Natalie was asked to be an Industry Ambassador for gaming-for-the-disabled charity SpecialEffect in early 2013. As well as raising funds for them herself, she offers the charity pro bono PR support on a regular basis, advising their team on fund-raising ideas, social media engagement and press activity.
She was also hired to help project manage their second annual Gameblast fundraising live-streaming marathon, and consulted on the third. Hugely successful and raising nearly twice the previous year’s total, Natalie helped guide the team’s organisational and promotional efforts, and secured a number of key sponsors and headline partners.
She was responsible for including SpecialEffect as an official charity for the Backspace Festival and also secured several high-end gaming monitors for the team to use, direct from manufacturer Eizo, and was also key to the charity being supported by the Humble Store release of Payload Studios’ TerraTech – the indie developer raised £1,100 for the charity.
Please visit the SpecialEffect website here to support an amazing and inspiring charity that transforms people’s lives.
For more information on the latest Gameblast event, please head here.
TESTIMONIAL:
“Natalie has been a long term and passionate supporter of SpecialEffect and our work to help gamers with disabilities. A clear communicator with creativity, passion and drive Nat is great to work with! Nat worked directly with SpecialEffect on our GameBlast15 charity games marathon event which became the UK’s big event of it’s type raising over £120k.”
Nick Streeter, Head of Fundraising, SpecialEffect
Natalie, quoted on the SpecialEffect site:
“I’ve been a gamer since before we thought to call ourselves that and have very fond memories of my earliest experiences of Spectrum gaming and the Game-And-Watch devices. I never imagined back then that it would continue to be such a major presence in my life, not to mention the bedrock of my career, but it’s an incredible and exciting industry that doesn’t get nearly enough positive press.”
“I came across SpecialEffect’s work via Twitter and was amazed and impressed at the lengths people were going to in order to raise money, and it inspired me to find out more – the more I learnt, the more I was impressed. Now when the Xbox or the iPad is fired up in our house and I watch my own kids play, digital natives in the truest sense, it brings home in a very real way how the work that SpecialEffect do is invaluable – disabled people in the 21st Century need more than ever to feel as included and connected as their able-bodied peers and the SE team are doing just that.”
“I’d urge everyone to take a look at the amazing work that SpecialEffect do – they’re not only helping to change the image of a too-much-maligned industry but they’re genuinely changing lives into the bargain. I’m deeply honoured to have been asked to be an Ambassador and hope that I can play my small part to help them help others.”