The following is from Lindsay, with permission. It’s her take on Penny Arcade’s holiday charity program, Child’s Play. There are links to the Child’s Play site (and their “About” page) in the post below, and I’ll give a shout out to the charity’s nuts’n'bolts/making-it-work partners, Amazon and PayPal, here.

Lindsay writes:
…it’s that time of year, again. Yes, the time of year where there’s a holiday approaching called Christmas, where kids wake their parents up early and are obnoxious until they get to open their presents. The day kids await for weeks with baited breath.

Unfortunately, there are kids that aren’t as lucky. Kids that don’t get to jump on their parents’ bed until they begrudgingly get up; kids that are lucky if they have the strength to get out of their hospital bed.

Now, all you nerds with soft hearts can help, if you didn’t spend your last dollar and change on a 2-liter of Mountain Dew. I don’t like charities — unfortunately, donations to a great many charities often never reach the people you intended to help. However, there is one that is much, much different.

The nerds over at Penny Arcade run a drive every year called Child’s Play to get presents into the hands of kids in children’s hospitals across America and Canada, and even a few hospitals in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. You can donate locally, or internationally — your choice. You can donate cash, or you can click the hospital you’d like to donate to, and it will redirect you to that hospital’s Amazon Wish List. You buy the stuff, Mike and Jerry from Penny Arcade help pay for the shipping, and sick kids smile on Christmas day. It’s not rocket science.

If you’re still feeling a bit leery of the idea of donating to a charity, here’s the “About” section of their site – go read about them for yourself. If you’re feeling charitable, send a book or a toy or a video game to a hospital. I’m not going to tag anyone specific in this note; I don’t care if you donate or not. But, if you want to donate, I’m telling you that this is the place.