Two of my most favorite gaming conventions of the year have one great thing in common: Both TennoCon and Dragon Con raise money for a selected charity each year. And not only do they promote the campaign, they emphasize it as well. Thanks to generous fans and attendees this year, these two events wrapped up the 2023 summer con season with some big gains for community charities. TennoCon and Dragon Con each raised $200,000 or more in their countries’ currencies (CAD and USD) for their respective charities, Canada Learning Code and CURE Childhood Cancer.
Tenno generosity
Since its inception, TennoCon has been raising funds for many local Canadian Charities. Past initiatives include helping the homeless, increasing awareness of issues like mental health, and supporting youth, women, veterans, and indigenous education. For 2023, Digital Extremes selected Canada Learning Code as its charity partner. As the world keeps barreling ahead technologically, this charity’s mission is to bring accessible computer science to communities across Canada so that everyone can learn to create with technology. Canada Learning Code partners with educators, designs resources, and delivers learning experiences to those who might not be able to find or access such resources on their own. Its official site states,
“The world is changing, and we want Canada to be ready. We’re here to make sure that all people in Canada — particularly women, girls, people with disabilities, Indigenous youth and newcomers — have access to the knowledge they need to prosper in our digital world.”
In support of this mission, Digital Extremes raised $200,000 CAD through ticket sales to Tenno as well as player donations from the live stream to send to the charity. Who knows? Maybe some of these future programmers will work at DE.
Dragon Con doing good
Unlike the single-day TennoCon, Dragon Con is a five-day event spanning the entire Labor Day weekend. As a larger, longer event, it utilizes a number of ways to raise funds for its chosen charity, including hosting a special charity auction and the Dragon Con Hustle 5K event (hey, you walk a whole lot during the convention anyway, and the entire entry fee goes to charity).
Dragon Con also sports different tracks within the con, such horror, puppetry, high fantasy, video games, and so much more. Many — if not all — of these tracks also set goals and collect funds, but it all goes to the official charity partner of the year. For instance, the Star Wars track and the Chess Jawa raised $10,000.03. In the MMORPG scene, the Final Fantasy XIV group held a contest called Chompin’ for Charity where donations were votes between burgers and tacos to feed G’raha Tia; team taco won bringing in over $1K, while team burger added $171 more to the raised funds.
When it is all added up, Dragon Con’s commitment was to providing a dollar for dollar match for raised funds, increasing its pledge cap from $100,000 to $125,000 for the 2023 show. And this year, all funds raised go to CURE Childhood Cancer. CURE Childhood Cancer non-profit is dedicated to conquering childhood cancer through both funding targeted research and supporting patients and their families. Since CURE’s beginnings in 1975, they have raised millions of dollars to advance promising research, lobbied for important legislation, and provided tangible support to thousands of childhood cancer patients and their families. And thanks to the generosity of attendees and fans of Dragon Con and the event organization itself, over $200K (and counting!) was added to help fund this research and support!
From happy stories to good deeds within our virtual worlds and the real world around us, there’s so much good in the gaming community. That’s why Massively OP’s MJ Guthrie pens Massively Uplifting: to highlight those generous, inspiring, heart-warming, and uplifting tales that exist throughout the MMOverse. Send your suggested stories along to warmfuzzies@massivelyop.com for our next entry!
