can trust for game reviews. In addition to entertainment activities we have used games to support other programs in the library.

Because our libraries are all open five or more days a week, and we have a focus on game events, we have a wide variety of game activities every month of the year. Each branch has at least one staff member who not only provides traditional library services, but also acts as a gaming and technology specialist. These employees check out games to library patrons, run game days, and even help us develop our collection.

Smart Investing @ your Library

Some of the library's games

The GCLS received a Smart Investing At Your Library grant from the American Library Association and FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulation Authority. Because of this grant the Georgetown Library System was able to offer a wide variety of financial programming, called Personal Investment Education (PIE), including game activities. At our annual book sale event where we served free pie to library patrons we had tables of games focusing on economic matters, including Settlers of Catan for Trading, Dividends, Shark, and Acquire for investing, and Masters of Commerce for auctions and real estate. We also utilized auction games like Medici and Modern Art, while games like Loose Change and Exact Change were available to play with younger children still learning how to count money.

Some of our Smart Investing activities also combined with our Summer Reading Program and our game design activities. A quick example includes the use of Northstar Games Wits & Wagers and Say Anything game lines, both of which are popular at the library. Besides playing the games patrons earned game time for helping come up with four questions for a game show we had after a week of financial activities two Wits & Wagers style questions with well written question and a researched answer (including a valid source) and two money related questions for Say Anything. Competition, both at the game show and to submit questions, was fierce.

Conclusion

I encourage you to get involved at your local library, however if you would like to support games in the Georgetown County Library System you can donate games, credit at online games vendors, or time. We always need people to come and teach new games.

I would like to echo Donald's sentiments.  Whereas his library may not be the norm for public libraries (yet!) I would encourage you to check with your library to see if they have a similar program - or if they are interested in starting one.  I know that the public library in Joplin's young adult department was interested in board games, and I was able to donate a few games to help build their collection.

Hospice House Featured Charity

After asking about various charities that can use board games (or are in some way related to board gaming), one suggestion that I had was Hospice House.  And, so I followed up with the person that suggested it and asked if they would be willing to share a bit about their experience with Hospice House.  So, I would like to share the following write up from Dale Moore:
  
"Hospice needs games.

It’s been a year since my mother in law has passed away. She ended up losing her fight with endometrial cancer. It was a long fight with a few years of remission, but when it came back it returned with gusto. It spread to the Liver and Bones. We enlisted the help of Hospice. What a wonderful organization. First the family does not pay for the service. What costs above insurance or Medicare is taken care of by the charitable side of hospice.

The Goal of Hospice is to keep you as comfortable as possible during you final stages of a disease that will take your life. They try to keep you at home if they can, but if you are beyond staying at home and your area has one, they will move you to a Hospice house for your final days.
To simply describe a Hospice house, think of it as the nicest nursing home you can think of. Then make it better. The rooms are very nice and clean. The staff is wonderful.

Often times a person moves to a Hospice house when they are in their final days or hours. The family has been called and it’s every body’s final hours with their loved ones. Everyone wants to stay as long as possible to be there.

A Hospice house has large communal waiting areas. Hospice asks for volunteers for many things, one is to cook meals for the families that are waiting.  Often there are kids that are there as well. For a kid hours and hours of waiting gets to be very boring and in these lounges is where they often go to get a way for a bit.
 
Here is where you can help as a board gamer. If you have games you want rid of and you are contemplating a yard sale, donate those intact games to your Hospice house. Those rooms really need a selection of board games that are easy to pick up and fast to learn.
 
Board gamers tend to also be thrift store shoppers. We are always on the lookout for that rare gem at the local thrift store. We pass over a Scrabble, Monopoly, Life game all the time. I suggest if they are cheap, good condition, and intact pick it up. Your Hospice house would be glad to have it in their lounge area.

Back to my story.
Being a gamer I took a box of games with us. My wife and I played Split for a few hours in my mother in laws room. It was a great distraction for us. I always keep some duplicate simple games in the box. When we left I gave those games to the Hospice. At first the lady behind the counter was confused. This is not a donation they normally get. I explained to them to add them to the Family lounges and she then got very appreciative. "

I would like to thank Dale for sharing, and I must admit that I really think that I need to investigate the local Hospice Houses in my area, as I (like he mentioned) generally have extra games that aren't getting played.  But, I was also quite surprised when he said that "the family does not pay for the service."  Conveniently, I have a "close relationship" with someone that is very familiar with how Hospice services work (my wife used to work for a Hospice provider), and so I asked her about this.  She said that, though Dale's situation isn't always the case, yes, regularly hospices will write-off any expenses beyond what insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance) will cover.  

Extra Life Featured Charity

After hearing a lot of people talking about having gaming marathons for Extra Life, I became very curious.  I was given the contact information for a wonderful lady named Megan that works for the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.  She was kind enough to share this information with me:

Extra Life was started 5 years ago by a guy named Jeromy Adams. A radio DJ working on a Children's Miracle Network Hospital's radiothon in Houston, he met a lively leukemia survivor named Tori Enmon. Though Tori eventually lost her battle, Jeromy realized that gamers wanted to give back—they just didn't have a way to do it yet. From there, he created Extra Life. For the first two years, it only benefited Texas Children's Hospital—where Tori was treated. Since 2010, Extra Life has been a national program through Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, raising funds for our 170 network hospitals throughout the US and Canada. While many of our participants chose to play video games, you can play whatever you'd like. Tabletop games, video games, card games, basketball—anything. We're looking for you to do something fun, challenge yourself to do it for a longer amount of time, and ultimately raise lifesaving funds for kids in need by reaching out to your family and friends for support! Just be sure to sign up at Extra-Life.org to get started.

Now, of course, I didn't let Megan off the hook that easily.  This just brought up some more questions that I had.  So, here are a few more questions I asked, as well as the answers that she provided:

Can someone organize an Extra Life campaign at any time during the year?

• Our official date is October 20th, but you can play whenever you'd like! Just be sure to sign up at Extra-life.org to get started. (Our 2012 player fundraising pages will be shut down to make way for the 2013 ones by the end of December though.)

Do you have a list of Extra Life campaigns, specifically by geography? I think that this would help people see if there was a campaign they could join.

• During registration, each players picks their benefitting hospital. Essentially, we are one big program tied to all our partner hopsitals. Wherever you are in the US and Canada, you can find your local CMN Hospitals affiliated children's hospital. A great place to do that is right here: CMNH Search This will allow you to search by state or zip code to find your local children's hospital. The other great part about this is that say you grew up in Indiana, but you moved to Washington, D.C. You could choose to play for either hospital; it's totally up to you as the player!

Should they go to Extra-life.org if they want to know more?

• Yes—Extra-life.org is the very best place to learn more. From there, you can also access our blog to see what's the buzz.

If you want to know more about the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, you can check out their site. However, if you want to read a personal testimony of how the CMNH have affected lives, then I'd encourage you to check out this write-up by one of the members of our own board gaming community: Baby Toolkit's Writeup about Children's Hospitals.

So, having heard and read all about Extra Life, I was fortunate to discover that there was a gaming marathon very close to where I lived!  So, on October 21, I was able to participate in a 12 hour gaming marathon at Games Keep in West Chester, PA.  The entry fee was "officially" $5, but you could contribute as much as you'd like.  Pizza was provided by the store owner, and several people and/or game companies had provided games to be raffled off during the event.  That was all amazing, but I really would have showed up just for the 12 hours worth of gaming!  Ultimately, I had a blast at our gaming session, and I was thrilled that I was able to play games while supporting an amazing charity.  (Not to mention I discovered an awesome "Local" Game Store.  If it took me less than 45 minutes to get to Games Keep, I'd go there much more often - if you live near West Chester, I'd really encourage you to check it out.)  Hopefully, I can participate in another Extra Life gaming marathon next year.  Or, who knows - we might eventually try to have multiple events per year.  After all, I like gaming, and there are always sick children!

Gamers For Cures Featured Charity

I am very proud to introduce a new addition to this site.  This is my first in what I hope will be a series of posts about "Featured Charities".  Since this site is about board games, these charities will (hopefully) all be related, in some way, to board games.  This may mean that you can donate board games, play board games, or simply that they are run by board gamers.  I would like to thank Dan Patriss for sharing about his charity Gamers for Cures.  Now, let's get to it!

My name is Dan. I am an avid gamer, pharmacist, husband, and most joyously a father of 2 wonderful up and coming child gamers. My daughter Lauren (8) had been struggling with growth and stomach issues for close to 4 years. Doctors were very baffled as to the origin of the problems, but thankfully about 2 years ago they found their answer when she was diagnosed with Turner Syndrome.

Turner Syndrome (TS) is a chromosomal condition that describes girls and women with common features and is caused by complete or partial absence of the second sex chromosome. Common problems include short stature, premature ovarian failure, thyroid problems, and heart and kidney abnormalities. TS occurs in approximately 1 of every 2,000 live female births and is responsible for as many as 10% of all miscarriages. After diagnosis, we began treatment - which included medication for her hypothyroidism and human growth hormone shots. She has grown 11 inches in height since her diagnosis and has doubled in weight.

Inspired by my daughter, I have created a charity called Gamers for Cures.  Next thing I thought of was - how can board gaming be used as a tool to raise money for the Turner Syndrome Society of the US? I knew about 24 hour video gaming events that raised money. People often would play MMO's, such as World Of Warcraft, or console games over 24 hours for charity, but I had never heard of board gaming used this way. I approached the store owners of the FLGS (friendly local game store) where I regularly game, Crystal and Scott, , about my idea for a 24 hour board game marathon to benefit Turner Syndrome Society of the US. They welcomed the idea with open arms.

Our 24 hour board game marathon is an event which started out as a pipe dream, but before it was over we could not believe what we had done - and what we had been a part of.

We hope that this year's event will be no different. Donations have been pouring in from publishers and the community for our door prizes and various raffles we do throughout the day. We have two larger raffles and also hourly free door prize raffles (every hour the store is open).

For the larger raffles we have two different types. The first, and simplest, is a big raffle. First prize last year was an iPad, and second was a rare MTG "from the vault"; the other 3 prizes were Dominant Species (the board game), Defenders of the Realm plus an expansion, and Ticket to Ride plus the Alvin and Dexter Expansion. These tickets were $5 each or 5 for $20. We had 500 tickets made ahead of time, and I brought a handful to various local game stores in the area along with other businesses who were kind enough to help us out. We ended up selling nearly 600 of these before and during the event!

Some of this year's prizes

The other raffle we had was a numbered box raffle. We had 50 items behind the counter, each with a number on it. These items were mostly board games, along with some war games (1st edition ASL books). There were also boxes with little holes in them numbered 1-50. People would buy tickets for $1 each and put them in the box with the item they wanted. This way they could load up on tickets, but more importantly they could try and get exactly what they wanted. (Again this was a HUGE hit.)

This year, like last year, we will have some tournaments running throughout the day, including my personal favorite the Ascension tournament. The others are still under wraps but I can tell you, they will be fun for all involved - so keep an eye on our web sites for details.

The number one thing, outside of raising money for an amazing cause, is spreading the gaming hobby to the public. We had such a high amount of foot traffic that gamers new and old alike intermingled and played throughout the day. We showed the community that there are a TON of great games outside of Candy Land and Monopoly, and I have even started to see some of the new initiates to the hobby at local game nights at some of the stores in the area.

If you would like to donate either money or new games/promos to this year's event please feel free to contact me through Josh or through the Gamers For Cures web site. Or, monetarily you could go to our First Giving site.