GamesForSoldiers.org - Finally up and running
 

So, I finally got Games For Soldiers up and running, and we've made our first donation (shipping tomorrow). I'd love to see some TFPers over there participating if possible, or at least showing support. <3

And, we can finally take donations:

LINKY

As of now, I am paying for all packages shipped on my own.

Shit yeah.

What a great idea! I will check with my husband to see which games we can donate. I am sure we have some he does not play anymore. I can donate the game without a system, right?

Yes, any games (new or used), DVDs, or game systems. Also cards, card games and other small (travel style) games are good. We try to stick at least a few things into each flat rate box we send. :)

Good job Xeph, I can't help at the moment but I will try and come up with something. Thank you for your volunteerism and efforts. It's nice to see that some people in this day and age still appreciate and support our men and women in the service.

Cards, poker chips, and green felt!

If you donate a good set of poker chips and some green felt, I guarantee they will be used almost continuously, and by a large number of people. It is easy overseas to hire a local carpenter to make a poker table for you...provided you have felt and the chips to play with. Cards too, to a lesser degree. We had a regular circuit of games when I was deployed. And we went wherever the game was several times a week. It made for a great change of scenery and we got to make a lot of new friends that way.

DVD's are abundant on a deployment as Haji Copies are nearly free and many are very good quality. I would not recommend going out of your way to donate any DVD's for that reason. Though if you have extras, it won't hurt.

Current Game Systems are very popular, XBox360 seems to be at the top of the pile right now. Most units will already have a player, so you will get the most bang for your buck out of the games.

Board Games will also get a lot of mileage. Monopoly, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, Etc. Something that takes time to play.

Good books too! For whatever reason, most of the books we got were cheesy romance novels. Which some people really like, but not most soldiers. I think it is a product of wives and mothers sending the books they had on hand. Just about anything else will find an audience.

Magazines! Especially gun mags, motorcycle mags, and mens magazines (Maxim, Mens Journal, Etc).

If you're going to plug it, can we get a link?

I'd be willing to donate a PS2 and several games. Is that possible?

Pretty sure there is and has been a link in the OP from the start. :)

No, I mean, can the TFP get a link on their site?

Well Halx, I COULD plug the TFP. I already plug it on my own blog. The only reason I'm not sure it's a good plan is because the TFP isn't exactly family-friendly (nor should it be). If that's an issue, as I know there is a policy to do such, we can probably just kill this thread until I figure out how I want to handle it. I'm not 100% against a link back to the TFP, but then a lot of donations do come from family and christian type groups that might balk at such a thing being linked from the site. While I'd love to tell them to go screw themselves, the site isn't about me, it's about hooking up the troops.

If there IS anything to discuss or anything else we could work out, let me know. You know I'm always happy to pull traffic to the TFP (like from the Gaming forums :p ). I just don't know if it would be a great fit right now. Let me know... :)
-----Added 6/8/2008 at 09 : 12 : 09-----

The man speaks the truth. Decks of cards get eaten by troops playing Spades all the time. We went through a deck a month easily just in my squad. Playing cards in the field can mess up cards pretty quickly.

When sending stuff to GamesForSoldiers, by all means feel free to include any entertainment type items, including magazines and such. We don't really go for the hygiene items as there are already MANY groups dedicated to pushing such things to troops. We had more soap and deodorant than we could've used in 3 years when I was there. LOL

Ok, I have done something that might be (hopefully) a happy medium about the link issue.

I posted a question on the GamesForSoldiers forum that contains a link back to TFP. So there technically is a link over there now, but it's not from any of the staff. So if any g-rated types have a problem with the link you can just blame it on me. :D

nice mrkilxx... :)


As a side note, I responded to your post :)


also, please digg this article as well as hit it up on Reddit

-----Added 7/8/2008 at 02 : 14 : 10-----

I wish people would actually go to the forums to request stuff, but I am getting emails. Such as:

this one

The guy is serving 20-25km from where I was. He got there the month I left. Lucky guy!

dugg

Dugg. Good luck with this, xeph!

Long time listener first time caller, I have a question and a comment for the guest.

First off, does the donor get any kind of record of their donation? Even if this isn't a 501(c)3, it can still be rebated in income taxes.

Also, I had a difficult time figuring out how to actually send games. I found it in ABOUT US, but it might help to jump that info to the front page.

/always a complainer

Poppinjay, I can issue a receipt for the donation, absolutely. I wasn't aware that it could be used against taxes if the organization was not 501(c)(3). Interesting...

Also, yes, I need to put a little blurb on the front page to make it more obvious. Still working out a LOT of kinks with the website.

Thanks for calling in ;)

I don't have any games to donate, but is there a way for me to send money to help with shipping costs?

I find it funny that tfp is not blocked, but gamesforsoldiers.org is blocked on the networks out here.

gamesforsoldiers.org is blocked??? I haven't even had the domain for a month yet, wtf?!

Oh wait... it may not have propogated OUT to those DNS servers yet... maybe? Satellite through Europe? I only hooked it to the DNS pretty recently.

At any rate, our paypal email address is: jesse[-=at=-]gamesforsoldiers.org. Monetary donations are awesome, actually. We GET games in but I've paid to ship them all out so far, lol. I appreciate the help.

If you find a way to get to the site, stop on the forums and say hello.

Keep in mind that many of the soldiers out there do not have very reliable power as well. Simple games like monopoly or puzzles can be a hit from what I understand. If you only have a couple hours a day of power it is hard to make good use of powered games.

Even the remotest of FOBs usually have solid power. Without power they would not be able to properly run their commo, which includes PCs. We were in the middle of nowhere (literally) and had very consistent 220v/110v power. It's all generator-based and they run on diesel, something there is AMPLE amounts of in theater.

However, yes, as mentioned on our website, we do take donations of playing cards and card-based games as well as smaller (travel sized) games that the troops would like. That stuff is always welcomed as well.

As an FYI, we just scored an agreement for a donation from EA. I'm pretty excited. Hopefully it'll be enough to fill one or two requests in and of itself. Most publishers/developers send between 6 and 14 titles.

I'm pretty sure an access list restricting the words "game" "blog" "forum" in domain names and prefixes has been set on our network. Even though it was just registered it was probably blocked immediately upon registering in DNS.

Bump this thread in a week, next paycheck I'll paypal some funds your way.

Congrats on the agreement with EA!

you are a very good person for getting that site going. i promise if i have any games that i dont want anymore, ill send them away for sure.

We shipped our second and third donations today. We've sent a total of 20 games to 3 separate units in remote areas of Afghanistan. This is not including other personal donations made before the site went live and we started taking donations under the Games For Soldiers name.

Anything you guys can do to help would be awesome. DVDs, video games, new or used (or cash donations to the paypal listed above to help cover shipping).

Thanks!

I'm working on getting my donations together.

Books were mentioned earlier in the thread, so are you interested in books as well? How about cds?

CDs, sure. Books, we'd prefer to stick with paperbacks. We use flat rate boxes, so the cost isn't a huge issue, but those boxes aren't THAT large, so... yeah, paperbacks :)

Yeah, all web sites that contain anything non-military related is blocked on the theatre network via local civilian system admins using Websense. Soldiers can go to either the local Help Desk (Where user accounts and phones are issued) or the TCF (On larger installations, look for satellite dishes) and request an IP be put on the safe list for their unit computer. They will require you to fill out a form that lists the web address as well as the reason it should be lifted.
I had many automotive websites lifted by saying I was pursuing degrees in Mechanical and Diesel Engineering. The SysAdmin is a civilian and he just needs a legit reason to lift the IP profile.
Hope this helps some guys get access to some niche websites. I know the MWR sucks, better to use the unit computers after hours.

Interesting. We never had MWR computers. We all chipped in for a sat-link from a British company. It was slow as sin, but it was 100% open. Well, and some of us used SIPRNET, but obviously not for anything other than strictly business stuff.

Sent off a couple of boxes of goodies this morning.

Awesome, mrklixx. Thanks!

It looks like we've also secured additional donations from 2K Games, PopCap Games and Epic Games and Capcom as well as a potential donation from the EA Outreach and Corporate Giving program. I am QUITE happy with how things are progressing. I'll be sure to keep posting updates now and then.

Hey, as a side note, if you have nothing to offer donation wise, you can always stop by The Forums, register and add a note to the troops that look at the forums. :)

Well, pending a rather LARGE (and boy do I mean large) donation from a certain game developer and publisher, we are pushing to incorporate and file our 501(c)(3) soon. Anyone care to help us cover the $359 cost? Paypal: jesse@gamesforsoldiers.org

Love you all! :p


EDIT: As a side note, and I'll post this in Tilted Gaming as well, any old OXM discs you have lying around? Those would be GREAT donations. Each OXM disc has the backwards compatibility update on it to allow play of old Xbox games. Sending one out with each of the Xbox game donations allows units with 360s to play those games. Could be a huge help for us! Thanks!

Oooohhhh, we might be getting a little article in a (very) local paper. Hey, better than nothing, right? Everyone cross their fingers! :)

Man that is awesome. Great work. I will dig through my games and send some your way if I find any worth sending.

Wow, that was a great donation. Also, that was the quickest I've ever seen USPS Media Mail move, lol. Thank you SO much!

I was wondering if you had anything to support this statement. Because everything I am finding on charitable donation tax deduction seems to say that the only organizations that don't need a 501(c) to be "qualified" are religious organizations.


Also do you (or anyone else for that matter) know if it is even worth it to try and deduct charitable donations.

I gave $500 worth of PC equipment to a charitable organization and actually got a receipt for it and put it on my taxes this past year and there was no deduction so I doubt you would get one from videogames.

The deduction is a deduction from your adjusted gross income, not direct taxes owned. So, $500 would come off of say $50,000 AGI, not $9,500 owed taxes. Also, it is not included if all deductible donations do not exceed the basic allowance (something like $4000 that you fill out on your 1040 somewhere). If it is less, then the normal amount applies. If it is more, then it applies instead.

Hey X, you in 'Ghan, I am about to go downrange to Iraq, so let's hook up so I can get this started for my area. Hit me up so I can get the details to start it off, ok?

I'm Stateside now... got back in April. Get me your info once you're set up in Iraq and I'll be sure to get you guys some goodies! :)

Hey BuDDaH, do you know where in Iraq you will be heading?

Wow,

Popcap Games just sent us a 60 game donation! That's HUGE! This is all really working out well. It looks like an article will be printed about GFS tomorrow morning as well. *excited*

Hey, kurty[B], are you still over there or are you home now?