Digital Games for Change

This month’s edition of the Social Good podcast was is up on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s website. The topic this month are the ways that digital games can be used for social change.

According to the Entertainment Software Industry association’s website, $11.7 Billion was spent on video games in 2008 alone and 68% of American households are playing video games. This doesn’t include the growing number of free games downloaded onto iPhones and other mobile devices. Gaming is HUGE, and will continue to grow exponentially.

A few groups are creatively using them to raise awareness and funds for causes. My guests on the podcast are Alex Quinn, the Executive Director of Games for Change and Brian Reich, who has the coolest title ever, Principle Evangelist of a new for profit venture called GamesThatGive, to talk about the ways that digital games can impact social change.

I was struck during our conversation about how both groups are using digital games for change but in diametrically opposite ways.

Alex and the groups that his organization supports are creating games with a serious purpose. Against All Odds has users experience the life of a global refugee. 3rd World Farmer has players experience managing a virtual farm in a third world country. Players learn about issues and even develop action steps beyond the game. Schools are incorporating these kinds of games into their curricula.

Brian’s group is a for-profit start up that is leveraging the large amounts of time people are playing casual games like Solitaire and Gems. By encouraging casual game playing on their site, the company will be donating a portion of the ad revenue the site is generating to donate to causes like nonprofit organizations like the Wilderness Society.

I love the idea that both of these groups arrived at the idea of using digital games for change in entirely different ways. It is a great reminder that there is no one right way to use social media for social change.

Causes on Facebook: An Update and Lessons

The latest edition of my Social Good podcast was posted yesterday. The topic this month is the Causes application on Facebook, where things stand and how to be successful using it. My guests were Joe Green the co-founder of Causes and Amy Eldridge, the founder and executive director of Love Without Boundaries. I first heard about Amy’s group through the research that Beth and I did for the Giving Challenge assessment effort for The Case Foundation.

Causes just had its two year anniversary. To date about 200,000 Causes have been created, and about 50,000 of those have been created for a specific nonprofit organization. And this just in from the Causes folks today, they surpassed $10 million in total donations using the application.

As you’ll hear Amy and Joe caution, uses Causes takes the same persistence and elbow grease that all fundraising efforts require. In addition, here are a few lessons learned from their experiences:

• As I mentioned Causes and Facebook are not ATM machines. Successful efforts have built relationships with their supporters.
• Successful efforts have been time limited, urgent campaigns that have engaged people — and then let them go when the campaign is over.
• Causes augments, doesn’t replace, your other fundraising efforts.
• It’s important to know when to lay fallow and spend your energy building your community and raising awareness of your Cause rather than trying fruitlessly to fundraise.

Andy Carvin of NPR on Social Good Podcast

The latest installment of the Social Good Podcast is up on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s site.

Andy Carvin, the social media mavin of NPR, is my guest.  We talk about how he is helping NPR, and the reporters, use social media to share content and engage various communities in discussions of issues and contributions to content development.

Andy’s advice to smaller nonprofits is to stay nimble and keep innovating and experimenting.  Don’t worry about failing, he said, just keep learning.

He’s currently in search of a good volunteer management software solution for a Web 2.0 environment.  I found this run down of applications put together by Jayne Cravens.  I know folks have used CiviCRM, but wondering if others have thoughts about any of these applications.

2nd Social Good Podcast is Posted

The second edition of the Social Good podcast that I host for the Chronicle of Philanthropy has just been posted.

The topic this month is whether and how the nonprofits and foundations can take advantage of social capital in light of our reduced financial capital.  Lucy Bernholz and Katya Andresen are my guests and they’re just terrific, smart, straightforward and helpful.

There are also some useful resources up on the Chronicles website, too.  Let me know what you think about this topic and the podcast in general. Enjoy!