#KeeleyCares: Extra Life 2020 Recap

By: Mary Sly

For the past seven years, Keeley Companies has loved hosting an Extra Life event to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Extra Life unites thousands of gamers from around the world to raise money in support of their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. We have made many long-lasting connections and this year was no exception. Even with the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, our Keeley’ns were still able to host an incredible, completely virtual event while raising over $24,000 for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals in St. Louis and Cincinnati.

While we have always had a vision of hosting a virtual event alongside our in-person events, this was the first year in which Extra Life was completely virtual. Our Extra Life team was fortunate to have met students from INTERalliance in Cincinnati. INTERalliance’s vision of dramatically growing the IT talent pipeline by designing and delivering innovative technology programs, in partnership with businesses, high schools, and universities helps students gain the necessary skillsets to enter the IT workforce. These students helped plan and execute Extra Life while also participating in some of the gaming. It felt like fate that our team was able to build this partnership with INTERalliance and allow the students to gain real-world experience while having fun. Along with INTERalliance, our team met incredible people at GiGNations, a veteran-owned gaming community with the goal of helping veterans rebuild social connections and help with their inter/intrapersonal issues. GiGNations’ extensive experience with events similar to Extra Life helped us engage with and spotlight various gamers throughout the 24-hour stream.

“A lot of the right people came together in the nick of time to do something amazing. It felt like it was truly meant to be.”

-Bill Orr

Bill Orr, Senior Vice President at ZeroDay Technology Solutions, is heavily involved in Extra Life and has a passion for supporting the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. When Bill started at ZeroDay about seven years ago, he had just become a father for the first time. After hearing stories from those directly impacted by the work of Children’s Miracle Network, Bill knew that, as a father, he wanted to get involved. Since Extra Life started, all money raised goes directly to the hospitals for direct care for the children and family support.

This year, the Keeley-sponsored event raised $7,238.50 for the St. Louis Children’s Miracle Network hospital and $5,020.50 for the Cincinnati Children’s Miracle Network hospital, with Nick Knipe, Infrastructure Engineer at ZeroDay, single-handedly raising $4,562. With #KeeleyCares match of $12,259, we were able to raise $24,518!

“I feel such an immense sense of gratitude. I look back on all of the challenges that the volunteers and INTERalliance students faced while pioneering this new territory of a completely virtual event and I am awestruck. I can’t wait to continue to improve our virtual event and combine our in-person and virtual events even more in the coming years”

-Bill Orr

Click here to learn more about Extra Life and donate. Learn more about #KeeleyCares here!