SmugMug's Don MacAskill

So we experimented a little bit with matching charity gift-giving earlier this year with Hurricane Katrina. And our customers came through -in a big way! We ended up donating $14,000, matching the $14,000 donated by our customers. What a great feeling.

It’s my pleasure to announce that we’ll be doing something similar for one of my favorite charities, Child’s Play. It’s put on by the funniest web comic around, Penny Arcade, who also happen to be two of the most generous guys around. Child’s Play is done 100% fee-free, so these guys aren’t collecting anything in return for all their hard work. In all, almost a million dollars worth of toys have been donated, thanks to their efforts and everyone’s generosity. (In the small world department, their very first comic strip was about a video game I helped make).

As a passionate, life-long video game addict, I’m thrilled that the video game community comes together and helps sick kids all over the world. In past years, smugmug has hosted the photos for the charity. I’m hoping we will again this year. Last year, we offered to donate $10 cash for every smugmug subscriber who signed up with the code ‘childsplay’.

This year, we can do even better. We’ll match every cash and gift donation from a smugmug customer with the same amount of cash ourselves, up to $10,000. I’d be thrilled if we can meet that goal – and given our customers’ past histories, I’m sure we can. We’re hoping to go to Oakland (the local hospital to us) and take some great photos of the toys being delivered, too.

If you participate, drop us a note with the subject ‘Child’s Play Donation’ and the body of your message telling us what your smugmug URL is and what you donated. We’ll handle the rest. We’ll answer questions and post status updates on digital grin.

So dig deep and give generously. The kids need us.