Since CoreCon accepts donations in order to be able to have an event each year, we make a huge effort to give back to the community in various ways. Some of our most recognized events include raising money through the annual Extra Life fundraiser and organizing blood drives. We also select a charity to benefit through a silent auction at each convention.
2018 Charity: Extra Life
This year’s selected charity for CoreCon X: Return of the Heroes, Revenge of the Villains is Extra Life. This seemed like an obvious pick since we do so much to support them already, but we still had a hard time selecting only one organization. Hopefully some day we will have the funds to be able to help every single person in need.
Extra Life is a national fundraising campaign that partners with Children’s Miracle Network and is aimed at video gamers and tabletop gamers participating in 24-hour gaming marathons to raise money for their local CMN Hospital. Extra Life schedules a day each year where participants will play games for a full 24 hours in support of their cause. This is a really fun way to raise awareness, though it’s still a struggle to make it a full day without sleep. A good portion of our CoreCon Inner Core members participate in Extra Life each year, and we encourage others to do so as well. We raised more than $4,000 this past year!
Every dollar that is raised through Extra Life goes directly to assist CMN at the player’s local CMN affiliated Children’s Hospital. The funds provide things as simple as toys and games for the kids to things as important as medical equipment that is specialized for pediatrics and teaching tools to help parents and kids understand complex medical procedures. Some might try to argue that the hospital can provide these services to the parents and children, but Extra Life takes care of things that the hospital doesn’t, like counseling for the patients and their families.
Some Past Charities:
- Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Red River Valley
- The Village Family Service Center
- Creative Care for Reaching Independence (CCRI)
- Rape and Abuse Crisis Center
- Freedom Resource Center
- Gary “House” Williams
If you have anything you’d like to contribute to the silent auction or just have general questions, please email charity@fargocorecon.org.
Read the interview with Steve Dekrey, President of the Extra Life Guild of North Dakota, here.
Want to get involved in Extra Life? Simply make a profile at https://www.extra-life.org and select the hospital you would like to support. You can also join the team page for CoreCon / Anime Fargo / Fargo GameFest.
