Extra Life New Jersey celebrates 2023 fundraising

The New Jersey Extra Life Guild kicked off its 2024 campaign by gathering at Children's Specialized Hospital to celebrate raising $118,798 in 2023! 🎉

Extra Life New Jersey Guild present check for $118,798 to Children's Specialized Hospital

📈 It was a tough fundraising year for a lot of folks, so it makes the fact that we raised 13% more than the previous year even more significant. It exemplifies the power of community, compassion, and commitment to a cause.

Table of Contents

What is Extra Life?

Who is the New Jersey Extra Life Guild?

Secrets to our success

How can you help?

What is Extra Life?

Extra Life is a fundraising program under the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. The program mobilizes communities of fundraisers to play games and raise funds for critical treatments and healthcare services. It has been an inspiration for my career path and I feel has set the standard for what it means to engage the video game community for fundraising. Every year, tens of thousands of gamers play for their local hospitals and since 2008, the program has raised over $110M. Watch the video below to see how it all started!

Who is the New Jersey Extra Life Guild?

The New Jersey Extra Life Guild's mission is to increase funds and awareness for Children's Specialized Hospital and Children's Miracle Network Hospitals across the nation. The Guild's vision statement is to connect local gaming communities and rallying them in support of the hospital. We do this by organizing guild meetings and member meetups, tabling at conventions and gaming vents, and connecting with partners within the community.

The Guild is led by the NJ Extra Life Guild Advisory Committee under the guidance and supervision of Extra Life Program Director, Jill Butterfield. The Advisory Committee is responsible for expanding guild recruitment, attending events, and finding new fundraising sources such as corporate partnerships. All members of the Committee have between 4-13 years of experience with Extra Life and CSH ( this is my 6th year, in case you were wondering).

Since 2010, the Guild has raised over $1.6M for CSH.

Secrets to our success:

👉 Clear goal: CSH helps treat ~35k patients in the state of New Jersey. Our goal is to be able to help fund the treatment for 50k patients.

👉 Recruitment: The guild had over 125 active participants in 2023, meaning that the average raised per member was around $1,000. I know a lot of orgs are competing for the biggest streamers, and I'm not saying they shouldn't seek out those relationships - it's great if they can work out, but the core of p2p fundraising in this world are communities like ours.

👉 Leadership: Under the guidance of the indomitable Jill Butterfield, CSH has formed the New Jersey Extra Life Guild Advisory Committee, which I am happy to say, I am also a part of. The committee is charged with driving the expansion of recruitment efforts and for finding new avenues of fundraising revenue. Each Advisory Committee member has between 4-13 years of experience in Extra Life, and will be sharing our best practices within our guild's Discord.

If you're an org looking to build a community of fundraisers, my hope is that this gives you some ideas.

How can you help?

For more information about Children's Specialized Hospital, please visit their website: https://www.rwjbh.org/childrens-specialized-hospital/

Donate on my Extra Life fundraising page

Sign up for Extra Life! (We would love to have 150 participants fundraising for CSH in 2024!)

Join the Extra Life New Jersey Discord server

If you're a company that feels like they'd be a good partner for CSH, please reach out to Jillian Butterfield at JButterfield@childrens-specialized.org (you can feel free to contact me, but I'll just send you to Jill 😅)