During this year’s Gamers for Giving, we’ll be joined by a number of streamers (both online and on-site) from the video game industry who have volunteered their time to make a difference for kids in hospitals!

Reaching our $350K fundraising goal wouldn’t be possible without the support of companies like Twitch, and the collective power of the streaming community!

The following broadcasters will be joining us on-site LIVE at this year’s Gamers for Giving!

• Ms Vixen
• Lindsay Elyse
• GoldGlove
• FemSteph
• VernNotice
• Hiko
• LadyDevann
• GrimisS
• Khaljiit
• oISketcHIo
• ActaBunniFooFoo
• Curvyllama
• Lewdicolo
• Friskk
• MarkstromTV
• Nicole Salera
• GassyMexican
• Winter
• NrageGaming
• Wavy
• Drift0r
• Bognogus
• DKDiamantes
• Covent
• SplitDaWig
• JaredFPS
• DJTruthSayer

In addition to the streamers involved, we’ll be producing our own broadcast on the Gamers Outreach Twitch channel, hosted by Walshy, SirScoots, Goldenboy, and Axeltoss! Our main stream schedule will be posted soon – but you can be sure to expect some PUBG competition, along with our annual Bob Ross challenge! We’ll also have a couple big announcements to share as we chase after our $350K fundraising goal in support of the kids!

Interested in streaming yourself? You can help support the cause by getting involved from home! Check out this article for helpful resources to get your fundraising campaign started, or consider hosting any of the Gamers Outreach streams on your channel! Don’t forget to tag us on social media so we can help promote your efforts!

Our main broadcast stream will run on both Saturday and Sunday from 12 PM – 8 PM eastern time!

We’ll see you all online April 28th & 29th!

At this year’s Gamers for Giving, we’ll be chasing down a $350,000 fundraising goal (matched by PUBG) in support of providing entertainment to hospitalized children.

Reaching this incredible milestone isn’t going to be possible without the support of the gaming community. We need your help!

During the weekend of April 28th and 29th, as hundreds of attendees convene at the EMU Convocation Center, we’ll be pushing out a live stream on the Gamers Outreach Twitch channel, sharing the latest updates on our cause, and seeking support from our fellow gamers.

In addition to our own broadcast, we’re honored to be joined by a number of streamers from across the internet who will be on-site to help raise funds for hospitalized patients nationwide.

Interested in getting involved yourself? You can start a stream of your very own from home, make a donation, or help spread the word! Here’s how to help:

• Fundraise: We recently built our own 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 in support of the big weekend’s goal! Create your first fundraising campaign here. Need artwork for your stream? Download our stream assets here.
• Donate: Any amount helps! Donations can be made on the front page of the Gamers for Giving website, or by visiting www.GamersOutreach.org/donate.
• Watch: Gamers Outreach will be streamed live all weekend on our Twitch channel, and with help from a variety of streamers in the gaming community. Be sure to check out our Stream page for all the details!
• Spread the Word: Unable to make a donation, but still want to be involved? Help spread Gamers for Giving hype on social media! You can use the hashtag #GFG2018 to help promote this year’s event and encourage friends to get involved.

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 April 28th & 29th! Let’s help others level up!

For 9 years we’ve been proud to call ourselves part of the #ASTROfamily. Having built a GO Kart themselves, the ASTRO Gaming crew has stood alongside Gamers Outreach since the early days of our founding, and the brand continues to be one of our greatest advocates.

ASTRO Gaming creates premium video gaming equipment and peripherals for professional gamers and hardcore enthusiasts. Spun-off from design powerhouse ASTRO Studios, (an industrial design firm responsible for the look & feel of such products as the Xbox 360, HP Blackbird, and Nike+ FuelBand) ASTRO Gaming is a leading manufacturer of video gaming accessories.

If you’re in the market for a new headset, be sure to check out some of the products available at AstroGaming.com. They’re a group of fantastic people who truly produce some of the best accessories available in the market.

Each of our console stations will be equipped with ASTRO Gaming Mixamps. We’ll also be awarding a number of ASTRO products to attendees through various activities at the event, as well as our raffle.

We’re looking forward to another great Gamers for Giving event on April 28th & 29th, proudly supported by ASTRO Gaming!

Airdrop incoming!

In partnership with PUBG Corp. and NZXT, we’re excited to unveil a special PC giveaway celebrating the 10th anniversary of Gamers for Giving!

Themed after the PUBG airdrop crate, this Level 3 gaming rig comes with a customized NZXT H700i case, and is packed with all the hardware you’ll need to win some chicken dinners.

The PC specs are as follows…

• ​CASE – NZXT H700i (PUBG / Gamers Outreach theme)
• CPU COOLING – NZXT Kraken X62
• MOTHERBOARD – NZXT N7 Z370 (Custom PUBG Paint Color)
• GPU (GRAPHICS) – MSI GTX 1080 8GB Gaming X
• CPU – INTEL Core i7-8700K 3.7GHz 6-Core
• POWER SUPPLY – Seasonic Focus Plus 850W 80+ Gold
• EXTRA – Cablemod 6+2 PIN Basic Cable Extension Kit (Red)
• RAM – G.SKILL TridentZ 3000 Mhz 16GB
• STORAGE – CRUCIAL MX500 1TB
• STORAGE – SAMSUNG 960 EVO 500GB M.2
• SOFTWARE – MICROSOFT Windows 10 Home

Between now and April 30th, you can enter for the chance to win this PC by completing a variety of actions on Twitter, or by donating at least $5 to Gamers Outreach!

Entries can be submitted on our Gleam giveaway page, located here.

This giveaway is for U.S. residents only. No purchase or contribution is necessary to enter or win. See the Gleam giveaway page for official Terms & Conditions.

A huge shout out to the teams from PUBG and NZXT for collaborating on this beautiful PC in support of raising funds and awareness for Gamers Outreach programs. We can’t wait to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Gamers for Giving on April 28th & 29th! We hope to see you at the EMU Convocation Center or on the stream!

It’s been 10 years since we hosted the first Gamers for Giving.

Wow – where does the time go!?

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.

Thanks to the generosity of our fellow gamers, 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 19 hospitals nationwide. We estimated as many as 105,000 patients were benefiting annually from initiatives like Project GO Kart and Player 2.

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

Gamers Outreach initiatives exist in 42 facilities across the United States. Collectively, our presence of deployed GO Karts (157 units) has the ability to support as many as 452,600 patients per year.

What’s more: we’re still in the process of expanding. In 2018 (thanks to support from Child’s Play) Gamers Outreach programs will exist in nearly 200 facilities across the U.S. and Canada!

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 2018 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: We recently built our own 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 in support of the big weekend’s goal! Create your first fundraising campaign here. Need artwork for your stream? Download our logo and Twitch banners here.
• Donate: Any amount helps! Donations can be made on the front page of the Gamers for Giving website, or by visiting www.GamersOutreach.org/donate.
• Watch: Gamers Outreach will be streamed live all weekend on our Twitch channel, and with help from a variety of streamers in the gaming community. Be sure to check out our Stream page for all the details!
• Spread the Word: Unable to make a donation, but still want to be involved? Help spread Gamers for Giving hype on social media! You can use the hashtag #GFG2018 to help promote this year’s event and encourage friends to get involved.

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! And remember, all contributions are being matched by our friends at PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds up to $350K! There’s never been a better time to help make an impact.

We’ll see you on April 28th & 29th! Let’s help others level up!

As fellow racing fans, it’s with great pride we welcome DXRacer as the official chair partner of Gamers for Giving 2018!

For the last five years, DXRacer has supported Gamers Outreach as our exclusive seating provider. Their chairs are known for having a race car aesthetic, but are also ergonomically designed to ensure comfort and proper posture during late night gaming sessions. DXRacer is also local to Ann Arbor, Michigan – which makes us all the more grateful to have their support as we create an incredible experience for this year’s attendees.

DXRacer will be outfitting our stream lounge with product, and will also be staffing a small booth at the event for attendees interested in speaking with their representatives. Be sure to swing by, say hello, and thank them for their five years of support!

You can keep up with the latest DXRacer news by following them on Twitter and Facebook!

We’ll see you on April 28th & 29th at the EMU Convocation Center!

Good guy Discord. Over the last few years, Discord has become the chat platform for gamers. We’ve used it ourselves as a hub for the Gamers Outreach community, and it’s been a wonderful resource for staying in touch with our supporters year-to-year.

With that in mind, it’s with great excitement we welcome Discord to Gamers for Giving 2018 as an official sponsor!

Want to interact with fellow Gamers for Giving attendees? Looking for an extra ticket? Need an additional teammate to compete in one of the console tournaments? You should join our Discord server! The Gamers Outreach Discord server is a gathering place for all our attendees and staff to share news of Gamers Outreach programs + Gamers for Giving event activities throughout the year.

The server is open to the public and can be found here.

Throughout Gamers for Giving, our staff will be making use of the Discord server to convey important announcements, relay tournament information, and provide you with an outlet to communicate with other attendees.

This server is especially important for PC gamers participating in the LAN. Many of our event announcements will be conveyed through Discord, so be sure to join the server and get prepared for this year’s event!

We’ll see you on April 28th & 29th at the EMU Convocation Center! Be sure to give Discord some love on Twitter and Facebook!

Competing in one of our headline tournaments? How would you like to win free burritos for a year?

Great! Because that’s exactly what you’ll take home thanks to our newest partner, Chipotle!

Yes, you read that correctly! All players that finish in 1st place during one of our headline tournaments will also receive a special gift from Chipotle – FREE BURRITOS FOR A YEAR!

We’re excited to welcome Chipotle to Gamers for Giving as a sponsor of our cause. Even if you’re not competing in any of our tournaments, attendees can expect to walk home with a bit of Chipotle swag thanks to our newly crafted partnership.

Unable to attend the event in person? Don’t worry, you’ll still have plenty of opportunities to win some Chipotle goodness through one of our stream broadcasts during the weekend.

Be sure to give Chipotle some love on Facebook and Twitter! We look forward to chowing down with you all on April 28th & 29th!

Everyone loves winning stuff. You know what goes well with winning stuff? Helping to support a great cause. At Gamers for Giving 2018, you’ll be able to do both!

During this year’s event, we’ll be accepting donations and selling raffle tickets to fulfill our $350K fundraising quest! Our loot table is the largest it’s ever been, and we can’t wait for you to see the amazing goodies available to win!

Tickets will be sold for $5 each, or you can purchase a batch of five for $20. There is no limit to how many raffle tickets you can purchase, and attendees are allowed to win multiple prizes.

While we can’t spoil all the details, the grand prize of this year’s on-site raffle will be a fully-built custom gaming PC, constructed by James Fislar of FortLAN! We’ve also got a ton of hardware goodies being provided by our sponsors, as well as a few one-of-a-kind collector’s items being donated by our community, such as the below Gears of War emblem built by Infinite Painting Design. You’ll definitely want in on this year’s drawing!

Tickets can be purchased throughout the weekend until 7 PM on Sunday, at which time the raffle drawing will take place.

The Gamers Outreach booth will be located in the atrium this year. Be sure to swing by to learn about our cause and how you can support! We’ll see you on April 28th & 29th at the EMU Convocation Center!