Well, in one week, the Foundation’s first project will go live on Kickstarter. It’s a card/board game called “Three Years of War“. It’s a game for 3-5 people and the theme is the Thirty Years War–but that doesn’t matter much for playing. Anyone can play. It’s a great, quick, fun game.
The thing is–and why it has a historical theme–people don’t like to do stuff if it’s ‘educational’, certainly not in the U.S. The minute ‘educational’ is mentioned, people tune out. But if you say, “Hey, shall we play a game?” they’re ready to have fun (or are old enough to remember the movie ‘Wargames.’ Once they play, once they have fun–now you’ve got the hook in and now there’s a chance to learn–and people may not even realize it’s happening.
That’s the whole point of the Foundation. I, along with the directors, all want to make a difference. The intent is to use ‘profits’ to help endow scholarships for teachers, to give teachers a boost to what they can do creatively in their classrooms. It’s almost a cliché, but ask ANY successful person out there and there’s a teacher they remember as an inspiration. The thing is, there’s a lot of stuff that gets in the way of teachers and rarely enough help for them. Again–the purpose of the Foundation.
When I ran a game company previously (from 1996-2015…this ain’t my first rodeo), the objective was to make money. I did. Yay me. After I sold the company though and reached some other conclusions about the world and such, I did some calculations. If I’d taken the money I made and put it towards scholarships/helping others, I could have endowed nearly 100 college scholarships. That would have been students helped year after year after year. If I’d done that only when I sold my business, I still would have helped 300 students already with their avocation for teaching!
So, if you’ve read this. Thanks. Consider supporting Three Years of War. Consider the other items the Foundation will produce. There’s a ‘donate’ tab if you want to give directly–and I promise, direct donations will never go to anything other than scholarship/grant endowments…never towards salaries or product production. You want to help, I’ll get it where it can do the most good!
Jim