Sad news this morning from Ryan Sharpe, head of the Get-Well Gamers Foundation, a volunteer organization which provides donations of used video games and systems to a network of children's hospitals around the United States.

Ryan, a longtime GP reader and contributor, sent an e-mail which describes the difficulty he is experiencing in keeping GWG going. The issues seem to be of the time and space variety.

Ryan, who is trying to juggle his degree program with the operation of the Foundation, also mentions that the donated games and systems are overwhelming his capacity to store them. Coupled with the loss of two dedicated volunteers, the wheels of GWG are grinding to a halt. Ryan writes:

The Foundation has grown tremendously since I first started it. Unfortunately, my capacity to deal with the foundation has not grown accordingly.  If anything, it has decreased, as my workload increases the closer I get to graduation...

I had two staffers who I could trust to help me run the foundation... (GP: great guys, I met them at E3 last year) Unfortunately, one of them recently moved to Washington, and the other has full-time school and a part-time job to contend with...

We need a shipping manager... We need a secretary... We need someone to handle our website.  We need an accountant...  Most of all we need an office...

So, barring some miraculous occurrence, this can't happen...  So when you notice the website is down and you haven't heard of any new hospitals or whatnot, it's because of this.  The foundation has grown beyound the capabilities of its founder, and there's no one available to take the reigns.

Again, thank you very much for your support over the years, and I hope we can work together again when the Foundation starts back up.  I can promise at least that I'll never let the Foundation die - it just has to rest for a while until there's someone that can take care of it.

This seems to be happening already, as the GWG domain hosting apparently expired in late March. It would be great to see someone step up and help Ryan keep the Get-Well Gamers Foundation running. Is there a white knight out there who can save the GWG?

Here at GamePolitics, we've always supported the GWG. In fact, the organization was the beneficiary of our well-known Pixelante T-shirt contest in which GP readers created wonderful shirts that turned a certain Miami attorney's anti-gamer pejorative into a plus for sick children. (you can still order Pixelante shirts, by the way, with all proceeds going directly to GWG)