Role-Playing Game Research - Shutting Down RPG Community Center - RPG Research & RPG Museum Continue

We are shutting down the RPG Community Center (rpgcommunitycenter.com) Effective February 2025.

Photo Above: RPG Center Buildings A & B, with RPG SUV on far right side, and some of the various active community participant cars parked in front.

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Photo Below: Satellite View (Google Maps) of the entire lot, including Building A, Building B, Building C, 4 storage sheds, 2 covered areas, parking lot, fenced enclosures. Plus showing RPG Bus (far left), RPG Trailer 3 (bottom-right), and RPG-SUV + RPG Trailer 2 (far-right).

RPG Research's Role-Playing Game Community Center is shutting down February 2025. We will be 100% moved out by February 28th, 2025.

The 501(c)3 RPG Research non-profit organization continues to operate and will revert back to its prior (much more impactful) mobile facilities and online global programs beginning around May 2025.

The RPG Museum (rpgmuseum.org) collection will continue to be safely protected, and when we get resettled, we will resume the cataloguing, indexing, scanning, etc. of the vast (and growing) RPG Museum artifacts. You may continue to send your RPG Museum Artifacts to us, but send your shipments to our Monroe Street Office: 1312 N Monroe St. Suite 114, Spokane, WA 99201.

Pending sufficient donations, the RPG Mobile Accessibile Mobile Facilties Fleet will resume operations Summer 2025.

OVERVIEW

We are a research organization. This includes real-world experiments. As with all experiments, some may not go quite as expected. Since we are a research and evidence-in-practice-driven organization, every effort is more useful data that further informs further forward movement in this growing industry.

It was an interesting 3+ year experiment.

We have learned much about the many hurdles necessary to try to establish and sustain a role-playing gaming (and cooperative music) dedicated community center supported only by crowdfunding without any wealthy patrons or grants (we tried to acquire the latter two (wealthy patrons or grants), but were never able to do so. We were completely dependent on the crowdsourcing and events donations. While RPG Therapeutics LLC's for-profit models have been self-sustaining, this non-profit and free to the public model only had (just barely enough) self-sustaining financial support to cover operations for about 2 years.

Personally, I was wary about taking on so much overhead without a much better support base. Also, I was proud of our innovative and incredible track record with our prior models that incurred very little dedicated overhead, and provided huge global impact.

While the actual donation numbers fluctuate wildly from month-to-month and year-to-year from $900 to $18,000 USD a year, prior to taking on the RPG Community Center our average annual base operating costs were around only $5,000 to $6,000 per year. Then if we had a month with more donations, we would expand services delivery operations more in the following months, and then if donations were insufficient, we could easily scale down to "low burn" easily sustainable baseline until the next influx of donations.

During that time prior to the RPG Community Center, with a peak of only a little more than 200 volunteers across 6 continents (30+ were pre-full-and-post-PhDs) we directly delivered services to more than 100,000 people across 6 continents, and indirectly impacted millions more through our online and mobile facilities programs delivery models.

At just around $5500/yr, we were helping tens of thousands of people locally, nationally, and globally, every year!

Unfortunately, with the community center model and draconian insurance restrictions, we have only been able to provide services to only hundreds of people per year, at a cost of more than $45,000/yr. Completely inverting our previously phenomenal Impact efficacy.

However, every time we attempted to get grants, we were told we needed to have a dedicated physical headquarters where we delivered services.

I was hesitant. We had a unique and incredibly successful model delivering exceptional global impact. However, in a unanimous vote from the board I took on the task of trying to find a physical property that we could afford with our meager budget and could host our broad array of services, in the hopes it would then also qualify us for a number of grants to help us further expend the benefits of our programs.

It took around 2 years of searching to find a property we could afford. In some ways it was less than ideal, while in other ways it was exactly what a community center, that wants to serve those most in need, should be. It was a major fixer-upper, but had potential. It was right next to a major bus route, not far from downtown, close to various mental health services, and in a rough neighborhood where the local population (according to our decades of research) could get extensive benefit from our programs.

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One problem though was that due to RPG Research's very small budget, no one would lease us a space without me having to personally be the guarantor. After consulting with my wonderfully supportive wife, Katy, we took the plunge and signed a 3 year lease on the corner of Stone and Riverside in East-Central Spokane, Washington (101 N Stone St). I signed a lease March 5th, 2022.

Due to insurance, I was the only one that could work on the property until we had the required insurance in place that allowed volunteers on the property to help. We also needed insurance to allow the community on the property to participate. Little did we know the vast array of obstacles, and ultimately the early nails in the coffin for the center, this would incur.

So, I personally began to spend months cleaning and fixing up the place. Once we had insurance then officially others could be allowed on the property, until then, especially since I was the signatory guarantor, I couldn't risk someone getting hurt and being sued into oblivion. Months before signing the lease I started the search for an insurance company that would insure this endeavor, this was extraordinarily difficult.

If interested in the long list of requirements and obstacles we had to overcome, you can read them in detail as they evolved over a 6+ month period through these articles:

• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/our-blog-1/rpg-research-suspending-all-international-services-and-most-other-operations-in-order-to-get-insurance-1
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/rpg-research-status-update-on-insurance-for-role-playing-game-research-and-rpg-community-center
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/rpg-role-playing-game-research-focusing-on-only-rpg-community-center-tabletop-role-playing-game-programs-now-due-to
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/rpg-community-center-status-update-august-26th-with-some-more-insurance-and-logistics-updates
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/pardon-the-dust-were-scrambling-to-move-servers-content-and-fix-breaks
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/critically-important-rpg-research-board-meeting-all-volunteer-staff-welcomed
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/role-playing-game-research-archives-once-again-available-to-the-public
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/moving-to-a-membership-model
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/fundraising/keep-the-rpg-community-center-doors-open-to-the-public-hurry-and-donate-today
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/spokane-rpg-center-update-20231014a
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/save-the-rpg-community-center-and-rpg-museum-2024
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/keep-the-donations-coming-rpg-research-rpg-museum-rpg-community-center-rpg-mobile-bci-rpg-all-hanging-in-there
• https://rpgresearch.com/blog/blog-news-category/shutting-down-rpg-community-center

Shorter version if not reading through the above epic saga:

Unfortunately, in order to open our doors to the outrageously restrictive insurance requirements were the number one killer of the RPG Community Center's potential. While there were challenges with increasing property taxes, increasing rent costs, facilities maintenance costs, and other costs that far outstripped crowdsourced donations, this was mostly due to the insurance restrictions.

We could not get a single company to even provide a quote for the RPG Community Center.

There is a limited pool of insurance companies that will rent to (any size) non-profit, and most of those will only do so for non-profits bringing in a minimum of millions per year in donations. We pre-existed for decades semi-formally, and incorporated and become a formal 501(c)3 in 2017. We've never quite broken the $50k/yr mark.

There is a much smaller pool of insurance companies that will provide coverage for very small (in donations) non-profits such as ourselves.

From that very limited pool, we just kept getting "Automatic Declinations". initially with no explanation.

After months of back and forth I was finally able to get them to provide the (lengthy) list of why they wouldn't even give us a quote.

Number one on the list is that they didn't understand what a role-playing game was, and their underwriters didn't have any data about the risks (to me that is data there, if there aren't a bunch of lawsuits for something millions of people do, that isn't a high risk activity). Unfortunately they were only making use of the news media descriptions "all about the dangers of role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons" from the 1980s, so they rated it as high, or higher risk, as sky diving, base jumping, rock climbing, etc. [1, 2, 3 ]

Also high on the list was our "overly large media presence" and "high risk online knowledgebase" research archives.

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In the previous links you can see the very long list of reasons why they wouldn't provide coverage. Generally all of the things that made RPG Research distinctive and effective providing global impact, they would require us to cease if we ever wanted to get insurance. Insurance was a requirement of the lease. Our landlord was represented by a lawyer who grew up in the neighborhood, and really wanted to support us and help us, but there were requirements he couldn't wave.

So, we couldn't even get a quote, and month after month I'm spending long physically intensive hours fixing up the place, and we're paying rent on a property we can't open to our volunteers or the public. On top of which my neighbors back at my house were getting increasingly noisy about not liking seeing the RPG Bus, Trailers, etc. on my property, and needed to be able to move them down to the RPG Center.

In desperation I went to the Board of Directors (BoD) with the only thing left I could think of, though it would be painful. According to the insurance underwriters list, the only way we could get a quote would be if we:

• Shutdown almost all of all our operations
• Shutdown all of our online presence except a very basic "pamphlet" website.
• Shutdown public access to all of our content, research archives, videos, etc.
• Shutdown the museum.
• Shutdown all research.
• Shutdown all of our social media.
• Stopped talking on talk shows, podcasts, submitting news articles, etc.
• Shutdown all of our online programs globally and across the US.
• Shutdown our administrative and operations online (except Board of Directors meetings were allowed as long as only in the US, if we were to get additional "Directors" insurance coverage).
• Removed all of our volunteers outside of WA state (except the BoD members).
• Only provided services to 18 to 64 year olds.
• Only provide services to those people without disabilities.
• Cease providing services to at-risk or higher-risk populations.
• the list goes on.

It was a gamble, but we were stuck with a 3 year lease on a 1/12th city block lot we couldn't use, so we needed to come up with something to make use of it. I proposed we capitulate to the insurance companies, and get fully in "compliance" with their extremely limiting list, and then re-apply. Then once we had an insurance policy, we could slowly add on "riders" to incrementally bring back much of our prior offerings (though we were never able to get back up to 100%, nor were we ever allowed to resume our global operations outside of the USA).

The BoD voted and we shut down everything on the list, going to bare bones basics:

• From 200+ global volunteers we downsized to just 12 volunteers, all in Washington state (except BoD).
• We took almost all of our online presence and content offline.
• We stopped offering services to anyone outside of the very limited demographics the insurance companies mandated.
• We effectively shutdown 95% of everything we do.

This worked!

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Though, see the earlier links detailing the multi-years-long process we had to go through to try to slowly try to resume a fraction of our previous operations. While at the center we never made it past 30% of what we had provided previously. Once we get out from under the center, we can go back to our prior model and try to rebuild back to the wonderful global impact we had for years prior to the center.

Now we were finally able to get 3 insurance companies to at least give us quotes. They were very broad in pricing, coverage, and restrictions. We eventually went with Hub International and their partner providers.

Finally I could allow volunteers officially on the property to help prepare the property for the public.

We had a one-day sneak preview Grand Opening June 25th, 2022.

Then I slowly added on the riders we would need to allow the additional populations we serve (2 years old through senior adults, and everyone in between) onto the property and to participate in our local programs (we couldn't resume US-only online programs until a year later, and we were never able to get insurance that would allow us to resume global operations - and if we did resume, then our existing insurance would drop us immediately).

Finally we fully opened with regular public access in September 2022, and steadily grew our service offerings, populations allowed (by insurance), etc. over the following 2 years.

Donations were sufficient to cover all costs, the RPG Community Center was fully self-sufficient.

Unfortunately we had already received our killing blow to the community center due to the insurance restrictions, we just didn't know we were already dead. :(

We were never able to get any grant applications accepted.

We were never able to get any wealthy sponsors (most of our support has been global and outside of Washington state, very little financial support comes from Spokane at all, unfortunately).

In late 2023 donations started to decline. Feedback indicated it was in large part due to the limitations we were under preventing us from providing many of the services and content that donors had been previously supporting. Going local steadily lost most of our many-years-long crowd-sourced supporters.

By early 2024 we were in crisis. We no longer had enough in donations to cover rent, and were in arrears. We were able to get a surge of donors briefly in January from a desperate call for help campaign that caught us up on the back rent, but wouldn't sustain us.

Because I had to be signed on as personally liable in order for RPG Research to get the property, starting in February 2024 I started having to pay an increasing portion of the rent, insurance, etc. Donations continued to decline, and really began plummeting in Summer 2024. All efforts we made for grants, fundraising, etc. failed.

It became clear this endeavor was going to bankrupt RPG Research (and possibly even me) if we didn't get out from under this albatross (With a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head too). So in December 2024 at the year-end quarterly Board Meeting, it became official that we would not renew the upcoming release in March, and would shut down the center, while making every effort to save to RPG Research, the RPG Museum, etc. from also being dragged down.

We're now in the middle of moving everything out of the center into a temperature controlled secure storage unit.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE - RPG RESEARCH ONLY HAS A FUTURE IF YOU DONATE TODAY!

We'll need a few months to recover financially from the moving costs, etc.

Then we plan to resume operations around May 2025, starting with our online programs, rebuild our volunteer-base and donor-base, and then ramping back up (as donations allow) our mobile facilities and other community programs locally, nationally, and globally.

Hopefully we can fully recover from this very expensive experiment. WE NEED YOUR HELP TO DO SO.

If you would like to support our endeavors, please donate today. You can join as a sustaining Patreon Supporter, or recurring monthly donations through Paypal, or make one-time donations.

We are a 501(c)3 non-profit charitable organization, TAX ID: 82-3521274

Your donations are potentially tax deductible.

We still have a lot of move-out costs, storage unit costs, etc. to recover from. So every penny helps us get back on our feet and get back to delivering the great content and services that have benefited so many over the years. The more we raise, the sooner we can be back up and running, and the sooner the RPG Mobile Fleet and other services can once again resume serving the public locally, nationally, and globally.

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