Check out Project Pinball’s Bonus Play News Letter for the month of April! This is a great way to keep up with the charity and to read about special things have been happening! It also gives you great insight to what is coming up for the charity and where we will be heading!
Since Project Pinball Charity was founded back in 2011, we developed a master plan to guide our road ahead with several detailed phases that would shape our impact through pinball.
At this time, we are proud to announce that we are ready to launch publicly our charity’s Phase Two. Phase Two is our new Rx Pinball Program which is a STEM and STEAM-based special needs development program. If you are not familiar with what STEM is, it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. STEM aims to foster collaboration skills, logical reasoning, and inquiring minds. It is an amazing educational program in that we can involve many aspects of a pinball machine, with therapeutic and educational benefits as our priority. We can show children and their families how much “pinball” can do for them.
Phase Two will be the introduction to our STEM and Special Needs Programs that we have developed in partnership with doctors, nurses, specialists, professors, and teachers from medical and educational settings, and other professional fields. This will go hand and hand with the pinball machines that we have placed and will be expanded upon with every new addition to our children’s hospital and Ronald McDonald Home pinball machine locations.
As a complete integration, our goal is to help assist the child life specialists to not only keep it fun and interesting for the kids, providing a therapeutic release, but to also teach them something in the process. Each hospital is different and has different needs for its patients, which is why we felt it was important to keep the development programs flexible, with the ability to be tailored to our hosts’ specific needs.
Phase Two will also open the school doors to local communities.
We are actively offering our Pinball STEM programs to schools across the nation!
Please follow our progress. For more information, you can find us on our website www.projectpinball.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well!
Thank you for your continued support, gifts, donations, and kind words to help us grow as a pinball charity.
Best Wishes,
Daniel Spolar
Project Pinball Charity
We are super excited to update our supporters, donators, and followers of a very exciting thing that has came up due to the Project Pinball Charities impact! As you are probably aware we started back in 2011 and since then several other pinball charities have risen with our help! As we want all of our incredible supporters to know that none of this would have been possible without you! We have been working very hard to help more kids and families than ever before. As we continue to do so we are getting our impact to reach farther than ever before, even globally!
We just received word that in Strasbourg, France there is a new charity starting that will be putting 3 pinball machines and 3 foosball tables in the Strasbourg-Hautepierre Hospital. With their goal being, “A charity project that shines in the eyes of sick children”. A very touching goal and we are so excited to be on this journey with this wonderful charity! We would love if our supporters, followers, and donators would take a moment to look at this awesome charity and know that because of all your help that this is possible! Our impact has crossed the oceans and we cannot wait to see what the future holds for all of us!
Check out the website for the charity in the link below! See what they are all about, give your support and feedback to them, also tell us what you think on our Facebook page!
http://www.deslumieresdanslesyeux.fr/en/to-make-a-donation/
Project Pinball was proudly featured on NBC Nightly News during a segment about the ‘Make A Film Foundation’. They grant film wishes to kids battling serious diseases, giving them a chance to shine as they write and star in their own movie. As one of our wonderful Project Pinball supporters, 16-year-old Anthony Conti got the amazing opportunity to be a star in his own movie “The Black Ghiandola”. Anthony proudly wore our Project Pinball t-shirt during his movie premiere to showcase his support for everything that we do. Check out this amazing story for yourself on the link below!
The holiday season is soon beginning and Project Pinball Charity is hitting the road again. This time to share joy in more children’s hospitals plus adding Ronald McDonald Houses to our “to do list”.
We are achieving planned goals and breaking through new boundaries and we have a lot of “firsts” for our charity this time out.
A Project Pinball first- we will be placing 5 machines in 5 different states after traveling over 4000 miles in less than 2 weeks time.
A Project Pinball first- We will be placing a pinball machine to be used for children with special needs. A doctor has asked to team-up with Project Pinball to start some research and collect data that can be used to develop programs to help these children through the benefits of pinball play. This has been the jump start needed to begin our 2nd phase of our elaborate mission plan.
A Project Pinball first- We have teamed up with Brad Baker, owner of VPcabs. He was thrilled to jump on board after he heard about our charity’s mission to help others through pinball. We will be placing our first video pinball machine that has been carefully handcrafted to add custom features to our machine that will give patients a greater variety of game play options.
A Project Pinball first- We will be introducing our charity’s service to, not one but to two, Ronald McDonald Houses, which are located in Columbus and Milwaukee. This opens a new brand new area of reach to add to our charity’s influence across the United States.
A Project Pinball first- We are adding new states to our pinball machines placed. We are excited to be entering New York, Connecticut, and Wisconsin.
A Project Pinball first- We have a new sponsor that has reached out to assist our charity with a new Star Trek pinball machine. Michael Daddona Jr., owner of Automated Services understands the impact that this new machine will have on the children and their lives.
Plus we have Joe Newhart of PinballSTAR Amusements helped us with the WOZ that will be introduced to the Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. Thank you Joe for being so caring and supportive by giving these gifts!
All delivered and setup just in time for the holidays.
We hope you join us on this exhilarating journey by staying updated with us on Pinside, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
@Projectpinball
Best Wishes,
Daniel Spolar
It has been 5 years since we started Project Pinball Charity.
It is an amazing journey that life has given us. It has been 5 years since Project Pinball Charity began this journey to help families across the United States through our love of pinball. We support countless lives through our charity’s efforts that would take years to discuss the full impact, so we will keep it brief to give you the simplified update.
We have successfully placed twenty-two pinball machines in our Children’s Hospitals from the west coast to the east coast of the United States. We have another five pinball machine dedications, for a December Winter Campaign that we will be announced shortly, raising that total to twenty-six placed.
We don’t only place pinball machines but we actively support, maintain and provide children’s programs with these machines to keep our hospital partners happy. Our hospital community is quickly understanding the exciting therapeutic benefits our charity’s program presents. We developed a program that helps supports families in hospital settings that could use what a pinball machine is designed to offer.
We had a mission statement that has been followed from day one to guide us to our goals along this epic journey to establish a system that will last for years to come. What we do today will have positive lasting effects on these lives through their association with pinball.
All of this was through the help and support of our good friends across our globe- yes. I said, globe. Our charity’s supporters are world-wide which I can only feel truly blessed as I write this.
We would like thank all of our founding partners that helped start our charity’s journey. We were blessed to know Little Shop of Games- Curly has been our there from the first days to help assist and be there when we needed a father voice to guide our ambitions. We would not have started on our path if it was not for the generous nature of Gary Stern of Stern Pinball. Gary and his close associates provided everything that was needed to help us in our infancy to find the legs to walk forward. Marc, Nancy and Paul Mandletort of Marco Specialties have been a huge supporter of our charity’s efforts through this entire time. Matt Barlow has to be mention because he never is that person to sound his own trumpet.
Thank you to our numerous donors, patrons, supporters, followers, well wishers, ambassadors, sponsors, volunteers, community leaders, pinball people and friends that are too many to list individual names. We love you all! Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving and giving life to those in need.
As a charity we do this full time to get things done and our results speak volumes! We take what we do serous because of the impact our charity on the lives of children and their families. With your continued help and support we will continue to grow to help and support these families in our special way. Please, when it comes to giving back, it would mean the world to us if you remember us as a strong charity that you would like to help reach more and more families for the years to come.
We look forward to our journey ahead…. for many, many more years!
Project Pinball Charity, with the support of Stern Pinball, Inc. and Marco Specialties, is kicking off their 2nd annual Love across America tour. Beginning June 30th, founder Daniel Spolar will travel over 10,000 miles, visiting 26 states to dedicate pinball machines in 5 children’s hospitals 5 different cities across the nation.
Project Pinball focused their charity’s mission on the understanding of the thousands of children undergoing intensive medical treatment in children’s hospitals across the United States. Their goal is to help ease their pain and speed up children’s recovery by providing a motivation to get out of bed, to socialize, and have fun by playing an iconic American pastime… Pinball!
“We assist in enriching children’s lives through active play and diversion from hospital life,” said Daniel Spolar, the charity’s founder and Senior Director. “Pinball allows patients the opportunity to focus on something other than medical tests, medications, and procedures. We have the opportunity to give them a chance to have fun, laugh and smile and just be kids.”
Headquartered in Bonita Springs, Florida, Project Pinball Charity, a nonprofit 501(c)(3), has been maintaining and donating machines for use in Children’s Hospitals since 2013 and has since become a nationwide organization with pinball machines in hospitals across the U.S.A. They now have 18 pinball machines placed in children’s hospitals nationwide.
Project Pinball is scheduled to deliver machines to children’s hospitals in Denver, Cincinnati, San Diego, and Chicago, as well as attend several fundraisers throughout the US. During their travels they will also be attending social gatherings and three pinball expos. “Last year we met so many amazing people, we cannot wait to share Project Pinball!”
“We’re thankful for the opportunity to team up with Project Pinball Charity again and support Project Pinball on their nationwide trek,” says Gary Stern, Chairman and CEO of Stern Pinball. “We’re looking forward to sharing our love for pinball with patients and uplifting their hospital experience.”
Lucas Heiser plans to clean and recondition the WurliTzer Jukebox.
When the restoration is complete Heiser said it will glow a shiney blue just as it did in the 60s.
“You can purchase it and help out the kids, and get a beautiful machine in return” Heiser said.
Anyone interested can visit Heiser Restoration or find more information on their website www.HeiserRestorations.com.
The WurliTzer is one of the last jukeboxes people can actually see the mechanism and watch the 33 and 45 records change out and play.
The record section was covered in 1963.
The jukebox was donated to Heiser Restorations by the residents at E. Dene Moore Care Center in Rifle, Co.
All the profits raised from selling the restored jukebox will be donated to Project Pinball.
“Pinball has been a way of life for a lot of people as a relzxing thing to do, but also therapy, anger management for some people,” Heiser said.
Project Pinball donates the machines to hospitals allowing patients, families, and even staff to use pinball as a form of therapy during the tough situations.
“There’s such a generational gap and we want to just close that and bring back that communication with people,” Heiser said.
http://www.nbc11news.com/content/news/387997982.html
Palmetto Pinball Club is hosting a charity tournament to benefit Project Pinball. Project Pinball raises money to donate pinball machines to Children’s Hospitals, and we’d like to raise money to donate a machine to a local Children’s Hospital.
The format will be a PAPA style tournament. Qualifying will be held all day on Saturday and we will be going all night into Sunday. It’s a pinball-athon, baby! Qualifying will consist of 5 tables (out of a bank of 9), and each ticket will cost $10. Play as many tickets as you like.
The tournament is IFPA sanctioned, and we’re gonna work really hard to get it to be a 20+ point tournament, so y’all come on out and play with us.
http://www.wltx.com/news/local/palmetto-pinball-club-hosts-tournament/262469568
The Project Pinball Charity is a labor of love for Daniel Spolar. It started with love for the game of pinball. “My children had left home and started their own lives; there was a gap. I reflected back on my past and remembered my love of pinball,” said Spolar. He looked on the Internet and found a thriving underground community of pinball enthusiasts, “pinheads.” Additionally, he discovered where to find pinball machines for himself and his friend and partner, Dave Denholtz. Each partner now has 10 – 12 pinball machines in their own homes and they participate in pinball tournaments.
“It’s not uncommon for pinheads to have sanctioned tournaments in their own homes,” said Spolar. He acquired a unique skill to stay in the game: he repairs pinball machines, an uncommon art.
It is necessary since Spolar and his partner have acquired more than 80 additional pinball machines in the last two years, and a warehouse mezzanine to store them and share the game with friends. They call it the Pinball Asylum and joke that they are the inmates. “Every machine is a unique find,” said Spolar, a Bonita Springs resident and business owner.
“My wife started Project Pinball Charity with a call from Chrissy Brown, Inpatient Oncology/Hematology Unit at Golisano’s Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida. They had a donated pinball machine that was in such disrepair that it was unused. She called me to make the repair,” said Spolar.
The heartwarming response from local and internet pinball enthusiasts to come up with the parts, including $1000 in parts from one anonymous donor, let Spolar know he found a mission for his pinball activity and lovers of the game.
Once Spolar repaired the machine at Golisano’s Children’s Hospital, it provided hours of relaxation and release from stress for parents, children, staff and visitors. It was a hit. They found the same stress relief as the majority of pinball enthusiasts — concentrating on the game frees the mind from its other concerns and provides a time of joy, laughter and excitement. What better gift for children and families in hospitals?
The Pinball Asylum is incorporated as a non-profit and can receive donations for Project PinballCharity Group, providing for the needs of children who are hospitalized. Spolar loans pinball machines to fund-raising events that also raise awareness that the game is still alive and well. Friends are invited to private Pinball Asylum games for charity causes.
Part of the thrill with pinball machines is the communication with other enthusiasts across the nation and in other countries. They share information about available pinball machines and activities. The desire to provide a charity purpose is spreading across these groups. They also compete for standing in their organization.
The pinball machine at Golisano’s Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida that Spolar repaired was a memorial gift from parents who lost their child to cancer. Thanks to Project Pinball Charity Group, the once broken machine is now bringing the joy intended to other young children. Below you can view the process Daniel Spolar went through to clean up the Spider-Man machine for the patients of Golisano’s Children’s Hospital.
