Role-Playing Game Research - Keep the Donations Coming, You Are Helping To Save the RPG Center and Turn Things Around
Keep the donations coming, you are making a difference saving RPG Research, RPG Museum, RPG Community Center, RPG Mobile, BCI RPG, etc.
We are still running our West-Central Spokane Drop In and RPG programs at the Spark Central Community Center, and we are planning to re-open the East-Central RPG Community Center in June, as long you keep the donations coming, we can make it happen.
- DONATE TO RPG RESEARCH TODAY: https://rpgresearch.com/donate
- VOLUNTEER AT RPG RESEARCH TODAY (IN SPOKANE, WA): https://rpgresearch.com/volunteer
It has been a very busy, but financially rough, 9+ months to say the least.
Despite our radio silence, we have been extremely busy working intensely to turn things around and keep things afloat, we have just been too busy heads-down doing the work, and we haven't had the wherewithal to post regular updates.
Our apologies for that.
All of our volunteers have been very busy.
Niklas and (newly joined volunteer) Shane have been overhauling our servers, network, and private and public cloud infrastructure to make many improvements and continue to improve capabilities, capacity, reliability, and usability, for all of our programs, locally, and online.
Syrus, David, Amber, Danielle, and others have been tied up with new babies in their lives (congratulations!).
John, Dan, Elizabeth (visiting from MA from January to May), and Kip (visiting from FL from March until August, and hoping to move here), have been keeping our Spark Central Community Center Drop in and RPG, in West-Central Spokane, running regularly for our Saturday programs there (for six years we've been running programs there non-stop, this coming August).
Spark Central has also asked us to run a special series this coming May, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Expo '74 World's Fair at Spokane (and of course it is also the 50th anniversary of D&D this year).
So every Saturday in the first three weeks of May, from Noon to 4 pm, we will be running a special Drop In and RPG series: D&D (Witchlight), Doctor Who (Arrowdown), and No Thank you Evil tables all with themes around fairs and festivals.
Kip and Elizabeth are both finishing their Certified Therapeutic Recreational Specialist (CTRS) requirements with internships working full time at Excelsior Wellness, running various Therapeutic Recreation and role-playing game activities.
Dan, Elizabeth, and Kip have been trying to get our online sessions back up and running, they have just been so busy, we haven't been able to pull the trigger on those programs just yet.
John, Dan, and I, have been too busy with everything else to resume the RPG Talk Show or our actual play shows, but we hope to revive them in the coming months.
Valerie, Mario, Luke, Suhwankim, Travis, Dario, Raj, and others, have been continuing to meet weekly, and keep working throughout the week on the BCIRPG.com (Brain-Computer Interface Role-Playing Game) open source project. It is looking promising, we might even have another public demo, and potentially a playable minimal viable product (MVP), by some time this summer.
Valerie, Kip, John, and others have been applying for grants. So far all have been declined, but we will keep trying. None of us have prior grant writing experience, so it is a lot of trial and error.
I have been working on the RPG Center and RPG Museum property improvements, as well as repairs on the Wheelchair Accessible RPG Mobile Bus and Trailers, when I can, on Saturdays and/or Sundays, as well as Spark Central and RPG Research administrative meetings, and also RPG Therapeutics LLC clients, which also help toward paying the RPG Research bills through donations.
The RPG Museum collections are still safe. We had started to move them from the ancient cardboard accounting boxes into more water protecting plastic cases. That has continued in fits and starts when our Archivists are sporadically available to continue the process.
I am now working 100+ hours a week: WebTPA & MedSysGroup is a 40 hrs/wk contract, another 20+ hours for PracticingMusician.com, and then additional 20+ hours on RPG Therapeutics LLC clients, RPG Research, ManufacturingPower.com and iNSUPPLi.com, and related.
Donations are still continuing to be insufficient to cover the center. We had a very helpful surge of $9k in January/February that helped us catch up on back rent and bills for December, January, and February, but we haven't had enough coming in consistently to be able to cover the insurance to allow people on the property so we can re-open the center. We need at least $10k just for the insurance for the year, and then we need $4,500/month to cover the rent and utilities, then we can re-open to the public.
Unfortunately, right now, we are only getting a fraction of what we were getting previously, only a few hundred dollars last month, when we need a minimum of $4,500/month now (plus insurance is coming due in May/June for around $10k), before we can allow the public back on the property. If we can raise about $15,000 by/before June, then we can definitely re-open the center in June!
All of the RPG Museum archives are relatively safe, though the scanning and migration to better storage boxes is temporarily on hold (need more donations for better archival quality, water and light protecting, boxes).
We are still receiving occasional physical donations of additional books, historical game supplies, press releases, and other interesting, and often historic, items (swords, board games, GM screens, unpublished original manuscripts by RPG authors, and much more) from various people donating either to the RPG Research Community Center for use in our programs, or to the RPG Museum for display (or later auctioning duplicates to help raise funds for the museum build out).
We need considerably more in donations (or grants) to finish preparing the RPG Museum building (Building A) to be publicly accessible. Proper museums can be quite a expense, a lot more than a community center. We really need some major benefactors to make that come fully to life. Meanwhile, we keep working every week on that goal, looking forward to the day it can open to the public!
We need a LOT of donations for protective archival museum display cases etc,. refinishing the floors, non-paper damaging fire suppression (special chemical) system installation, etc., before we can open it to the public for tours and the like, but it is still what we are striving toward.
It is all taking a lot longer now due to the sudden reduction in donations of late. We have spoken with many other non-profits that have been experiencing this sudden downturn lately.
The more donations we get, the faster these things can happen to re-open the community center, resume the online programs, and open the RPG Museum.
The landlord really wants us to outright buy the entire lot, before the lease is up in March 2024, we can keep extending the lease, but it would be so much better if the non-profit could buy the property outright (a lot less expensive in the long run. He wants to sell the entire lot to us very inexpensively, at far below market for around 1/12th of an entire city block lot (but we need a LOT more in donations for that to be possible). The lease can be extended, but keeps increasing the monthly rent by $500/month each year, and each time it come up for renewal, there is the chance someone else could swoop in and kick us out. So, the only real safety would be to find the means to buy the land.
If at some point we can raise enough to buy the property outright (mortgage or otherwise), that would be the best solution for long term stability of the RPGMuseum.org especially.
Personally, though directly relevant to these programs, I have also been making some more progress on the GameConsent.com app and NeuroRPG.com. I hope to be able to release the GameConsent web and mobile apps to the public by some time this summer. There will be the open source free version with features that 80% of people will need. Then there will also be a paid-for version for professionals and researchers, with additional features that only 20% of people will probably want, and all the proceeds will be donated to RPG Research.
I am still some some ways away from being able to resume work on the Zdaycity.com game and applications, but still getting client requests for RPG.Education, RPG Parties, RPG Therapeutics LLC, RPGProfessionals.com Training, RPGPublishers.com book publications, and other general RPG.LLC services.
After September-ish, hopefully I won't have to keep working 100+ hours any more, and then I can hopefully once again be available for more than just Saturday/Sunday. If that happens, then I can resume work on finishing the Third Edition of the RPG Professionals Workbook, and other related books, as well as resume the associated training for all of the RPG Research volunteers to get their certifications completed after all this time and experience.
Please help spread the word to donate today!
Regards,
-Hawke Robinson
Founder, Executive Director, and CTO of RPG Research.
--
RPG Research, a non-profit 501(c)3 100% volunteer-run charitable organization providing tabletop role-playing game community programs for everyone ages 4 through 104+, at 101 North Stone Street, Spokane Washington, 99202.
TAX ID EIN: 82-3521274
Learn more about our 100% volunteer-run organization at:
Hawke Robinson
Known across multiple industries as "The Grandfather of Therapeutic Gaming" because he has been studying the effects and uses of role-playing games and their potential to achieve therapeutic goals longer than anyone else, Hawke Robinson is a Washington State Department of Health Registered Recreational Therapist.
He has a diverse and deep background in Therapeutic Recreation / Recreation Therapy, computer science, neuroscience, cognitive neuropsychology, neurotech, research psychology, nursing, play therapy, education, music, and role-playing gaming.
- Hawke Robinson has been involved with role-playing games in community settings since 1977.
- Studying methods for optimizing the experience of role-playing games, software development, and online since 1979.
- A paid professional game master since 1982.
- Studying the effects of role-playing games upon participants since 1983.
- Providing role-playing games in educational settings and for educational goals since 1985.
- Working with incarcerated populations since 1989.
- Researching and using role-playing games to achieve therapeutic goals for a wide range of populations from 2 years old through senior adults since 2004.
- Founder and Executive Director of the non-profit 501(c)3 charitable research and human services organization, RPG Research.
- Founder and CEO of the for-profit RPG Therapeutics LLC and RPG.LLC.
- Author of multiple books in technology and gaming W.A. Hawkes-Robinson books available on Amazon.
- Creator of the wheelchair accessible RPG Mobile fleet vehicles and trailers.
- Founder of the experiential learning Role-Playing Game RPG Museum, and much more.
- Creator of the Brain-Computer Interface Role-Playing Game (BCI RPG) and many other related projects.
No comments yet. Start a new discussion.