Stats from the Event
Originally we had set our goal low because we did not know what to expect. We had a goal of $250 to start with, which I increased when Nick joined the team to $325. When the dust settled after the event we had a total of $590 in donations. This is great for a couple of reasons. For one we were overwhelmed by how strong our circle of friends and family supported Children's Medical Center. For two it gives us a solid goal to set next year. We have a baseline now, and we know what to shoot for in the future (and believe me we plan on doing better than $590 next year for sure).To put some context to the number, the coordinators at Extra Life told us that each registered participant brings in an average of $100. That is a good number considering we had over 15,000 registered participants this year, so hopefully that statistic held up. Based on some rough math and the last number communicated to the teams, the event raised over $1,930,000 across over 15,000 gamers, which is a little over $120 per participant. Amazingly an estimated half of registered participants may never raise a dollar due to various reasons, so that average is even higher if $0 participants are factored out.
On our team we started three individual fund raising pages. Right now we sit at $590, so split that by three to get an average of $196.67 per participant, well above the average. We were also 3 out of 132 participants to play for Children's Medical Center. Those 132 (or more if more joined after hospital data was provided) pushed Children's Medical Center into the top 25 hospitals by funds raised. Out of over 2,300 teams, our team ranks in the top 650, which is pretty good for a first attempt.
Lessons Learned
I also wanted to talk about some of the lessons we learned this year, since it was our first try at gaming for charity. One thing I certainly want to do next year is diversify our hospitals. We have a lot of relatives and friends in Louisiana, and our hospital was in Texas. The Louisiana folks still supported heavily, but local community is always easier to rally around. Expect to see several hospital options from our team next year.We also had three separate pages for the same hospital. Even though we had three people actively seeking donations, I want to simplify that next year. Look for one page per hospital we support. Our team will discuss that next year when we prep for the event.
We also learned plenty of lessons about playing games for 24 hours. Surprisingly we did not even come close to our planned games list. 24 hours is not as long as you might suspect when playing engaging games. We'll simplify our list next year. Out of my personal list, we played Skylanders, Lego Batman 2, Mario Kart, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II, Shatter, Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead, Crazy Taxi, and Red Dead Redemption, along with a few Android games Joshua played. That is roughly 2 and a half hours per game, with the most played games being Lego Batman 2 and Halo Reach. Additionally we learned that the entire team hit a wall at the exact same time (from about 2:30 AM to 3:30AM was when that wall hit for each of us). We may look to rotate in at that point or take snack breaks or something. That wall was vicious.
I think one positive I will try to maintain next year was the types of updates I provided via Facebook and Twitter. I tried not to inundate everyone with random game details, but instead focus simply on what games we were playing at the time and the people who were playing them. Any feedback on the updates would be welcome, but everything I have heard was pretty positive.
Finally look for a higher goal next year. We shot low and hit high this year, but we do not want to make it easy on ourselves. We expect to match and surpass our totals next year.
Final Thoughts
Finally I wanted to let everyone know the donation pages will still be active for a few days more. We will no longer be actively seeking donations, since our planned event has passed. However, if you would like to donate feel free to visit our team page here: Shoot Many Bad Guys. The page will be taken down prior to end of the year for various reasons by the event coordinators. The slate needs to be cleaned prior to any 2013 events for various tax and reporting reasons.Thanks again everyone for the support. In the meantime we plan to utilize this blog to cover video games our team is currently playing. If you want to read any reviews from our team, feel free to check this space.
Until next time.
- Scott
No comments:
Post a Comment