ELMIRA, N.Y. (WENY) -- The Arctic League continues to work towards its goal of providing Christmas gifts to kids across Chemung County. Today, board members provided an update on the progress towards this year's goal.

With just under two weeks to go until present delivery starts, a new donation from Tioga Downs has put the goal within reach. The annual Arctic League telethon raised $27,000. Though this sum is lower than what normally comes from their largest fundraiser, they remain confident that they'll reach the goal of $175,000.

"$60,000 short at the end of our broadcast so we went out to the community and we asked for additional help, and additional help has come forward. We've gotten lots of people making donations, including today," remarked Arctic League board of directors president, Bob Kramarik.

Donation efforts were bolstered by a significant $8,000 contribution from Tioga Downs, bringing the total to $168,000 and further pushing the Arctic League within ten percent of the goal. The funds raised from this year's efforts go towards the gifts for next Christmas.

"Every quarter we pick a different charitable organization to be the recipient and this particular quarter (Q4), it just made sense to go with the Arctic League and I give credit to all of our casino players, all of our guests that have donated. We have donation boxes, we have areas where they can round up their change, things like that, and it adds up and this just goes to show for the quarter, $8,000 is a lot of money," said Tioga Downs director of marketing, Jim Weed.

With focus shifting to delivering gifts, the Arctic League also provided an update on how the delivery process will occur, starting at 9:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve.

"Cars will pull right into the parking lot where we have volunteers from here ready to load their cars up to take the packages to the different families. It's a pretty smooth process. It takes about two hours overall roughly and just pretty smooth. It's ages old. It's not a new concept or anything like that. We've had people helping us every year for over 100 years and so this year we're just asking them to come out and help us again," added fellow board member Mike "Robby" Robertson.

Members of the Arctic League are confident that they'll reach their goal thanks to the community's support that continues to show their love for a cause that brings so much cheer to so many.