Now in its fourth year, you've no doubt heard of Child's Play, the charity started by the guys behind Penny Arcade to get toys and games to sick kids in hospitals. Here at Joystiq, we get sent a lot of stuff that, as a rule, we don't keep. So we've decided to do what we can to help out this holiday season. Here's where Child's Play comes in. We're going to raffle off items from our considerable bounty of swag as well as special prizes that have been donated or purchased especially for this raffle. If you represent a company and you'd like to donate prizes for the raffle, please contact us!

Here's how it's going to work:

• We'll be running posts for the rest of December tagged raffle06 with an item or group of items to give away
• To enter the raffle for that item, follow the post's PayPal link and donate at least $1 to the Child's Play charity
• This donation is your raffle ticket. Each dollar donated earns you one comment so, if you donate $10 for that item, feel free to comment ten times. A reminder: we do not handle the money at all, it goes directly to Child's Play (note the PayPal email address linked in the raffle posts).
  
• You will need to donate for each raffle you want to enter
• When we select a winner for each giveaway randomly with random.org, we'll ask them to forward their PayPal confirmation email to us so we can verify with the Child's Play people before awarding a prize
• Shipping may take up to three weeks, so please be patient!

Why all the trouble? Look, we know some clever cheapskate is going to try to game the system, leave comments without making a donation or leave twenty and try to squeak by with a single dollar donation, so we're going to try to make it as reliable as possible. Any suggestions? Leave your comments here and not in the raffle posts!

[Update: Added some clarifications regarding our handling of the money and the duration of the raffle. Thanks for the feedback!]