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Mario Marathon starts on June 22nd. For those of you unfamiliar with Mario Marathon, it is an event hosted at http://www.mariomarathon.com. Their goal is to raise as much money for Child's Play Charity as they can. They do this through fan donations, made while they play through the vast collection of Mario games (Super Mario Bros. 1-3, Super Mario World, Mario 64, Galaxy, etc.).

Similar to the way our site promotions have certain milestones in which a new award is available, the guys at Mario Marathon have a system set up in which the amount donated directly correlates to their progression in the various games of the Mario franchise.

This is an event viewed by thousands of gamers worldwide, as the whole event is hosted on TwitchTV. Frankly, I feel this is one of the best venues for us to make an appearance if we wanted to increase site traffic, and content.

How will this help the site?

Simply: Every donation made has the option to affiliate your donation with a particular website.

enter image description here

If we were to put our site in this box (whether it be https://gaming.stackexchange.com/ or our newly decided http://www.arqade.com/), it would be visible to anyone and everyone watching. Edit: The affiliation is determined by the site from which the link was originally accessed. Further donations should be placed from this link. Were we to donate a large enough sum, placing the website on each donation made from one of our users, we would have a chance of making it into the ranks of the Top 10 Contributors.

enter image description here

This is visible to everyone on the main page of the website.

I feel like this could be one of our biggest opportunities to increase site traffic, and get our name out there as a go-to source for gaming expertise (so long as they read our FAQ!)

Would this be possible? Or would the powers-that-be not be fond of us affiliating ourselves as such?

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    I think it is a fantastic idea and I hope we can work something out.
    – user11502
    Jun 10, 2012 at 18:18
  • Not to sound too callous, but there's like a dozen Child's Play bundler events every week. Why is this one special?
    – user3389
    Jun 10, 2012 at 20:16
  • @MarkTrapp I don't necessarily consider this one to be "special". It's just the only one I'm familiar with in which we can get our name out there. If you know of others, feel free to mention them.
    – Niro
    Jun 10, 2012 at 20:28
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    The Child's Play calendar lists many of the larger ones. I guess now I'm confused: is this a plan to support a specific event, or to support the Child's Play charity with any event that we can put our name on? If it's the former, I'm not clear on why Mario Marathon over the others.
    – user3389
    Jun 10, 2012 at 20:47
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    There's also, of course, the Humble Indie Bundle.
    – user3389
    Jun 10, 2012 at 20:55
  • @MarkTrapp I personally think the Humble indie bundle would be great if we were going to contribute to any charity based thing to get our name out there. Not only is it HUGE, but stackexchange could give out x amount of keys as a giveaway, so we'll get lots of people playing games and contributing questions.
    – Mr Smooth
    Jun 10, 2012 at 20:59
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    @MarkTrapp I was looking at it as more of a "this event happens once a year, maybe the members of the site can contribute and give our site some recognition." I wasn't thinking in terms of "Let's support X over Y because I like X better." This is just something that happens to be coming up very recently, and I felt it was a good way to draw attention to the site.
    – Niro
    Jun 10, 2012 at 21:17
  • My first thought is that this is a good idea, but I have to check to see whether it's logistically possible for us to make donations on your behalf. Will respond with more info soon.
    – Lauren
    Jun 11, 2012 at 15:35
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    @Lauren Even if the site can't make donations, would it be possible for the users to make donations and put Arqade in the URL affiliation?
    – Niro
    Jun 11, 2012 at 15:42

2 Answers 2

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As I said in my comment, I really like this idea and it is ok with us if any of you want to make donations and put arqade.com in the URL affiliation. I looked into whether we can cover the donations, but unfortunately it will be too difficult logistically to do so for individual users.

That being said, we will match the contribution that you all make through Mario Marathon. Fluttershy and I have been in contact with the organizers of Mario Marathon, and here's how to make donations that will be affiliated with Arqade.com:

  • Click here or use the following link to make your donation: http://www.mariomarathon.com/py/donate?rr=arqade.com
  • It's important to use that link instead of going to mariomarathon.com and finding the donate page, because it has our url within it and will assign your donation to Arqade. If you donate through another link, we won't be able to track it.
  • Make your donations from now until June 21st 2012 at 3 pm EST (the day before the contest starts). At that time, we will check the total contributions you have all made, and we will match it, up to $500! Feel free to donate after the 21st, it just won't be included in our match.
  • Donations that have already been made will be included in our match.
  • To see the total amount Arqade users have contributed, go to our partner page.
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    You can donate however much you want, the place in top 10 is determined by total donations linked to a site, not the number of donors. SE could buy the top spot all on their own with a single donation, given the funds and the inclination.
    – kotekzot
    Jun 11, 2012 at 17:54
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    @Lauren kotekzot said it best. If ten of us were to donate and each put arqade.com in the URL affiliation, our combined totals would go into a pool of contributions from arqade.com
    – Niro
    Jun 11, 2012 at 18:03
  • I am donating and putting arqade.com as my affiliation.
    – Peter Grace
    Jun 12, 2012 at 13:53
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    Just FYI, even though I put arqade.com in as my site, it must traverse the links because it attributed the donation to gaming.stackexchange.com. Either way, huzzah for a great charity.
    – Peter Grace
    Jun 12, 2012 at 13:57
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    Since our donations have already exceeded $500, I think it would look nice to go ahead and match the $500. Extend our already commanding lead!
    – user9983
    Jun 15, 2012 at 20:43
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    Just took a look at the top donaters' board. Man, we're awesome!
    – MBraedley
    Jun 17, 2012 at 12:06
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I noticed when poking about that they show a partner widget that would add a donate button the the arqade.com side of things. Even if SE doesn't want to make a direct donation this might help achieve the same advertising goal as is being talked about above.

The script is shown on this page http://www.mariomarathon.com/donations.html

enter image description here

On a side note, I have sent an email asking if charitable receipts are being issued, which might help make a Stack Exchange donation easier, if they intended to make a donation at all, the reply to that inquiry is below. If someone from SE needs the email forwarded (for headers or something) let me know.

TL;DR Looks like the answer is yes.

Steve,

You should be able to use the paypal receipt e-mail you receive as a charitable receipt along with the Child's Play's Tax ID information:

Child's Play 123 NW 36th Street Suite 210 Seattle, WA 98107

Tax ID Number: 20-3584556

If you have questions about this you should contact your tax professional or a Child's Play Charity directly at:

Kristin Lindsay: klindsay@childsplaycharity.org Jamie Dillion: jdillion@childsplaycharity.org

I hope you enjoy Mario Marathon this year, and thanks for your support,

Brian "Shirt Guy" Brinegar

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  • It looks like it should be fairly easy to adapt that image into a Community Promotion Ad, no?
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Jun 12, 2012 at 1:22
  • I'm guessing so but I'm not brave enough to try to do that and link the script together. Where's Jin when you need him :-)
    – Tharius
    Jun 12, 2012 at 1:43
  • Plus using their script will show the "Total donations from arqade.com" in the picture instead of their own .com address.
    – Tharius
    Jun 12, 2012 at 1:47
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    Shirt Guy's pretty cool. He'll be the one handling the user questions and such during the actual event! Thank you, @Stephen for finding this out for us!
    – Niro
    Jun 12, 2012 at 1:59

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