Child's Play 2007 Gets Underway

It is well worth mentioning that a post by Tycho over on the Penny Arcade site signals the kickoff for Child's Play 2007. This year they have over 30 hospitals spread across five countries, and (as always) every little bit helps. From Mr. Brahe's post: "At the last Child's Play dinner, a man whose son was currently staying at Seattle Children's Hospital - he'd left him temporarily, to attend - literally could not produce the words to thank me. The depth of his appreciation bordered on anguish. I hardly knew how to respond, other than attribute those comforts to their true authors. The opportunity to be excellent has arisen again. Just as in years past, visit the site proper, choose your favorite hospital, and select your toy. We promise to let you know how incredible you are at regular intervals."

Best God Damn charity in the world

[geekoid]

Scrape 20 bucks up and go buy something.
They keep nothing, the world volunteer, everything goes to the hospital.
Your charity will allow children in pain to laugh and forget.

Re:Best God Damn charity in the world

[DragonPup]

Or empty that tub of change you have sitting in your room into a CoinStar counting machine and it can give you an amazon gift certificate on the spot with no coin counting fees.

Re:

[Warbringer87]

Dude, that's a fucking excellent idea, and I mean for every year!! Just have a Child's Play jar that you toss change into throughout the year, then just donate the whole fucking thing.

Re:

[geekoid]

"The world volunteer" hmm perhaps "everybody is a volunteer" would have made more sense..or at least some sense.

Still, help out.

Too poor? Next time you have a LAN party, tell everyone a buck goes into the childsplay bucket. There are some items as low as 6.99

Organize something at your local hobby store.

Sell some of the Gold from your WoW character.....love you Blizzard heh.

Hell, put up some of the signs around town.

Re:

[lmnfrs]

Hell, put up some of the signs around town.

Good idea, I was unaware they had these [childsplaycharity.org].

Funding efficiency?

[Krishnoid]

I don't see them on Charity Navigator [charitynavigator.com] . The FSF is on there, though, with a 4-star rating [charitynavigator.org], no less.

I'd love to see Child's Play show up near the top of the list as having one of the lowest CEO salaries or administrative expenses -- "Gamers -- Violent Psychopaths, Generous Givers, or both?"

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the overhead of Child's Play is subsidized by Penny-Arcade, much of the labor for the auction/dinner is volunteer. Every dollar you donate to Child's Play buys stuff that goes to hospitals. Period.

Don't be an asshat!

[urcreepyneighbor]

Child's Play 2007!

Re:

[geekoid]

Whose Chucky, your cell mate? ZING

Re:

[Bushido Hacks]

Oh come on! If this were a movie, it would take three or four sequels to do it justice.

Besides, Martha Stewart never does anything like this.

Re:

[corsec67]

You could have a hospital for healthy people, but it would just be for elective surgeries, (like breast augmentation, vascetomy,...) and routine check-ups, like physicals, mammographies, colonoscopies, ...

Re:

[eln]

It seems the hospital was founded way back in 1875, well before marketing took over the naming of everything in existence. It seems like just the sort of perfectly accurate and utilitarian name that was popular in that era. These days, I'm sure they would have invented some nonsensical non-word that was vaguely reminiscent of health care to name it instead.

Kids

[Mark_MF-WN]

You don't have kids, do you? Healthy kids go to the hospital all the time. Check-ups, immunizations, bruises and scrapes, etc.

Tycho and Gabe

[Enderandrew]

These guys continually try to convince the world that they're assholes. They will tell you repeatedly what mean, horrible people they are, while at the same time donating $10,000 in Jack Thompson's name, creating a scholarship out of their pockets, and organizing this great charity where they pocket absolutely nothing.

Man, they suck at proving what horrible people they are.

I'm in

[fruity_pebbles]

$18 and about five minutes of my time. I hope some kids enjoy the heck out it.

Post your social site support links here

[Kris_J]

Help promote Child's play on various social networking and community websites. Post your links to groups and such below:

• Penny Arcade Childs Play Charity on Facebook [facebook.com]
• Board Game Geek Microbadge [boardgamegeek.com]

I'm broke, but I spent what I could on the kids.

[DragonTHC]

great cause, Now I feel all good inside!

good job but...

[thermal_7]

Good on them for starting a charity that does a lot of good. However, can someone tell me why not just send the hospitals money instead?

This means you cut out the middle man of amazon so the hospitals effectively get more money and it also means the hospitals can use the money as they see fit. I agree games and toys are important, but sometimes new medical equipment is more important. Regardless I figure let the hospitals decide.

Re:

[Adam Whisnant]

Because other charities help with equipment and such. Not so many of them give much thought to kids stuck in hospitals for weeks at a time with nothing to do but stare at the wall or sit in front of daytime TV.

Re:

[LingNoi]

I agree games and toys are important, but sometimes new medical equipment is more important.

Congratulations on missing the whole point of the charity.

Re:

[thermal_7]

Congratulations on acting like an arrogant 13 year old.

You can argue that my line of thinking is wrong and indeed others did. They raised points I hadn't considered and gave information I didn't know about and I largely agree with them.

But seriously, what is the point of your post? You make no arguments, give no information, just loosely and arrogantly state that I am missing the point. Since doing this has no hope of convincing me of anything or conveying information, which is generally the point of discus

Re:

[hexadecimate]

>Isn't this a site of intellectuals and scientists?
>Or is it a site of people with emotional problems who feel the
>need to lash out at random people to make themselves feel big?

Boy, you must be *really* new around here. Pretty clearly the answer is "both".

The NAME of the charity is "Child's Play". How is that hard to understand? I'm glad the other posts helped you figure it out, but the /.er you object to merely called you out for being lazy.

The answer to your question is right here [childsplaycharity.org] and it

Re:

[thermal_7]

I have read that twice before and it doesn't answer my question.

Yes it is called child's play, I get it, it is about making the children in hospital play. My question was why not refocus the charity to achieve greater good. I am not totally convinced otherwise, but good points made that are not in the about page are:

- hospitals don't appropriately allocate funds to providing entertainment to the children
- there are already mechanisms in place for donations to the hospitals, thus if the charity focused on t

Re:

[crotherm]

Yes it is called child's play, I get it, it is about making the children in hospital play. My question was why not refocus the charity to achieve greater good.

Why don't you start your own charity then? There is room for more. Or is it you just want to "arm chair quarterback" someone else's work?

I have more respect for people who don't boast about doing good things..

I have more respect for people who actually do charity rather than complain.

Re:

[thermal_7]

> Why don't you start your own charity then?

I personally believe the world is in pretty bad shape. I think a complete restructuring is needed. I see charity as dealing in a small way with terrible symptoms rather than addressing the disease. I plan to write a book on all this and if I can start a non-profit organization to focus on looking at a global societal system that is vastly better. Deluded or not this is the way I see it and the best way I can be charitable. Not to boast, but to respond to your i

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that is that they won't prioritize enough money for fun. For almost any institution it's very difficult to intentionally spend the right amount of money on fun, despite how tremendously important it is. Morale makes a huge difference, whether you're developing software, building airplanes, or (especially) battling cancer. But it's very challenging to justify such expenses when there are many very serious and dour individuals scrutinizing your bottom line. The fact is that the medical in

Re:

[porcupine8]

Every nonprofit organization has a specific mission. And to stay alive, they need to focus on that mission, otherwise every charity would just devolve into "Give Money To Whomever Or Whatever Needs It This Week, Inc." This charity's mission is to provide toys and games to sick children in children's hospitals. Not to provide entertainment for sick adults. Not to provide homes to homeless dogs. Not to buy new CT scanners. If you want to help with any of those missions, there are other nonprofits that you can

Re: you *can* donate money

[Mike Fehlauer]

This is a good question, and the answer is: you *can* donate money. The Paypal link and address for donations by check are right in the middle of http://www.childsplaycharity.org/ [childsplaycharity.org]. In this case there is no benefit to cutting out the middle man (Child's Play), because we don't take out any money from the donation pool. Donate a dollar to CP, and we'll give that dollar to a hospital. So why not just send the dollar directly to the hospital? Because we use the cash donations to balance out the toy donations.

Amazon discount

[MetaMarty]

I love this charity and I will surely contribute again, but I can't help but feel a little awkward about the money that amazon is making by offering their goods at full commercial prices. If they would just hand in a little of their profits by offering some discounts for charity, much more could be given to the children.

Re:

[sudnshok]

I agree, it would be nice, although keep in mind that many toys sold on Amazon are sold by third parties. I know Amazon still gets a cut, but it's probably not that much. Also, if you buy stuff actually sold by Amazon - between the free shipping and normal discounts on their merch, I don't think they make all that much off of each sale. They make profits by volume. In fact, according to their financials, Amazon clears about 2.5% of their gross income as profit, which is not all that much when you consid

Full Article?

[MetaMarty]

Why isn't this a slashdot main feature article? I'm sure this is a lot more important than "OMG Iphone hax0red with 5 byte hack!". This project could use some slashdot attention.

Quality control?

[denzacar]

First off - great idea. Love it. Gonna go there and buy something for a kids' hospital somewhere myself after this.

But... how is the new Casino Royale children's hospital material? http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html/?_&id=1YESGR3K97CSS [amazon.com]
And 5 of those?

I mean.. I can imagine one teen desperately needing a daily dose of Daniel Craig in his/hers life, but five of them?
Or could it be that someone thought that this would make a great (free) Christmas gift?

Re:Quality control?

[porcupine8]

Remember that there are teenagers in children's hospitals, too. And they may want individual copies for different wards, so that they don't have to shuffle the video collection around constantly. No, there may never be a time when five kids want to watch it at once, but at least the kid sitting in oncology doesn't have to hike over to the burn unit to get a copy, nor do the nurses have to waste time searching the hospital.

Re:

[denzacar]

Thought about all that.

And still... can't fit that movie with all the other gifts there. That is not a movie for sick kids.
Yeah, it is PG-13 through some creative fiddling around with the camera - but the main character still kills two people in first five minutes of the movie.
Not to mention all the other killings, torture and etc.

Notice what amazon offers you to buy along with it?

Better Together

Buy this DVD with The Departed (Widescreen Edition) DVD ~ Leonardo DiCaprio today!

Yeah... why not? Lets drop a headshot or two in the children's hospital's DVD library.

Anyway... whatever...
Found that hospital

Re:

[MetaMarty]

Firstly, it is of course an emotional thing. People respond emotionally to harmless creatures that are hurting. The fact that they are our species and maybe even relatives makes it stronger.

Secondly, a hospital is a hard environment to be in. The fact that children often don't understand what is happening to them makes for a devastating experience. It's weeks or months or longer being away from your normal environment with everyday people performing what seems to be crude experiments on you often involving

Re:

[porcupine8]

There are charities for those, if you want to donate to them instead, go ahead. In all other species, sick adults don't survive, either. Would you rather we just give up the whole "medicine" thing?