Games For Life, Inc.

Interview with Ron Chapman Jr., Executive Director

1. Why does your organization exist?
Our mission is: To advance individual understanding and use of games for personal growth and knowledge. To teach individuals the usefulness of games to support healthy, fully-functioning, and financially responsible lives.
Basically we teach important life principles through games.  Kids are maximally engaged when playing games so why not sneak some learning in there?  

2. How are you different from other nonprofits?
We are the only nonprofit in the Atlanta/Decatur area (that we know of) that offers after-school chess programs for the duration of a school year.  We also offer programs using other games if organizations are interested.  Also, most chess nonprofits are focused on the game and tournaments where we want to focus on the life principles.

3. What do your financial numbers look like?
The numbers are really small as we still consider ourselves a new nonprofit.  In 2007 we brought in $1,549 and spent $372 while so far in 2008 we have brought in $1,767 and spent $2,081 to date.  Our main source of revenue is fee-for-service from our chess classes while our main expenses have been equipment, official registration stuff, and salaries.

4. Are you growing?
Definitely trying to.  We were in 3 Atlanta Public Schools, one private Decatur school and a church last year.  We want to at least double the number of places this upcoming year.  If you have any connections with schools or other organizations in our area, please let us know.  

5. Anything really new/interesting on the horizon?
To be perfectly honest, no.  Being such a young nonprofit we are still trying to get the basics down and increase the number of individuals we are able to help by increasing the number of programs we run.

6. Who is the target population for your services?  
We serve anyone that can benefit from our programs, but right now all the schools we worked in last year were 100% African American elementary schools.  We taught students K-5th.  We hope to expand to middle schools in the near future.

7. If you had a large influx of money, what would you do with it?
Beef up our advertising.  We would like to be in contact with every public and private school in Decatur and Atlanta as well as any day care/recreation center, etc. where children gather.  Depending on the amount of money we would be able to look into cutting our current fees for chess classes.

8. Do you have competent leadership?
Of course!  I serve on the board and as Executive Director. I received my undergraduate degree from Harvard University, and have two master degrees with the 2nd being an M.P.A with a focus in Nonprofit Management. During my career I have organized and run kids' camps, tutored and mentored kids, and taught lots and lots of chess.  My wife, Susan L. Chapman, also serves on the board and is our Program Director.  She received her undergraduate degree from Furman University, has received her masters from Georgia Tech and generally helps me keep the organization running.
             
9. Do you have any partnerships?
No official ones.  We are hoping to get some official ones soon!

10. What's your pipe dream for the organization?
We would love to have programs all over the country and even internationally one day.
Beyond the organiztion we would love to see every student in this country at least learn the basics of chess.

For more information on Games For Life, check out their site at www.games-for-life.org