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Interview with Project Pinball - Episode 49

JBS Show·podcast_episode·1h 6m·analyzed·Dec 20, 2024
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TL;DR

Project Pinball charity founders discuss mission, growth from 1 to 81 machines, and personal drivers.

Summary

Jamie Burchill interviews Daniel Spoler (founder) and Taj Nicely (marketing/communications) from Project Pinball, a 501(c)(3) charity placing refurbished pinball machines in children's hospitals, Ronald McDonald Houses, and other care facilities across the United States. The episode covers the charity's origin story (sparked by restoring a vandalized Spider-Man machine in 2011), growth to 81 machines nationwide, operational philosophy emphasizing transparency and community-driven fundraising, and the personal motivations of team members rooted in experiences with pediatric illness.

Key Claims

  • Project Pinball currently has 81 pinball machines placed in facilities across the United States

    high confidence · Daniel Spoler states 'We went from one machine to currently at 81'

  • The original Spider-Man machine in the oncology ward received 21,332 plays in 2.5 years (2009-2011)

    high confidence · Daniel Spoler: 'It actually received 21,332 plays' after finding the machine in 2011

  • 100% of funds raised in a local community stay in that community for that specific machine/location

    high confidence · Daniel Spoler: '100% of the money that is grown in that community stays there, 100% of it'

  • Project Pinball placed 7 machines in 15 days across the United States in December 2020 during COVID-19

    high confidence · Daniel Spoler: 'we placed seven machines in 15 days across the United States...in the December of 2020'

  • The charity has five operational phases: children's hospitals, Ronald McDonald Houses, assisted living facilities, rehabilitation services, and schools with special needs programs

    high confidence · Daniel Spoler outlines: 'phase one was children's hospitals. Phase two was Ronald McDonald homes. Phase three was assistant living...phase four was for rehabilitated services and phase five was for schools that had special needs programs'

  • Daniel Spoler's personal motivation stems from his son being diagnosed with leukemia when he was 14-15 years old

    high confidence · Daniel Spoler: 'When my son was 14 years old, almost 15, he was diagnosed with leukemia'

  • Taj Nicely's father died of cancer when she was nine years old and spent significant time in the hospital

    high confidence · Taj Nicely: 'my dad passed when I was nine from cancer. He spent a lot of time in the hospital'

  • The charity was incorporated and became officially registered in 2012-2013

    high confidence · Daniel Spoler: 'we started the spider-man renovations in 2011 and we started looking into incorporating and then becoming a charity in 2012-2013'

Notable Quotes

  • “I believe that is very much needed for a charity, especially nowadays...we really have to have people keep faith in us that we're going to do what we need to do through our pinball charity.”

    Daniel Spoler — Emphasizes Project Pinball's commitment to financial transparency and accountability, directly addressing donor skepticism toward larger charities

  • “Every dollar counts so yeah that's a thing in the beginning i'm not good at asking for money...I could see the look on their face that they're really upset that they can't give more to the charity but as taj was saying we feel that you know that is a treasure you know that's one more dollar that we did not have a moment ago”

    Daniel Spoler — Demonstrates the charity's inclusive approach to donations and respect for contributors of all means, reflecting the founder's modest background

  • “I call them black hole charities because the money seemed to go in, but it was swallowed up, never to be seen again...I didn't feel good for my hard earned money.”

    Daniel Spoler — Critiques lack of transparency in larger charitable organizations and articulates Project Pinball's differentiating philosophy

  • “Your hard efforts are going right here to affect the people in your neighborhood in your community you know right down the street”

    Daniel Spoler — Explains the hyper-local impact model that drives community engagement and donor motivation

  • “If I wear a mask, it's not for myself that I fear for it's for everybody around me and it got me thinking it's my responsibility to make sure that you know I'm taking care of the people around me”

    Daniel Spoler — Personal reflection on ethical responsibility during COVID-19 operations in hospital settings; reveals vulnerable self-awareness about past gaps in care protocols

  • “I know that I knew nothing about leukemia other than it was a form of cancer and I needed to know more...And not saying that everybody's going through that, but I know that people are struggling in their own way.”

    Daniel Spoler — Connects personal trauma and information-seeking experience to empathetic approach toward families in hospital settings

Entities

Project PinballorganizationDaniel SpolerpersonTaj NicelypersonJamie BurchillpersonWormhole PinballorganizationSpider-Man (2007)game

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Project Pinball has grown from 1 machine (2011) to 81 machines nationwide with five distinct operational phases (hospitals, Ronald McDonald Houses, assisted living, rehabilitation, special needs schools), indicating successful scaling and diversification of charity impact

    high · Daniel Spoler: 'We went from one machine to currently at 81' and detailed expansion across five phases

  • ?

    community_signal: Project Pinball implements hyper-local fundraising model where 100% of community-raised funds stay within that community for specific machine placement, creating direct donor connection and accountability

    high · Daniel Spoler: '100% of the money that is grown in that community stays there' and emphasis on community sponsorship and dedication events

  • ?

    event_signal: Chance for Hope charity (Houston-based) planning 'Enchanted Night' event at Wormhole Pinball in 2025; represents growing cross-organization collaboration between pinball-focused nonprofits

    high · Jamie Burchill: 'we're going to be having an event here in Houston in 2025, Chance for Hope, and we're going to do an enchanted night at the Wormhole'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Strong positive sentiment toward Project Pinball within pinball community; Jamie Burchill (Wormhole Pinball host/operator) expresses deep partnership commitment and describes the charity as 'near and dear to our heart'

    high · Jamie: 'this is something that is near and dear to the Wormhole's heart' and commitment to partnership and growth

  • ?

    product_concern: Daniel Spoler expresses regret about not requiring masking during pre-COVID hospital visits when immunocompromised children were present; indicates potential past gaps in health protocols, though current practice appears improved

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.201

0:00
Hello, my name is Jamie Burchill, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents.
0:10
Today, I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today, I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today, I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from Arizona. Hello and welcome to our podcast we call Wormhole Pinball Presents, a series we started to highlight those in pinball and arcades. I'm your host, Jamie Birchall, and for episode 49, we have a very special holiday episode, if you will, with the amazing team of Project Pinball. So let's go around the horn and introduce yourselves and the role you play with this wonderful charity. Well, my name is Daniel Spoler. I'm the senior director, founder of Project Pinball Charity.
0:53
I am Taj Nicely. I am Project Pinball Charity's marketing and communication specialist. I also do some grant writing and kind of a jack of all trades. Whatever people need me for, I can help with. Well, this charity is – Project Pinball is near and dear to our hearts here at Wormhole Pinball. I was talking before that we are 5013C here, C3, excuse me, I always mess that up.
1:22
And so I'm going to be picking your brains a little bit about your process as well, not only kind of delving into what is Project Pinball, but also how did you get started from this little acorn to this mighty oak, right? How did this thing grow?
1:38
Yeah. Does everybody live in Florida? You guys live in Florida? well i live in i live in michigan um so i'm i'm up north but the the charity was founded in florida is that right it was florida right yeah i grew up in pittsburgh and you know one day i woke up i was uh i was a construction worker it was another day of uh being cold for you know 10 hours plus and I said I'm done so I drove until I drove south until I hit sand and water and I ended up in Fort Myers Beach probably like 34 years ago so I've been here ever since but the charity did grow up in Fort Myers we found a pinball machine that was in our local children's Hospital at the Galsanos Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida that needed our attention.

“I just think, like, if he would have had something there to keep him busy and just to get up and do something, would that have helped him in any kind of way emotionally?”

Taj Nicely — Articulates the therapeutic rationale for pinball machines in medical facilities through personal loss experience

  • “If anyone has ever seen a child playing a pinball machine that is struggling and fighting for their life and the joy in their face, this is why we're doing it.”

    Jamie Burchill — Encapsulates the emotional core and mission impact of the charity—the visible therapeutic benefit to pediatric patients

    • Galsanos Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida
    organization
    Chrissy Brown Oncology Wardorganization
    Helen DeVos Children's Hospitalorganization
    Nationwide Children's Hospitalorganization
    Ronald McDonald House (Columbus, Ohio)organization
    VP Cavs / Brad (VP Cavs founder)person|company
    Electric Bat Arcadeorganization
    Starfighters Arcadeorganization
    Hangar Pinball (Tulsa, Oklahoma)organization
    Chance for Hopeorganization
    Guardians of the Galaxygame
    Pinball Expo (Chicago)event
    Sierra (Project Pinball staff)person
    Fort Myers Beach, Floridalocation

    high · Daniel Spoler's extended reflection: 'I was so disappointed with myself...a child's walking in and his immune system is deficient and he's protecting himself from us...I should have did better here'

  • $

    market_signal: Shift from skepticism about video pinball compatibility with charity mission toward acceptance of video pinball as 'bridge to real thing' for Ronald McDonald House settings where maintenance burden is lower

    medium · Daniel Spoler's extended reflection on video pinball decision: 'I struggled with that greatly...but I figured this was close enough where it could be a bridge to the real thing'

  • $

    market_signal: Project Pinball uses auction events at Pinball Expo and community fundraising tournaments as primary revenue mechanisms; emphasizes visibility and community participation over traditional direct mail/corporate sponsorship

    high · Daniel Spoler discussing community fundraisers and auction process; Jamie noting Project Pinball's presence at Pinball Expo

  • ?

    community_signal: Project Pinball intentionally recruits team members with personal connections to pediatric illness or loss; Daniel Spoler emphasizes 'everybody that comes on board...has to...have that feeling' rather than general volunteers

    high · Daniel Spoler: 'We don't have anybody just putting...time in, punching a time clock' and discussion of personal motivations driving Taj Nicely and others

  • ?

    product_concern: COVID-19 era hospital operations required rigorous safety protocols including daily testing (12-20 times per day), temperature checks, masks, face shields, and surgical gloves; demonstrates commitment to patient safety despite operational uncertainty

    high · Daniel Spoler: 'we were testing 20 days out, 10 days out...testing on the road...thermometer...doing it like 12 to 20 times a day'

    • 2:43
    A friend at the time, she went into the local oncology, it was a Chrissy Brown Oncology Ward, and there was a pinball machine that was dedicated by a family that lost their child a couple years before from his cancer, battle with cancer. and they thought so much of the care that they received in that hospital that they put a plaque on the side of the machine that would just bring you to tears. You could really feel the pain of their loss and they wanted to use this machine as a memorial and a way to give back to other people that might be in similar struggles, going through similar family problems.
    3:37
    We found it in such a state of disrepair because it was played so many times in two and a half years. It actually received 21,332 plays. Wow, what machine was it? It was a Spider-Man. It was a Spider-Man put out in 2007 and we found it in 2011. so our mission at that point was not you know this mission that we have nowadays it was a singular focus just to raise some money for this machine that was in front of us so we could return it back to the children's hospital so when the machine was leaving it was really touching because the parents and the kids were really concerned about where this machine was going. And we had to promise them that we were going to fix the machine up and return it right back to its home.
    4:41
    So what we did was we went out on Facebook, and you can still see it on our Facebook page. We started a campaign that was Save Spider-Man for the Kids campaign, and we were trying to raise money because this thing needed a lot of parts, a lot of funding to put back together. So we had people reaching out to us, giving donations, and it took 112 hours for me to pretty much restore the machine. I had to rip everything down on top and bottom and just touch every single mech and assembly in that to restore it. When we were bringing it back, again, we didn't set up any fanfare. We were just doing our duties, you know, fixing this machine. And when we just started offloading it, people started gathering around, and they were actually, you know, really happy. They were applauding and cheering that their machine was back. So, you know, there was a lot of information that was being thrown at us in that moment. For one, you know, think about 21,332 plays in two and a half years in a hospital location. It wasn't like it was an arcade or a cafeteria or somewhere where it would have, you know, a lot of people, you know, finding the machine. Here it was in this ward that was pretty isolated. I would say, you know, this is a guess. Probably had 23 rooms in this ward. But yet it was receiving all these plays. So I wanted to find out more. So with the help of the staff there, it was doctors, nurses, child life specialists, even the administrator of the hospital was sharing testimony with us how much they needed this machine and how therapeutic beneficial it was. And then we had a chance to talk to the small patients when we put this machine on a maintenance plan so it wouldn't fall and disrepair. And we started talking to the patients and the siblings and the parents and started getting their testimony. And it started to fill out this picture of how therapeutic one pinball machine can be in that setting. And that pretty much transformed us to singular focus on fixing, you know, this one Spider-Man pinball machine to maybe venturing out to, you know, look into our state of Florida, maybe to do this in the children's hospitals in our state. and you know simple math right simple uh not knowing all the information at the time and you know we wanted to you know help other families so we were thinking it was in tampa orlando jacksonville miami and maybe gainesville or tallahassee the major cities right so we were thinking five at that time but then we started doing research and we found out it was actually 11 so it pretty much doubled our you know scope of you know what we were going to try to accomplish here so at that point we started the spider-man renovations in 2011 and we started looking into incorporating and then becoming a charity in 2012-2013 the paperwork went through so we can reach out to the state of Florida and it gets even bigger just with the communication that people had through Facebook and I was doing pinball tournaments at the time trying to raise money for what we were trying to do and then also we heard other people asking if we could do it in their backyards as well. So we were looking at other places like St. Louis and San Francisco were some of the first ones that we did only because people were in the community saying, hey, can we do this here? So we really had to sharpen our game and you know we went from just 11 in our home state to you know over 700 children's hospitals in the United States so we took it from our focus on our state to across the nation so yeah it grew because it needed the growth and you know I want to say this first and foremost. We couldn't grow without the help of our supporters out there. The support that we received when we were trying to get to Spider-Man up and working was tremendous.
    10:14
    It's been growing ever since. We have a great following out there. We remain grassroots. We try to be super transparent. And I say grassroots because we show where the money comes from, where it's going to, and the final results. That way everybody could share in that process. I believe that is very much needed for a charity, especially nowadays. Everybody's working really hard for their money. not saying that they weren't before but it seems like a lot of people are stressed out with inflation kicking off and everybody sees that their dollar is not going as far so we really have to have people keep faith in us that we're going to do what we need to do through our pinball charity.
    11:15
    That's pretty much the condensed version. no it's great yeah yeah like we always say every dollar counts so yeah that's a thing in the beginning i'm not good at asking for money um i grew up in a very modest family that's why i'm here i'm not good at asking people for money i was taught you know to work hard and you know succeed and save your money and you know when we're at the shows i see people come up and they reach into their their wallet or their pocket and they pull out you know maybe a single dollar and i could see the look on their face that they're really upset that they can't give more to the charity but as taj was saying we feel that you know that is a treasure you know that's one more dollar that we did not have a moment ago and thank you for putting that faith into us so we really really you know stress that every dollar counts uh every quarter whatever you know you want to say it does move us forward so we really feel that uh even to this day You know, it's how we get there. We had steady progress from the very beginning. We went from one machine to currently at 81. Yeah.
    12:55
    When did the relationship with Ronald McDonald House come about? Oh, that's a good question. I'm going to look at our website and see when the first one was. From my memory, I believe it was 2014. I believe that was the case. The first Ronald McDonald House that we did should be Columbus, Ohio. what happened with that is we had one in the Nationwide Children's Hospital and we had a great community Columbus would do these fundraisers for us they would do these fun pinball tournaments and the money that they raised they would donate 100% to our charity so if people do not know this about our charity I want to stress this, that 100% of the money that is grown in that community stays there, 100% of it. That way their efforts are felt in their local community.
    14:02
    So, like I said, we had a hook, a Data East hook, in the Nationwide Children's Hospital, but there was a Ronald McDonald House that was right across the street. and this is a pretty weird twist to this as well and I wouldn't mind seeing people's comments down below if this is going to be open for comments. It will be, this is taped if you will and we'll release this podcast on Friday because I would love to know this because I struggle with this greatly and I'm going to introduce it here and I would love to have people's feedback. Brad from VP Cavs, what he did and he built in the company that he built was video pinball.
    14:59
    To me, I actually fell back in love with the regular pinball machines like you see behind me. I'm a collector just like you through video pinball. So when Brad said, hey, we would like to help you guys out with the Ronald McDonald House, I had to pause for thought, saying is this what Project Pinball is?
    15:31
    It's not officially pinball, because it's not a mechanical thing. the video screen for this video cabinet kind of takes it away. It doesn't have operating mechanics.
    15:50
    So I struggled with that greatly. And two things were, one is it's not going to break down. Don't have to rebuild flippers and Macs like you do a regular pinball machine. So that was something that was going forward. And the other one is, would it serve the same purpose as a regular pinball machine? Would it be that distractor for the kids to take them out of that moment, maybe of stress, and relieve that while they were playing games? And the answer was yes. so it was not an easy one because we want to stay pure to what we started but I figured this was close enough where it could be a bridge to the real thing at that time it had real games on there real tables The old Bally Williams the old Data East were ingrained into this video pinball So I figured it could be a bridge to the real thing. What's your thoughts here?
    16:59
    Look, the more that you can get little patients to flip anything, I think is fantastic, right? anything that we can do to take their mind off of their treatments is just a brilliant idea well i i figured that was what our goal for the charity was to add comfort to what they were going through and even the parents could play it as well and a couple times i did hear the parents recognized some of these older machines that were in the video game. They recognized it from their youth, their childhood. So that was a kind of a neat connection as well.
    17:43
    So I think we didn't want to get into the video games. We've been approached about that as well, where we were approached about putting in, you know, full size arcades. And, you know, I felt that would be stretching the boundaries too much. And the person that was asking us to do this was very capable of doing it, you know, through their community. They were really, really big in the video side of things. They were part of, I hope I say this right, King of Kong, right? Is that the right title? They were a part of that. So, right. You know, I asked them if they wanted to, you know, have my help, I would help them. But, you know, I wouldn't want to be a part of it directly. For one, our charity took a lot of my time and my focus and I didn't want to dilute that at all, especially with the different phases that we have, you know, on our docket, so to speak. For one, phase one was children's hospitals. Phase two was Ronald McDonald homes. Phase three was assistant living, you know, facilities for these older games. phase four was for rehabilitated services and phase five was for schools that had special needs programs maybe children with autism so you know did we want to add another phase six to this no not at that time we had a full agenda in front of us and you know it starts out slow you build a a strong foundation absolutely before building too quickly and that's what we were trying to do and you know i hate to say this but it's 100% true that we did slow it down in the beginning we would have to search locations for children's hospitals and we would approach them and we really learned a lot how to approach that environment, how to approach Ronald McDonald Homes and other ones.
    20:22
    So at a time we weren't ready, we were getting requests from different children's hospitals. They would find out about us and we didn't have the funding for it. And that's the one thing that we wanted to stick to is, you know, we wanted to focus the community to raise money for the needs in their backyard. So we really got good. And with the help of Taj coming on board, we really organized different areas across the United States that we find a need, maybe a Ronald McDonald House or Children's Hospital or reaching out to us, we approach that area and say, hey, we have a need. The children's hospital is asking us or similar for us to help them.
    21:17
    And usually we get a, you know, a sponsor, a spokesperson in that neighborhood, and they start raising money through, you know, tournaments or bake sales, as I like to say, whatever they're good at. Whatever helps them to raise money. And again, 100% of that money goes back into this request that we had in that community. I think that's where our charity excels because people, you know, when they give to a charity and, you know, I use this phrase. I think that I came up with it because it's how I felt giving to some bigger charities that, you know, you felt the need to help other people. So you give to these charities and I call them black hole charities because the money seemed to go in, but it was swallowed up, never to be seen again. Yeah, that wasn't rewarding. I didn't feel good for my hard earned money. and I was hoping that they did, you know, what they said that they would set out to do.
    22:29
    But a lot of times that wasn't shared with the public. And that really hurt. And I think there's a lot of other people out there that feel the same way. They don't see, feel, or hear about that impact. So they're disconnected. and I think that's one of the strong points that our charity tries to make that connection with those communities saying your hard efforts are going right here to affect the people in your neighborhood in your community you know right down the street so yeah I mean and a lot of those people that are involved in that they we invite them for dedications like we want them to be there We want them to see it and experience firsthand why they've been fundraising so hard. And it's just cool to invite them. I mean, we've had in Phoenix, Electric Bat Arcade came out with our dedications. That was awesome. You know, I love them. I mean, so many other communities. Yeah, we love them. And, like, Starfighters Arcade, they were part of that as well. And, I mean, just so many people. Hangar Pinball out in Tulsa. I mean, yeah, we just love to see the results. You get to see the fruits of that labor, right? That was what was difficult with COVID going on.
    23:50
    We could not get the people that were part of making this happen. COVID was a weird year for us, just like the rest of the world, right? With such uncertainty of what was up, what was down, type fogginess, right? So much information. So as a charity,
    24:18
    we were unsure of our foundation and our direction at that point because of all the information that we received. In March, our phones pretty much I had to dial out to make sure the phones were still working, right? You know, those deals. And all of a sudden in the middle of April, we started getting a lot of phone calls to our surprise. It was actually the Children's Hospital Ronald McDonald homes that were so busy during normal, you know, times that they didn't have time to return our call or, you know ask us for more information all of a sudden they weren't receiving patients in the children's hospital they were putting off any kind of operation that wasn't you know critical or crucial right they had a lot of time on their hands so they started reaching out to us and we were really busy from April on and I was quite surprised that they actually wanted us to start traveling to their locations.
    25:40
    And through their protocol that they had in place, we had to come up with our own safety protocol to go on the road. And it was actually, we placed seven machines in 15 days across the United States, which was mostly, you know, in the east, northeast. but my god each night we were in a different town and it felt so strange being out onto the highways where you could tell that something was definitely impacting the way people were living and I say this because the best way to you know relate to this was you know it was like a zombie apocalypse you know because everybody's seen you know the walking dead and you know there wasn't cars and and zombies walking around but you know there was definitely a you know desertion that was happening and it was quite airy and it made us feel very very vulnerable at the same time because it was a constant reminder of what we were doing. And we did this in the December of 2020. So it wasn't like there was a whole bunch of information that, you know, was coming out. The vaccinations were... Right. Yeah, it was scary times. Yeah, we were testing before we went on the road. You know, we were testing 20 days out, 10 days out. Yeah, plus you have to test before you can enter a Children's Hospital. We were doing testing on the road. We had a temperature gun, thermometer.
    27:43
    I'm not sure what to... Thermometers. We did it I would say every time that we thought about it. We were doing it like 12 to 20 times a day.
    28:00
    just each other. You know, Sierra went with me and, you know, we were checking in, you know, through our phone or computer and, you know, we wouldn't see anybody. We were doing, driving food and, you know, staying isolated. Even in the hospitals, we were all masked up. We had face shields on. Sure. And I even, a couple times, had surgical gloves on because, again, we didn't have the information and we never posed a risk. Especially in December of 2020. I mean, we didn't know what the heck was going on. It was really weird times. Yeah, and the environments were already so sensitive. I mean, we tell everybody who comes to the dedication, our first priority is the safety of the patients and the families inside. And so then to add everything else on top of it, it just makes everybody's systems on alert. What else can I do to protect them?
    29:00
    Go ahead. There's something tied to this story that I feel that I have to share. I'm deeply disappointed by myself in this, and I failed, and I want to share this with everybody. we were at Helen DeVos up in Grand Rapids and we were doing a dedication up in Michigan of a Guardians of the Galaxy and a news station came in by the request of the hospital and we were doing this story and the news station was fantastic and we were standing there with the news group and a couple people from that community and all of a sudden a boy walks in and he has his car and his his IVs and his treatment bags are, you know, attached to his arm and he comes in and you could see that, you know, definitely he was receiving chemo. He didn't have any hair on his head and he had this mask on. Right. And he walks in with this blue surgical mask and he walks up to the machine and he wanted to find out more about it. And the joy that I felt in that moment was tremendous. You know, you could see, you know, the opportunity for joy in this kid's eyes.
    30:29
    But years later, when I was dealing with the pandemic, you know, on such a level, I was going into these hospitals and we were masking up because we didn't want to be a risk to, you know, our surroundings, right, to people there. so it started giving me thinking about that day at Helen DeVos and I was so disappointed with myself I should have did better here a child's walking in and his immune system is deficient and he's protecting himself from us being in that room and I'm so disappointed that I didn't realize at that time that we should have been protecting him.
    31:17
    We should have been masked up. We should have did everything that we could. You know, I was cleaning my hands. You know, I was always big. You know, I always clean my hands.
    31:32
    But I could have did more. And I was so disappointed. And, you know, by wearing a mask, if I wear a mask, it's not for myself that I fear for it's for everybody around me and it got me thinking it's my responsibility to make sure that you know I'm taking care of the people around me and that includes that boy that I failed you know in Helen DeVos that day and you know I say this as a learning you know experience we do have our failures but you know it's how we come out you know make ourselves aware and better for the future so thank you for you know allowing me to say that and sharing oh of course i think anyone i was sharing with you daniel uh a story that we had and i'm going to ask you a bunch of more questions on the foundation and the charity but we uh there's a charity here in houston called chance for hope and i'm going to tell you a quick little story on it because it's near and dear to my heart. Chance was my son's very close friend. And we lost Chance about 13 years ago to brain cancer. And the family, like you, said, how can I help? What can I do? Because I don't want to just give to cancer research and then not go anywhere. I want to see something. I want to feel it. So they started with an idea. And they said, one of the hardest things we had to do when we were meeting with trying to see Chance was there was nowhere to stay in the Houston Medical Center. So they had the idea, we're going to start a foundation called Change for Hope, and we're going to buy one apartment.
    33:17
    They have seven apartments. That fantastic They deliver food on Sundays because there no food at some of the hospitals on Sundays They started dances for the kids that can go to their school dances and we provide pinball machine to them Amazing. And we're going to be having an event here in Houston in 2025, Chance for Hope, and we're going to do an enchanted night at the Wormhole. But if anyone has ever seen a child playing a pinball machine that is struggling and fighting for their life and the joy in their face, this is why we're doing it. This is a passion project for us, okay? Agreed. And you identified a problem that we've got to fix Spider-Man for these children because it's had 20,000 plays and you have 81 machines out. Right. They started with a problem. They have seven apartments and we are just so proud to have you here. and I'm so proud to talk to anyone that will support Project Pinball because this is something that is near and dear to the Wormhole's heart. As a 501c3, we look forward to a partnership with you and continuing to grow this great charity of yours as we grow our own and get our footing, right?
    34:50
    Yeah, I mean, one of the things I love the most is we are a nonprofit who supports other nonprofits. I just love that so much. I mean, obviously we have our own mission and we care for our people, but I love working with other nonprofits and seeing their growth and how we can help each other. It's just, it's really cool. That's why we're here. We should support each other. I mean, being a nonprofit doesn't mean that you can't make money, okay? You know, a nonprofit is a tax status, ladies and gentlemen, for those that are listening, right? But what I really believe that this tax status allows us to do for individuals, families, and groups is to fulfill charitable passion projects. That's what I really, really believe, right? So question for you here, how do you keep everyone motivated? You went from a little idea, you have 81 machines. I'm sure you all have day jobs. How do you keep the passion on this team? Well, just like you guys, right, you see the need for it, And that's how I shared it started with me. I couldn't recognize the need, but it actually goes back to personal experience for me. When my son was 14 years old, almost 15, he was diagnosed with leukemia, misdiagnosed, but he was diagnosed with leukemia. And my world came crashing in with a phone call. I knew that I knew nothing about leukemia other than it was a form of cancer and I needed to know more so I was on a public library at that time and on the internet trying to find out more information about leukemia so I could find out the questions that I needed to ask to get the answers that we needed to move ahead and you know it was that you know that I could relate to with you know how my family was struggling how my family was being impacted by this because it's just not my son that was going through the illness it was the whole family and I knew what I felt and when I go to the children's hospitals Ronald McDonald homes, wherever we're placing these machines, I have that ability to connect to, you know, what I was feeling at that moment and how isolated and overwhelmed I was. And not saying that everybody's going through that, but I know that people are struggling in their own way. And I can relate to the struggles that I was in. You know, it helps me motivate, you know, every single day to go out there and help other people through their struggles. Because I knew, you know, this was before Child Life Specialist. This is before I moved, but, you know, Ronald McDonald Holmes and their mission. So I really felt isolated. I never want, you know, a person to go through that, not if I could help it. And our whole team has their own, you know, ability to relate.
    38:19
    And I think we're all super passionate. Everybody that comes on board, you know, has to, you know, have that feeling. We don't have anybody just putting, you know, time in, punching a time clock and putting in hours. I think we're all motivated by, you know, pushing ourselves to do better for, you know, the people in need out there. and you know even Taj I felt her passion from the very beginning the first time that I met her was in Chicago and she was helping us out with our endeavors there our auction and you know she heard the story that I told about you know the charity and then I heard her you know say a similar connection that she had with our charity through different words and i love that i don't want people regurgitating you know what i say and what i feel and i look at the charity i want other people to look upon what we're doing and make it their own and And I believe she felt that from the very, very beginning, even before she was part of the charity. And I'll let you tell your story.
    39:48
    Yeah, for me, before Project Pinball, I did not know pinball was such a huge world. I didn't know anything about it. I, yeah, it was quite fascinating coming into Pinball Expo and seeing that there's like a whole weekend dedicated to this. And I started playing and I was like, OK, this makes a lot of sense. And then I started thinking on my end, I've had so many people in my family pass away. I mean, my dad passed when I was nine from cancer. He spent a lot of time in the hospital and my dad wasn't a huge gamer. But I just think, like, if he would have had something there to keep him busy and just to get up and do something, would that have helped him in any kind of way emotionally? And just all the other people in my life. And then I think about me. Like, what if I was in that position? What would I need and feel? And as a child, what would I want and need and feel? And so I try to just put myself in other people's shoes and decisions. I try to be sympathetic and empathetic and just try to help in really any way I can, whether that's social media posts, whether it's sharing fundraisers or helping at dedications or telling people that live here in Michigan with me, like, hey, have you heard about our machine at Helen DeVos? You know, just like, oh, didn't even know we had one here. So I just I like talking about it and connecting with people and hearing their stories and validating them and knowing that there's people out there to help in all different kinds of ways, even in the form. So, yeah. That's amazing. A couple of questions for the foundation itself. I mean, does the foundation own the machines or do you give them to the hospitals? We do not. We we own the machines. OK. Only if people, you know, they jump on both sides of the fence on this. and you know i really don't care because if people remember how the charity got started it was from a broken machine that was donated to the children's hospital and it never received maintenance in two and a half years of that time until we were able to find it so we knew you know placing a pinball machine just like a car it needs routine maintenance sure you need to change the oil, you need to throw new tires on it, whatever. The same thing with a pinball machine. And why would we, you know, pose a problem for the children's hospital when they do not know anything about how to restore a pinball machine? Exactly. So why would we introduce that element into our charity and say, okay, we did our job, here's your machine, goodbye. And then all of a sudden, you know, two years later It's, you know, the worst case scenario is for that machine to be broken and hit the dumpster. Right. Right. We don't want that to happen. So people say, well, what if you decide to pull it out of. You know, that Children's Hospital or Ronald McDonald House. Yeah, that's part of our agreement that we have with the Children's Hospital. If we see them abusing the use of this machine or it's in a janitor's closet and not being used, we have the ability to go in there, reclaim the machine to repurpose it, maybe into another children's hospital, Ronald McDonald House or something similar. We have control over our asset. So it's not that, you know, we're not fulfilling what our mission does. we just, you know, our donation is the use of the machine. Yeah. And if a machine breaks down, which we had happen before, it was out in Stony Brook, Long Island. We had a Wizard of Oz that was there receiving it was like over, you know, 40,000 plays. I think it was like 47,000 plays and it couldn't work anymore. So you're looking at a game, if you're familiar with the game, you know that it has five flippers on it. So think about the scenario. You're going to open up a dirty game because you know the selenoid dust migrates everywhere into sterile environment like a children's hospital. Yeah, that's not going to happen. So what we had to do was we had to get a donor machine, which was a home version of the Spider-Man pinball machine. We have a heavy metal right here. It's the same machine. Yeah, it's a great machine. It's a basic machine, but it's a great pinball machine. So we switched them out. That way they weren't without a pinball machine. We took it back to a shop. We had someone help us out with restoring the machine, rebuilt the whole thing. we called up the hospital and said hey we're ready to return the machine they asked us could they keep the Spider-Man instead and we're like yeah 100% you know if you would rather have that machine that's fine by us so what we did was we took the Wizard of Oz and it's now in New Haven in a Ronald McDonald house there. Perfect.
    45:28
    It's not like we're selling these for any kind of gain. Like you said, we run as a business, but the IRS recognizes us as a charity. Yes. We operate as a business. Yes. People said, what if you sell that machine? well if we did sell that machine we would repurpose the funding into doing more good so I never understood that argument when I know the purity of our mission it's not like you know we're selling machines that are bought just to I don't know be nefarious and you know do these other things. No, we're putting pinball machines in children's hospitals. That's our mission. Now our mission has grown to the other phases that I mentioned. We have a great machine. It was an older machine. We call it school days now, but it was an older machine that's up in Lockwood Elementary School up in Michigan. It's in a classroom with kids with special needs. So we love that machine. We love helping out those kids and the joy that they have for that. So why would we start selling off machines for other things?
    47:05
    We're just so entrenched in helping people through pinball that we just want it to grow. and this is kind of funny. Here's a new question I get asked all the time. All right, let me hear it.
    47:24
    In the beginning, did we set a number on what we would recognize as achievement, as success? What number of machines would that be? And honestly, we never had a number, ever, ever. Great. It was always one more. absolutely that's the answer yeah we're going to this location one more but you know as we look back and we're at you know a number of 81 yeah that's a huge you know mile marker you know when you're traveling you look at the miles that you put on right from the very beginning. And that's all it is at this point. It's a great number, but I could think of other numbers that are higher that would be, you know, to my liking as well and to our charities, you know, to show the impact that we're having. So I think that question is really, you know, something great that we can reflect upon but the number is not 100 you know people ask me that will you feel accomplished when you're at 100 no maybe it'll be 101 maybe 102 maybe 103 we don't know um i think that people feel that you know it's they could see the journey as well in the number and you know that has to serve that purpose right there does that make sense it makes a ton of sense it makes it i view building a charity as building an organ just a company being an entrepreneur i own a small staffing firm my wife and i and when we look at our numbers it's never good enough we have to continue to grow and again from a little acorn grows a big tree so i i am always in the belief of one more one more is the proper number right just like the chance for hope foundation you went from one apartment and now you're at seven yeah what number do you put upon that where you're like, okay, we arrived and we can do no more.
    49:57
    I mean, it's really hard to put on that as long as you see a need. I think that growth is always going to be there Absolutely My son went door to door selling pretzels so that he could buy a couch for one of the apartments Oh that fantastic And it was just like he just wanted to build. He's like, can I get a couch? And we're like, yeah, you can get a couch. How do you want to get a couch? He's like, I don't know. Well, you like these pretzels. Why don't you sell them door-to-door? And he literally went throughout our small town in Southeastern and got himself multiple people to go buy a couch for that sixth apartment, or maybe it was the fifth. That's amazing. It's just little things like that.
    50:43
    That's the secret right there. The best salesperson is a person that believes in their products. So your son found something that he enjoyed and they wanted to share it with the world. And it makes it less frightening when you're selling a product that you tried and tested. Yeah, he made good pretzels. There were some spicy pretzels, and he went door to door, and he got them. I think it was actually a loveseat, not a full couch. But it is what it is. A couch is a couch. When did you guys start raffling machines on YouTube? Did that seem like a good fundraising move, right? Well, it was introduced to me, actually.
    51:25
    I used to go to a local tournament. It was held up in Fruitland, Florida here. It was Curly's little shop of games.
    51:37
    And he would always do like an open house, and it would be a fun little tournament with my friends from Florida. But he would always raffle off a machine. And I always thought that was neat. You knew someone was going home with a brand-new machine. Yeah. And at that time, the games were, you know, around four thousand dollars.
    52:00
    And but, you know, it was still a lot of fun. You seen someone win, you know, a pinball machine and they were taking it home, you know, that evening. That was very cool to me. So as a collector myself, I want to share, you know, my passion for pinball with other people. I always had open houses where people could come over and I would say, here's what I do. And, you know, people could try it out and, you know, maybe they enjoyed it as well. I heard a lot of people say that, you know, it was a really the best family fun night that we had through the Rotary Club that they ever done. And so it showed the connection. And so with the raffle, all it is is a 50-50 raffle. And people are probably familiar with that. Sure, if you go to a ballpark, any baseball park, 50-50 raffle. They do the same thing. The churches would do it. The volunteer fire department would do it. So, you know, I thought that was always really neat. And when Curly was doing it, I'm like, wow, that's a great idea. So I called him up and said, hey, do you mind if I do what you introduced to me? And he's like, no, you know, fine, do it. So it's a 50-50 raffle. We pay for the machine, you know, on 50%, and we use the other 50% to help our program to place pinball machines. And 100% of that goes back to our pinball placement program to allow us to place machines. So it's a real pure mechanic, real simple math. Yeah. So the entries, the pricing, again, is real simple. All you're doing is pricing out how much the machine is costing, then double the entries from 100 to 200, and there you go, 50-50 raffle. And we have been doing it since the fall of 2014. and we've been doing I don't know how many raffles I was going to ask you that's my last question people could go to our website and you'll see when it started you'll see the very first winner because again we're very transparent with that so people here could go right to our website projectpinball.org go to the raffle page, you'll see all the winners of whatever we did through raffles. Even if we get an older machine and we raffle that, that's there as well. Our Toys for Tots raffles are there as well. Again, it's very transparent. It shows how many raffles. I'm not big on numbers like that. Again, it's not showing our success or accomplishment. I want to feel that every time that we have a dedication in that moment. I want to feel that we achieved something that we needed to for that moment, then move on to the next moment.
    55:25
    You just raffled off Evil Dead. How was the reception to that raffle? Oh my God, that was so remarkable. The Testament is too spooky in their desirability for their company and their titles.
    55:42
    You know, they do a lot of French titles out there. Probably not going to put an Evil Dead at a hospital. Probably not. Yeah, yeah. Evil Dead, Rob Zombie. You might not do that. But they have a Looney Tunes. They have a Looney Tunes. Yeah, we were talking to Bug and Morgan about that. A back-end one for a hospital. So, but, you know, they do a lot of these great titles and we do offer them up because, again, I'm a pinball enthusiast and we love Spooky. They are so fantastic.
    56:16
    And, you know, from the very beginning, they've been so supportive of us and what we do. And we support those guys, too. I think they're very passionate about pinball. It just shows, you know, they've been around for, you know, many, many years now. Their first game was Americans Most Haunted, and now we have the Evil Dead. I mean, it's just amazing. And the first one was pretty special.
    56:47
    We had 001. So the very first one coming off the line went to one of our supporters, which is, I think that's super, you know, amazing. And then we did another one. It was another collector's edition, and that sold out equally as quick. So it shows, you know, the attention that people have on Spooky's titles and the support that they have for what they're doing. So I think that's fantastic. It is fantastic. Congratulations on that. I don't want to hold you too much longer, but I do want to ask you any fundraising goals and projects you have for 2025? Yeah, we have a new one. that Taj was leaning towards it. She didn't go there because I know that she wants to talk more about it.
    57:42
    Is we want to do something for you guys. We want to do something, Chance for Hope Foundation. As she alluded to, we do help other charities out there because I think that, you know, we're all, you know, pushing to make our planet better and why not help other people with their achievements. So if we could plug into our audience, our donors, our supporters, and show them there's a need in Houston, Texas, let's do it. You know, there is a need in Houston, Texas. And and we need we need to put pinball machines in these and let these little patients play it. Yeah, and I think one of the key things is knowing somebody in the hospital, too. So fundraising, of course, is important, but if you can find a child life specialist or somebody in a Ronald McDonald house who's in the pinball community, somebody knows someone, that's always a huge key factor that gets our foot in the door, too. Well, we're going to make that happen, Taj. Because this isn't a race. This is not a race. It's not who gets there quicker, faster, better. this is a journey that we're all on and we need to help other people um you know along their journey as well you know absolutely it's a passion project for all of us and the joy that we have for pinball to give that to people in need is just oh tickles me guys gets me so we want to circle back around We want to hear more about your charity as well. Absolutely.
    59:24
    Let's see what we could do. As you can see, we're into a new place here. We want to do fundraising here similar to what you were saying as well, where we could introduce it into our community and help maybe do fundraising for Ronald McDonald Homes here, and the money would go directly for that goal. And as a charity, we could help facilitate that. Absolutely. You put a flip frenzy there. You put a flip frenzy in your background, and you have people from the Ronald McDonald House playing against each other. They're going to have the best time. They're going to have the absolute best time. yeah I think that again it might be self-serving for my passion for pinball I love seeing people play and enjoying it just like I feel but at the same time we know that it's expanding you know the feeling of goodwill you know there's a lot of people that never touched a pinball machine and you know how can they relate to our charity unless they're you know placed in front of the machine and what's really funny and you could use this you could use this to make that connection with um you know new people that never touched the machine before i have them playing and after they're done i'm like you were probably thinking about work or you know your busy day or something like that and the response is always people start laughing because they know that they were totally engrossed with playing the pinball machine soon as they plunged it nothing else mattered uh for that moment and they were just concerned about you know keeping the ball in play and trying to achieve that disconnected them from any other emotion that they were feeling in that moment and they could have had you know a lot of world's problems going on but for that moment they weren't thinking about that so building that connection with people from the community helps them to realize why as a charity we choose to do this why as a charity you choose to do it and how we could get back in that moment it's that connection so you know i welcome uh bringing people in out of the community to try it out firsthand.
    62:02
    Well, I am so happy to have you both here today. The massive number of sponsors that are listed on your website, projectpinball.org, is a testament to how you develop such a large group of partners and people that believe in your cause. So congratulations on that. What a pleasure it was to speak with you both. please visit projectpinball.org for more information on this wonderful charity and please consider donating click that how can you help button right up top and let's get their goals for 2025 and let's get to 82, 83 84. Keep it, continue and that's a great you know that's very kind words coming from you because with you involved with the charity you have the insight of what it takes to take a vision idea and making it happen. I take your words of kindness really to heart on what we're trying to do here. Again, any way that we could help you guys with your mission, just reach out to us anytime. Absolutely. You're going to get sick of me, Daniel and Taj. I'm sorry. No, that's not possible.
    63:22
    Thank you. Thank you so much. Am I missing anything in the outro? I don't think so. You know, we're we got a big year coming up in 2025. This year we placed 11 machines. So we're hoping to achieve those numbers. And it looks like it's going to be a busy year for us. but again, you know, we're going at the pace of our community. So like you said, donations always help. Absolutely. It helps us allow to reach, you know, that much, you know, further and sometimes even quicker. So, yeah, we could always use everybody's help out there. So I'm going to leave everybody to that. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, Taj. Happy holidays, Daniel. Thank you so much. Thank you. dot org. Oh, appreciate you so much. Happy holidays. You too.
    64:21
    Thank you so much. Project pinball for coming on this podcast right before the holidays, please donate $5, $10, $20. It means so much to these children. And if you've ever seen a picture of a little patient playing a pinball machine, I'm telling you, that's why we do this. So, uh, So much going on at the Wormhole. Back to regularly scheduled programming in January, and our Monday game streams will be coming back. So that was a nice little break for the Wormhole. If you've not heard, I don't know where you've been, but the Wormhole is hosting the Pinball Community Awards on February 22, 2025. For more information, especially ticketing information, there's a few tickets left. Please visit twippies.com.
    65:10
    Speaking of the Twippies, I need to schedule a few test streams. in January, really live on YouTube and Twitch. We really need viewers to come on, help us get the sound right, get the video right. We want everything perfect for February 22nd. So be on the lookout for some of those streams and come on and yell at me and tell me how my audio sounds. We have a new segment on the podcast that we'd like to introduce. At the end of each podcast, we're going to be doing something called Be On The Lookout. These are rare pins that the Wormhole is looking to buy or trade for right now to add to our collection. So here we go.
    65:52
    Be on the lookout for machines made by a French manufacturer of pinball machines called Rally. We want to hear from anyone that has any of those titles for sale or trade. Also, be on the lookout for Japan's Sega titles. Not Sega USA, but Japan's Sega titles. We're looking for a few of those as well. So each podcast, I'm going to be listing many of the pins that we're looking to acquire. So be on the lookout and hit us up on all the socials or wormholepinball at gmail.com. Thank you again, Project Pinball. We really appreciate you coming on this podcast, and we are so excited to be partnering with you moving forward from 2025 onward. So thank you so much. Have a wonderful holiday season. From Wormhole Pinball, I am Jamie Burchill. Take care.