Heart Piece: The Zelda Universe Charity Organisation

Hello Zelda Universe! Bex here, and I'm here to talk about something that a few of us are very excited about.

A couple of weeks ago a thread was started that proposed an organisation of ZU members to coordinate site-based charitable donations. Since the original thread died a bit, a few of us (Mattocks, Margar, Kassi and myself) have been discussing this idea, and we're proud to introduce:



So, what's all this then?

Us here at Heart Piece intend to regularily organise charitable events that all of ZU can, if they choose to, participate in. Although we have organised something that will begin very shortly, this will not be our only venture.

Childs Play

"Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over two million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception."

Childs Play is a charity that many of you have probably heard of. Founded by the lovely boys from Penny Arcade, Childs Play delivers games and other toys, purchased by donators, to children's hospitals.

It's a personal favorite charity of mine, as it not only provides a lot of enjoyment to very sick kids, but also demonstrates the capacity for kindness and social usefulness in the gaming community.

This is how it works: You can select a hospital from the map on their site, and you will be taken to an Amazon wishlist. From there you can buy any combination of products, from a couple of books right up to gaming consoles, and have them sent to that hospital. With Childs Play you know exactly what you have contributed and exactly where it is going.

And what are you doing about it?

Here is our plan:

We intend to recruit three or four organisers (see further below), hopefully those who live near hospitals that Childs Play sends donations to.

We will then open for donations, and from then on we count on our members.

Once we've received all we can, each organiser will send a contribution, the contents of which we will decide on as a group, to the hospital that they chose.

Good thinking, Bex Mattocks Kassi and Margar!

Why thankyou!

But how can WE get involved?

We need YOU to help us make this work by, if possible, volunteering as an organiser. We need three or 4 members with paypal accounts, and who we can trust with donations. We are still very much in the organisation stage of things, and there are a couple of grey areas about exactly how we are going to go about this. But it will be a lot easier to work it out once we have volunteers. Keep in mind that if you are an organiser, you will be able to choose the hospital which you contribute to.

We are only looking for 3 or 4 because we do not want to spread our donations out too thinly. If we only get one or two volunteers, so be it. It shouldn't be too much of a problem.

If you can't be a coordinator but you are interested in helping, simply donate when we begin accepting donations! We'll put together a little I-Donated banner for sigs and whatnot, and you'll be contributing to an excellent cause.

.....

We'd like to hear your opinions, gauge your enthusiam, answer your questions, and hear from any possible volunteers. So, go forth and post!

I'd also like to personally thank Kassi, who had this good idea in the first place.

Remember- YOU are the piece that Heart Piece needs

Personaly, I'd like to put a call out to my fellow Canadians. Unfortunatly, I can not participate as a donations manager, but I would love to see some donations go to The Hospital for Sick Children. So if you are Canadian, and would like to help out sick kid's, please put your name in.

Great idea. :D Many many many thanks to you three/four for setting it up. Hopefully I'll be able to donate; unfortunately I can't act as an organiser but I'll try to help in one way or another.

Man, I wish I had Paypal so I could be an organizer.

PayPal is the fall of me. D:

Is there any other possible way to donate to this cause? Other than using PayPal? However, if you're looking for someone to overlook the donations or keep them in check, or whatnot, then I am volunteering for the job. Unless it's not needed, whereas, that's ok. ;P

I do not have a PayPal account, but is there another way to donate? I'd love to help out, and it's a great cause.

Originally Posted by musical zombie.

I do not have a PayPal account, but is there another way to donate? I'd love to help out, and it's a great cause.

hmm... does one have to have a paypal account to use Ebay?
because I know you can sell stuff on ebay and have the money go directly to childsplay. You wouldn't need to collect any money cuz it would go directly to childsplay. you'd just have to mail the person your stuff.

I don't have anything to sell on eBay. :< There isn't an address I can mail some stuff that I buy myself or anything?

you can buy things on amazon and have it sent to them, yes. you can't mail them stuff yourself, though.
paypal accoutns take like 2 minutes to set up. as long as you have a bank account or credit card.

Okay, lemme clarify here for a second. There are a few ways of donating to Childs Play- either direct monetary donations, the model that we are using here, and something that involves ebay and is very complicated.

What we're trying to do here is pull ZU together and make one big contribution as a group. We need organisers with Paypal accounts so that they can actually collect money. I think (but don't know) that you can send money to a paypal account through credit card. I'll need to get someone to confirm this. So it will probably be easier to donate than it will be to be an organiser, you just need to know someone with a credit card. Donating to this will hopefully work just like donating to ZU.

Although, if you do find a way to donate to childs play that isn't related to us, let us know about it

Amazon seems like it will work. I'll find SOME way to donate. Fantastic cause.

Also, by games, do you mean both video games and/or other nonvideo games (ie board games etc)? Because I wouldn't mind spending fifty dollars on a video game and knowing that the product is helping sick children.

The amazon wishlists of each hospital usually include both video gaming items and things like books or colouring books.

When we have collected up all of our donations we're going to have to decide on what our contribution includes based on the opinions of ZU, so what we donate will probably be game-related.

So, I'm guessing snail mailing money is outta the question. xD

What about money orders? Nah. That'd probably be to much of a hassle.

You know, I'm not actually sure. Can anyone tell us the ways in which money can be sent to a Paypal account?

I wish I could, but I realy know nothing about paypal.

Let me stp in here and clear some things up.
WAYS OF CONTRIBUTING TO CHILD'SPLAY:
1. Donate money directly to them
2. buy something on Amazon and have it mailed to childsplay
3. sell something (anything) on ebay, and you can choose to have the money for it go to childsplay (there is an option when setting up your sale on ebay to have the buyer's payment go to a charity organization of your choice). It's not complicated at all.


Paypal accounts are nothing more than a way of buying and selling things online without the merchant seeing your credit card or bank info. Paypal is simply a middle man. the keeper of your credit card/bank account numbers. whomever you are giving money to never sees your information.

If we are simply going to ask people to donate money, all we have to do is direct them to the childsplay website, and they can donate themselves and simply get a receipt (since it's a charitable donation, you will be able to get a receipt since many people give charitable and claim it for tax purposes) or take a screen shot of the page (with personal info blacked out if any is shown). that way we can keep track of how much money we've raised for them.

If you'd rather collect money and then buy stuff on amazon, then we'll have to have someone set up one universal heart piece paypal account for people to donate to. whoever is in charge of the account can then take all the money raised and be in charge of purchasing the stuff.

of course, anyone with junk to get rid of can sell it on ebay and simply choose the option of having the money go to childsplay. simple.

Originally Posted by Margaret

If you'd rather collect money and then buy stuff on amazon, then we'll have to have someone set up one universal heart piece paypal account for people to donate to. whoever is in charge of the account can then take all the money raised and be in charge of purchasing the stuff.

I think we decided on doing this because it is actualy through ZU so we can make an "official" ZU donation to Child's Play instead of a whole bunch of scattered little ones. It'll be easier to keep track of.

Bex, this thread looks great. Thanks a billion for starting it.

I would like to interject that as far as snail-mail goes, if we are doing regional donations, I will consider receiving the donations via USPostal. (I will consider P.O. Boxing for safety's sake) That being said, if we do regional donations and such, Lex and I will be manning the US SouthWest group. =) (It would give us a good excuse to visit San Diego! <3)

Guys! Hi!

Okay, Kassi has suggested to me via PM (Thanks Kassi you wonderful thing) that she could set up a paypal account to facilitate donations, but that she would want the approval of the community. So, guys- do you approve?

I for one think its a good idea, as other volunteers haven't been forthcoming, and if we can trust anyone with our donations it's Kassi (whose idea this was in the first place).

Ur idea is great. Sadly, I myself can't be much of an help since I live far away (not that far really) in Finland.