The Charity Room began life as “Fund the Charity Room,” a simple joke based on the acronym of Find The Computer Room, aka FTCR. From July 9th to the 17th, 2016, the original “Fund The Charity Room” event took place, comprised of, but not limited to, members of FTCR. After its success, the team looked for ways to make the event bigger and better the following year. 2017’s Platformania ended up exceeding all expectations, becoming a true community event and raising over $25,000 for The International Rescue Committee.
Over the years, a number of large and small scale charity fundraisers have been done under the “Fund The Charity Room” banner. In 2021, the organization was renamed to simply “The Charity Room.” The scale had long since grown outside of being an FTCR-centric venture, and it was decided that a new, yet familiar, name would help the event grow even more.
My first involvement with TCR was during Platformania. Invited to sit in Gareth’s basement as MykonosFan played the infamous Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, I showed up some time after the playthrough had begun. I texted to say that I had shown up, but received no reply. So I did the only thing I could think of - I donated so they would let me inside. I returned to the basement for 2017’s Gift Bump, a one day event for Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The game was Sonic Forces, and I somehow embodied the spirit of the create-a-character in the game, affectionately referred to in-stream as BloodSonic. In the years since, I’ve been lucky enough to take part in further runs to help raise money for a variety of causes.
Over the past seven years, The Charity Room has raised over $172,770 dollars for a number of great causes, including The Dreamscape Foundation, American Heart Association, Rise Above the Disorder, and The Diabetes Research Institute Foundation. For more information about the event itself, you can check out the website which also includes a detailed history of all the events that have happened under the TCR umbrella. To be informed of the latest for the group, including announcements of future events, be sure to follow the official Twitter and/or ,Bluesky accounts. And, of course, if you want to experience the many, many runs full of high octane video game playing for charity, you can view the entire TCR stream archive over on YouTube.
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