Charity fundraising...

Many many years ago (it was either 1991 or 1989, not sure) I took part in a 24 hour RPG event to raise money for Red Nose Day.

Throughout the KoA days we had a modest but consistent charitable donation plan focussed around cancer charities such as MacMillan Cancer Support.

The ability to raise sizable funds for charities is one of the most celebrated elements of Conpulsion and other tabletop gaming events.

It's also something I'm keen to do in relation to this 2nd Chapter and I've signed up for a seminar at Gen Con to try and help come up with other ways of doing this.  There's a group who are running games of D&D to raise money called Castles & Chemo, going to try and re-organise my schedule to get in on one of the games.

So why am I posting this now?  Well it's kinda 2 fold really.

The first reason is that I have been thinking about this as part of the 2nd Chapter, specifically organising a 24 hour gaming event to raise money for charity (method and charity involved were still to be confirmed). Ideally I'd want to make this event happen in 2014 but post-GenCon to give it time to be promoted etc.  This wouldn't necessarily be 1 group of people playing 1 RPG or a series of board/card games but more mini-con in an attempt to promote the hobby and raise some funds for charity at the same time.

The second reason is much sadder unfortunately.  I learned on Monday that a good friend of mine (and former customer at KoA) passed away on Friday 13th after a long tough battle against cancer.
Ray Gillespie epitomised the Tabletop Ambassador role that I've defined previously. Hugely positive hobbyist who most definitely was there to have fun (as his win rate at games suggested!).

Ray was also one of the most thoroughly decent, friendly, engaging people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. He will be sorely missed in my life.

Taking this on board and factoring in the awareness that the wider community had of Ray I feel now is the time to start planning for the charity event I had been pondering.  A number of names sprung to mind, some less family friendly than others but there will be a reveal in due course once ready! Needless to say we're not using +Liz Mackie 's initial suggestion!

What I'd appreciate is if people could make suggestions on what we should do and how we should go about raising money.

Prize draws tend to work well but I don't want to rely on getting gifts to fulfill that.

I'm thinking of things like charity re-rolls which would work for all dice based games, charity shuffles for all deck building games etc etc.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated on fund raising and of course on what the event itself should entail.