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10/12/08 - New Orleans Work Trip Signup Now Open!

We are happy to announce that we are now signing up volunteers for our March 2009 work trip to New Orleans. Come join us!

9/30/08 - Holiday Game Drive, T-Shirts, and More

We've got a lot to tell you about this month:

  • We need you to take part in our Holiday Game Drive.
  • We have t-shirts! A $20 donation gets you a cool GfH shirt to wear with pride.
  • October is almost here, and with October will come the official start of signup for our NOLA trip in March!

Let me first take just a moment to say this: as our economy reaches ever increasing lows, we need to remember that these troubles are even harder on those who are lower on the economic ladder and those who are ill. As it becomes more and more difficult for us to find the money and time to do things for ourselves, we should keep in mind that our efforts are needed even more now. You don't have to donate to us. You don't have to donate money at all--time is valuable as well, and there are organizations all over the place who would be happy for a few of your hours a month. You are valuable to groups like us.

Our Game Drive at Gen Con this year was an absolute success...so we want an encore.

And that's where you come in. Our Holiday Game Drive is a multi-location event. We'll be collecting games and toys at 'Hot Spots' all around the country, and donating them all to charities that are local for each collection point. Where are the Hot Spots? You need to tell us.

We need you to help us out by volunteering to organize a Holiday Game Drive Hot Spot in your area. Here's how it works:

  1. Find a local business willing to serve as the collection point: your local game store, church, coffee shop, etc.
  2. Find a charity or organization who would like the donated games and toys: the local Ronald McDonald House, childrens' hospital, women's shelter, Toys For Tots, etc.
  3. If possible, ask other local businesses to donate swag for the people who donate games: movie passes, tournament entry at the game shop, coupons and gift certificates, store credit, etc.
  4. Place an ad in the local paper, and post flyers.
  5. Coordinate with the Hot Spot and selected charity for pickup of the donated items.

That's it. If it sounds like a daunting task, keep in mind a few things. First, it's all local. You don't have to leave your area to help, a lot of the work can be done over the phone, and the donated games and toys will all go to help local people. Second, Gamers For Humanity will help you in whatever way we can. If you need help making phone calls or finding charities, help is an email away. Third, as I discovered when setting up the drive at Gen Con, most people are more than willing to help with a cause like this. Getting up the nerve to ask is the hardest part :)

Each Hot Spot should begin collecting no later than November 15th, and generally no earlier than November 1st.

We want to make this a HUGE event, so please consider volunteering. I think you'll find that the time spent isn't so hard to come up with, and is more than worth while. If you'd like to volunteer for the Holiday Game Drive, contact Lisa at lisa-at-gamersforhumanity.org (replace the 'at' with an '@').

GfH T-Shirts

We've got stylish and cool Gamers For Humanity t-shirts! The artwork on this shirt was designed originally for our NOLA trip last April, and we carried it over through the summer to Gen Con. Available in either blue or green, these shirts can be had for a $20 donation to Gamers For Humanity. We rely entirely on donations to fund things like our Game Drives, and to help our volunteers cover some of the costs of housing and transportation during our work trips. And thanks to Offworld Designs, we've got something cool to give back to our donors.

Check out the colors and sizes we currently have on hand, and let us know if we need to order a different size/color for you. Contact Tom at tom-at-gamersforhumanity.org if you're interested.

NOLA Sign-Up Fast Approaching

October is almost here, and when it gets here, we'll be reserving our spots to work in New Orleans in March. Our current plans are to volunteer with Habitat For Humanity and The Phoenix of New Orleans, and we'll be opening spots in groups of 25. This is a great opportunity to do some good work, and spend a week in a great city. Keep your eyes open for the official sign-up announcement, coming soon...

8/24/08 - Gen Con 2008 After Action Report

We've been back from Gen Con 08 long enough to start getting all of our ducks in a huddle, so here's our first report on all the action at our booth this year.

Special Thanks
First, we want to sincerely thank all of our sponsors who made our first year in the Exhibit Hall successful. Foremost on the list is Gen Con LLC. Aside from putting on another great Con, they, as a company and as individuals, have been incredibly supportive of us and our efforts since the beginning, and we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are now without their help. Hopefully you saw our shirts popping up around the Con, and we want to thank Offworld Designs for those. It was nice to be able to point people to them, only an aisle away. We have Nametag, Inc to thank for the badge ribbons, and I know for a fact people were noticing those all weekend. The people from the George Fern Company were also great, but more about them later.

We can also put our booth volunteers in this category. Thank you to the dozen or so generous people who gave us some of their time during the Con, manning the booth and passing out information. Hopefully we gave you enough information to make your jobs tolerable :) You are all definately appreciated.

The Game Drive
Down to the details: our first annual Gen Con Game Drive was a great success! We were taking in donations for the drive so rapidly on Sunday that we had little time to keep count, but a few of us managed to get a rough count after the hall closed and before the games were picked up. In the end, you and other people at Gen Con donated over 100 board games, 250-300 card games, over 100 books (novels and RPG material), and 4 large bags of other games and toys. As we were sharing our booth with The Chainmaille Wench, we were extremely grateful for the help that the George Fern Company gave us in storing the donations. They are the people who run the 'back of the show' in the Exhibitor Hall, and their help was instrumental.




Jay, Shauna, and Tom helped load the games on Sunday, and we filled up the back of the van that Aaron from the Indy Ronald McDonald House brought. There was more in the back seats as well, but these pictures give you a good idea. And that was only part of it. We also stuffed the trunk and back seat of Chris-Michael's car from the Wheeler Mission Ministries. (Thanks to Aaron from the RMH for the pictures.)

It was like Christmas morning every time someone approached the booth with donations, and I know that the kids and families who the donations are destined for will feel likewise. Thank you all so much for your generosity. This is something that we will definately be doing again.

Other Booth News
Aside from the Game Drive, we were also fortunate to receive enough donated funds to enable us to continue on our path towards our 501(c)3 status. That paperwork should be completed next month, and if the IRS isn't terribly slow, we should have that 501(c)3 by the end of the year. Once we do, all donations we receive will be tax-deductible--and this is retroactive to all donations we have received in the past. If you got a receipt from us at the booth, or if you donated prior to Gen Con, we will contact you when your donation is duductible. Our 501(c)3 status will enable us to do some serious fundraising, so this was a great milestone as well.

Even more important than that, however, are all of the names of interested people we have added to our newsletter mailing list. We are now counting in the hundreds, including a lot of checked boxes of people interested in our yearly New Orleans work trip. (We'll be sending out information about that trip in the near future, so stay tuned.)

Our prize drawing at the booth was also a success. It featured donations from Profantasy Software (makers of Campaign Cartographer, which every GM must have), Abstract Nova, Mindstorm Labs (and honestly, you must check out their Alpha Omega game if you like RPGs...Ennie Award winning artwork), The Chainmaille Wench (who is also a GfH member), Uniforms of Antiquity, Imperial Weapons, Angelwear Creations, VooDoo Baby, and Buca di Beppo restaurant. Thanks to these companies, we were able give something back to a few of the donors from the weekend. Plus, their wares on display brought more than a few people over to talk to us, so we give them all a big thanks as well. (All that great stuff to look at also caused me to make a few purchases myself, but that's between me and my poor credit cards.)

In the end, it was a very successful week--Tuesday working with Habitat For Humanity, donations and meeting people at our booth, and plans for the future of Gamers For Humanity. We are planning a NOLA trip, a coordinated holiday season multi-city game drive, and our presence at Gen Con next year. Thank you all for your support and interest. We'll have more pictures from the weekend up on the website soon, and more news on the way.

Thank you all.

6/4/08 - Gen Con Game Drive - Your Support Needed - Our work day with the Indianapolis chapter of Habitat For Humanity is scheduled, and our list of volunteers is growing (email us or come to the Gen Con Community Forums at www.gencon.com to sign up and join us). That leaves us with our other project for the convention: our Gamers For Humanity Game Drive! We're collecting new and gently used games at our booth in the Exhibitors' Hall at Gen Con (booth #2328). What are we doing with those games, you ask? We're donating them. To whom, you ask? We're happy to announce that there are three recipients of the bounty of our Game Drive: the Wheeler Mission Ministry, the Peyton Manning Childrens' Hospital, and the Indianapolis Ronald McDonald House.

Three organizations means that we definately need your help--we can't very well show up at a Childrens' Hospital with only a deck of cards and a bag of old pogs. We need your donations. If you'll be at the convention, it's easy enough--just swing by any of the dozens and dozens of other booths, buy a game, come by our booth, and donate it. Easy. You'll get a shiny ribbon showing that you are an excellent individual, and you'll have helped someone by bringing a game into their life. That's the whole point. If you won't be at the convention, send some money with a friend who's going, or donate it to us, indicate 'Game Drive' with your donation, and we'll pick up a game and donate it in your name. We have the ability to help a lot of people here.

As always, sincere thanks to everyone for the support you've already shown us.

5/27/08 - Important Habitat-Indy Fundraising Update - I'm excited to announce that our fundraising effort for our project with Habitat For Humanity's Indianapolis chapter has come to an end...just not in the way we expected. As it turns out, Habitat-Indy would be able to guarantee us a day on a build site (house) with enough funding. They just wouldn't be able to offer us August 12th, the day we have available. Their operating schedule prevents them from offering us a work day on a house regardless of how much they receive in donations. House builds are carefully scheduled, and that Tuesday just won't work.

So why am I excited by this news? Because a) Habitat-Indy will have other work for us to do, and b) this means that we will be able to volunteer without having to raise $5000. We're not sure exactly what we'll be doing yet--we may be working in their woodshop precutting lumber and working on other necessary preliminaries for building a house, we may be working in their Home Store. The exact nature of the work will be confirmed in the next week or so.

But, in short, our work day with Habitat-Indy on Tuesday, August 12th, has been confirmed.

And that means that we can start building our list of attending members for this project. If you'll be in Indianapolis on August 12th and you want to work, let me know (contact 'at' gamersforhumanity.org). We have room for twenty people, so get your name in as soon as you make a decision. Once we have twenty people, we can try to look for more work for you to do, but we can't guarantee that we'll have anything for you to do that day. (Current members: don't assume that I know you're coming--email me to let me know that you'll be there.)

This is a great opportunity to help a great organization. Habitat for Humanity operates entirely from donated funds, and they work relentlessly to put people like you and me into new homes every day. You can be a part of that. It's rewarding work, for a good cause. We'll see you in Indy!

5/24/08 - Sponsor and Donation Update - We're happy to announce that we have another sponsor on-board! The excellent folks at Nametag.com are donating the badge ribbons that we will be handing out at Gen Con this year. Donors to our Gen Con Game Drive (collecting games for charities) will receive a cool badge ribbon, and be the envy of all their friends. So that's great news, and we are very grateful to the Nametag.com staff.

We also want to welcome a number of new people to our newsletter, and focus on how to think about fund-raising, and ways that you can help. Calling businesses in the Indianapolis area is pretty simple, and while it may not be high-percentage, it can work. Potential businesses to contact might be construction supply companies, restaurants, service organizations (Rotary, Kiwanis, lodges, etc), or gaming/book stores. If you want to help in this way, email us (contact -at- gamersforhumanity.org) for a list of companies.

But, there's another way to think about fund-raising: individuals. For us normal people with jobs and houses and dogs and kids, $5000 seems a bit daunting. But consider that 50 donations of $100 each would get us where we want to be, even with no support from the business sector.

What can we offer donors in return? Publicity. We will give them publicity on our website, on our t-shirts, and at our booth at Gen Con, and in whatever other ways we can think of. As the donations for this project will be made to Habitat for Humanity, they will also be tax deductible.

There's a lot that can be done to help with the fund-raising, and much of it doesn't take a lot of time at all, even for the busiest of us :) Thank you all for the support and prayers.

5/18/08 - Gen Con Email Blast, and Flyers - Gen Con LLC sent out an email blast on Friday to all attendees and exhibitors, and Gamers For Humanity was prominently featured! Here's the text:

Have you ever considered how fortunate you are to be able to take a vacation and game for four whole days? Gamers For Humanity (www.gamersforhumanity.org) was formed with one purpose: to give gamers an opportunity to gather together and help people who are less fortunate. In their first year, with the help of Gen Con and other sponsors, they have already been to New Orleans and back, and they are looking to do more. They are planning another trip to the Big Easy next Spring and they need help! They are hoping to be able to work with Habitat for Humanity's Indianapolis chapter on August 12th, but Habitat needs donations in order to be able to provide them with the materials to do the work. Their target is $5000, donated directly from donors to Habitat. Have you or your company chosen a charitable cause this year? Do you want to go work with them? They are gamers, just like you, and together everyone can do a lot of good in the world. Please visit their website and contact them to see how you can help. If they can meet their donation goal of $5000 by the end of May, they will be able to show Habitat-Indy what gamers can do. They look forward to seeing you in Indy. You can stop by their booth in the exhibit hall to meet them.

Big thanks goes out to the Gen Con staff for continuing to support us so generously.

We also have *flyers* available for download, announcing the Indianapolis build and our fund-raising goal of $5000. Any help is appreciated--donations from individuals are great, but if you don't have the ability, so is contacting businesses in the industry and asking for their support. $5000 is a good amount of money, and we'll need a lot of help to get there.

5/5/08 - Marengo Habitat Pictures Online - The Habitat For Humanity house in Marengo, IA is going up quickly and smoothly, and we've now got some pictures online from the build. It's an ongoing project, so we'll be adding more pictures as we go. Check the Pictures page for the latest.

4/25/08 - Workers Needed in Marengo, IA - Habitat For Humanity is building a house in Marengo, IA--it's in the very early stages. The slab (foundation) has been poured, and one exterior wall has gone up. What they need right now are numbers, a large group for the upcoming week to finish putting up the rest of the walls, and to get the roof trusses put into place--a big job. Gamers For Humanity will be there on Thursday, May 1st, and on Saturday, May 3rd, with whatever numbers we can gather (at least 3 people so far). Go to the Contact page if you're interested in coming along. No experience necessary, and lunch is provided (probably morning donuts too).

4/15/08 - NOLA Trip a Success - Our trip to New Orleans was a resounding success. Pictures will be uploaded soon to the website, and the site blog is available for a narrative of the trip. We even left one member behind to continue the work. Plans are already in motion to set the dates for next year's NOLA trip, so stay tuned if you're interested in joining. There was such a great response from the students at Cornell College (5 attended, many more expressed interest in future trips) that we will try to coordinate next year's trip to NOLA with Cornell's spring break, if possible.

3/30/08 - Trip Nearing - The NOLA trip is almost upon us. We have 10 confirmed attendees heading to the Crescent City, supported by generous donations and excellent people. Included in the 'generous' part is going to be a meal at one of the best restaurants in New Orleans, namely Brigtsen's Restaurant. We'll also be meeting with several local gamers and residents, and dispersing a lot of books and games that have been donated to the cause. Stay tuned for more info, and check the new Site Blog for updates while we're down there.

1/20/08 - Zazzle Gallery - We have a gallery of Gamers For Humanity products available at In association with Zazzle.com. The direct link to our gallery is www.zazzle.com/gamersforhumanity*. Mousepads, mugs, magnets, soon to be followed by t-shirts and other apparel.

1/17/08 - Change of Plans! - The dates are staying the same, but it looks like we won't be working with Habitat on our first trip. Schedules are not working out between us and them, so we have made modifications. We will be doing the same work--building houses for New Orleans residents in need--but we'll be working with The Phoenix of New Orleans instead. They are a great organization, and we're looking forward to the trip more than ever.

1/7/08 - Gen Con Sponsorship!
Gen Con LLC, out of a great sense of charity and in return for our spreading the word of Gen Con while we work, has been tremendously gracious in their sponsorship of Gamers for Humanity. We wanted to officially announce what that sponsorship includes:

1) 4 (FOUR) Gen Con Indy Promo Passes for 08. These will be randomly distributed among our participants (i.e. people attending our trip in April). FREE badges to Gen Con! For FOUR of our people!

2) Off The Grid and Gen Con SWAG for participants!

3) A forum for discussion of our project on the Gen Con LLC forums.

4) A press release about us, to be assembled in the near future.

5) Last, but certainly not least...a BOOTH at Gen Con Indy, in the Exhibit Hall. This is wonderful!

We can't thank the people at Gen Con enough. Megan, Peter, Melissa, Adrian...they have been so generous.

12/01/07 - The date for our first project has been set! We will be in New Orleans from April 6th through the 12th, working with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild one of America's greatest cities. Come and join us!

11/25/07 - We have adopted an excellent logo, designed by Cody, one of our members. We can now set about designing t-shirts, buttons, business cards, and other useful stuff. Here's the logo: