Child's Play Approaches Half a Million Dollars

SecureTheNet writes "Created by Penny Arcade, the Child's Play Charity gives all toy and monetary donations directly to hospitals for distribution to sick kids. There are NO administration fees taken. As the holidays approach, the donations are approaching half a million dollars!"

Surprising

[mfh]

I'm surprised PayPal accepts donations for PA. Remember when PayPal shut down the SomethingAwful.com Katrina aid drive [somethingawful.com] without so much as a consideration for the victims? I thought their response was that PayPal doesn't support charities? Or was it a conflict of interest with one of the major charity groups that PayPal is contracted with?

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Given PA's general level of planning and professionalism (No, that's not sarcasm. Really. I promise.) I would guess that they actually contacted PayPal and cleared everything with them before going ahead with anything. I believe SomethingAwful.com just put up an account and had people donate, which raised a bunch of red flags with PayPal. SA could have gotten their money back eventually, but they were in a hurry (understandable, what with people being immediately in need). Child's Play, on the other hand, has a very long lead time to make sure things get handled properly. Note that this is not a criticism of SA in any way, just noting that PA has a much easier situation.

Re:That is great..

[ucblockhead]

But they aren't doing that. They are asking hospitals to put up Amazon wishlists containing what they want and having poeple buy off that. It's great, really, because the hospitals get what they want, and no one spends much effort. What's great about it is that it is NOT giving money. It's not like most charities where you fire off twenty bucks and have no clue what happened to it. I went on the list, saw that the Oakland Childrens' Hospital needed certain videogames. By making the purchase, I know that they got one of the things they needed, and I know that 100% of my money went to some kid having games.

Flamebait, false comparison

[happyemoticon]

Balderdash. Raising your spirits helps you get well - that's why there's a statistical link between religion (or optimism) and health. In one case (no, I don't have a link to support it), a double-blind study showed a correlation between a negative attitude going into heart surgery and dying in said heart surgery.

There's a difference between charity to save somebody's life - be it giving toys to a kid with cancer so he doesn't die of despair, or giving clean water to somebody in Africa so he doesn't die of dysentery - and charity to finance somebody's continued economic indifference and unwillingness to support themselves. A living person at least has a chance of economic contribution but a dead person has none, unless you're talking soylent green.

Fundraising at Laurier

[fa1uzure]

A campus club(Kult of Gaming) I belong to at WLU in Waterloo, Ontario was doing fundraising for this charity. I don't know the total amount we raised, but we got the creater of VGcats to come out and do a signing for childsplay, where the profits went to the charity, yesterday.