Youth Opportunities Unlimited Needs A New Park
One of the things we are most proud of as a guild and that we feel separates us from most other organizations is our charitable work. Some years back, we adopted a guild charity. We picked Youth Opportunities Unlimited for a variety of reasons. First, it is a good cause. Second, we had a member who was involved with them and that helped us make contact and gain information. Third, they held an annual event that was kind of like a mini renaissance festival for kids so that even worked in with the theme of our guild. Since then, at each of our annual conferences, we do a charity auction and donate the proceeds to help Y.O.U.

This year, we had the opportunity to also help in another way. A local Y.O.U. chapter Evanston, Wyoming needed money to build a new park for the kids. Oscar Meyer was looking for organizations to support with grants. They had more requests than they had grant money so they needed a way to decide who to pick. They chose to do that via a website where the supporters of each project could post a short note indicating their support for it and why they felt it was a good investment for Oscar Meyer. Website? Posting Support? For a group where every member has a computer and is fluent in the use of the internet that was a no brainer. Within a couple of weeks so many posts had come into the site that we broke the counter for the page. They never anticipated more than 100 people signing their name to support a given project and we massively exceeded that total. The Syndicate itself outposted the entire community of Evanston. Needless to say Y.O.U. was very pleased to have us as a supporter and we were very glad that our hobby was also able to help add even more benefit to the kids of the community.