Using "More Than Words" To Fill Chad's Locker

Over the course of the nine years. . .well, almost nine years (our "birthday" is in a couple of weeks here). . .we've experienced a great deal of growth as a website, particularly in terms of our audience. One of the things that I wish we were doing more of is helping worthy charitable causes, but I'll be honest. . .I'm pretty terrible at organizing these sorts of things.

Thankfully, we're going to change that this summer. Yes, this particular function has been organized for us, and we're happy as heck to be a part of it.

Over the course of his career with the Minnesota Vikings, linebacker Chad Greenway has been a huge part of the Twin Cities community thanks to his efforts with his Lead the Way Foundation. Chad and his wife Jenni have put together numerous programs, but in the case of this particular fundraiser, there's one that we're interested in, and that's a program known as Chad's Locker.

There are five Chad's Lockers that are located in medical facilities around the Twin Cities area. Those facilities are

-University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital (formerly Amplatz Children's Hospital)
-Children's Minneapolis Hospital
-Hudson Hospitals and Clinics
-Children's Hospitals and Clinics Minnesota, St. Paul
-Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare

There are plans for lockers #6 and #7 to be established sometime before the end of the year, although we're not aware of where those will be located at this time.

What Chad's Locker does is provide things like notebook computers, video game systems, movies, and other such amenities for families with a child that is hospitalized for an extended period of time. For families in such a situation, it's nice to occasionally have the amenities of home while dealing with such a stressful situation, and that's what Chad's Locker does.

In order to help make this happen, The Daily Norseman has teamed with four other Minnesota Vikings' websites in an effort that is both competitive and collaborative. Those other sites are Vike Fans, Vikings Corner, Vikings Journal, and Vikings Territory.

The "collaborative" part is that we are hoping, as a group, to raise $10,000 in order to support the Chad's Locker program through our efforts. Those efforts will include occasional posts like this one as well as the use of the hashtag #MoreThanWords on our various social media platforms. The "competitive" part is where we attempt to raise more money than the other four sites involved.

When you go to the donation page for our fundraiser. . .and it's open for business right now, if you're interested. . .you will have the opportunity to specify which site your donation is on behalf of. That will be tracked as well. If you go to make a donation, the opportunity to choose which site you're donating on behalf of will come up after you hit "Submit" on your donation.

What does the site get if we raise more for this endeavor than anyone else? Well. . .we get a pretty spiffy trophy to display somewhere on the site.

And, really, that's it. There's nothing that's in it for us personally or anything like that. Other than the satisfaction of knowing that we raised a whole lot of money to help sick children and their families in the Twin Cities area. We'll get to hold on to that trophy until next year, when we'll likely be doing it all again.

Big thanks to Adam Warwas over at Vikings Territory for getting this whole thing organized and for allowing us to be a part of it.

So, ladies and gentlemen, let's do what we can to help out a great program that helps a lot of deserving folks. Thank you very much for your donation in advance.