It's All in the Game

So how does a charity benefit from gamification? The basic tenets of fundraising still hold true -- you need to recruit, engage, measure and grow your support base. Gamification can help with the first two. A simple, rewarding game, with a registration feature can be an effective recruitment tool if you can manage to make it viral. It may even reward the player for making a donation too. Take a look at iHobo, developed for UK charity DePaul. It's an iPhone app that invites you to spend three days in the company of a homeless person and help him survive. The app raised money, but also raised a lot of awareness that opened the door to larger grants.