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Victoria firm taps into social gaming for fundraising

Sep 9 2011/in News Coverage

Determined to remove or at least reduce the cap-in-hand approach to fundraising used by charities and notfor-profit organizations, a new Victoria company is taking the fundraising campaign to social games on Facebook.

Donate2Play Media, founded by Tomas Ernst, Adrian Pereira and Kelly Pereira, has launched a program to help not-for-profit organizations raise money by tapping into the massive online social-gaming scene.

The company launched the first of those games Thursday – Wordraiser on Facebook – customized for the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance.

According to Ernst, Donate2Play is about “empowering organizations like the AFA to spend less time chasing money and more time doing what they do best.”

“It’s a new channel to raise funds. Online social games are a billion-dollar industry,” he said, noting they hope to funnel a small fraction of that to organizations like the AFA. “Our goal is to create fresh, online social games that are fun and exciting to help them grow their revenue stream and activate their membership base.”

The Wordraiser game challenges players to create words from a jumble of letters. Players graduate through levels by finding a word that uses all of the letters provided. The game also offers facts and images to raise awareness of the province’s old-growth forests.

The money is raised when players are prompted to donate at certain levels.

The donations start at $1 and can go up to $20. The money donated is split 50-50 between the organization – in the case of Wordraiser that’s the Ancient Forest Alliance – and Donate2Play.

“We don’t want to cannibalize their other donation avenues, this is about augmenting the traditional fundraising channels,” said Ernst who suggested this kind of donating is a lot like dropping spare change into a box at any retail outlet. “We want to tap into the high volume of online users and tap into micropayments, as not everyone has $1,000 to give.”

“This is a great way to reach a new demographic of people, especially ones who may not be aware of the threat to our old growth,” said TJ Watt, one of the co-founders of the AFA, which works to protect old growth forest in the province. “And there’s a powerful ability to share the game with Facebook friends.”

Neither the AFA nor Donate2Play could estimate what kind of money they expect to raise through the game.

“We hope to scale to multiple charities across many causes, we expect big things out of it,” said Adrian Pereira, who noted it’s not all about money. “This is also about building awareness and increasing the support base for the charity.”

Ken Wu, co-founder of the AFA, said the organization is acting like a bit of a guinea pig.

“We don’t know what this will mean for us, but the beauty of it is we don’t have to pay anything, they put in all the risk,” he said, adding the AFA raised about $60,000 last year through traditional channels and expects to raise as much as $90,000 this year. “And hopefully this helps with that, this is a new revenue stream.”

Donate2Play would not divulge what it paid to create the game, other than saying it was costly.

In a 2009 article, Gamepro.com estimated the cost of developing a Facebook game at anywhere between $30,000 and $300,000 over a six-month cycle.

“But we think it’s worth it when you look at the explosive growth online, when you look at games right now,” said Ernst

Link to Times Colonist article not available anymore.

New Company Develops Online Games for a Better World

Sep 8 2011/in Media Release

For Immediate Release
September 8, 2011

New Company Develops Online Games for a Better World

First new game helps non-profit organization to protect British Columbia’s old-growth forests!

Victoria, Canada – Fuelled by a desire to make a difference, a Victoria, B.C. company is out to create a new way for charities and non-profit organizations to raise funds. Donate2Play Media (https://www.donate2play.com/) creates fun social games for charities. Through the incorporation of fun facts, compelling imagery and the viral nature of social media, Donate2Play provides a novel and lucrative fundraising channel for charities of all varieties.

“Online gaming is one of the largest industries on the Internet, generating tens of billions of dollars in revenues annually – why not funnel some of those revenues towards making the world a better place?” asked Kelly Pereira, Co-Founder of Donate2Play. “Our games will not only raise funds, but also increase awareness about the specific causes promoted by the charity at hand.”

“Wordraiser”, Donate2Play’s inaugural game (see https://www.wordraiser.com) is customized to their first non-profit partner, the Ancient Forest Alliance (https://ancientforestalliance.org/), a Victoria-based environmental organization working to protect British Columbia’s endangered old-growth forests. Wordraiser is a skill-based game for Facebook users in which players solve anagrams to pass through levels, while learning about the Ancient Forest Alliance’s cause. Using Donate2Play’s patent-pending model, players are prompted to donate at key junctures in the game – for donation amounts equal to pocket change.

“We’re very grateful to Donate2Play for choosing us as their first beneficiary. Not only will the game raise greatly needed funds for us, but will also raise awareness among new people on the plight of British Columbia’s endangered old-growth forests by using our photos, environmental fun facts, and petition in the game,” stated TJ Watt, co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “We’ll be asking our Facebook supporters and the environmentally-minded public to play this game as a contribution to our organization – and to have fun and learn at the same time!”

Donate2Play seeks to help alleviate the headaches of charities from traditional fundraising campaigns: perpetually requesting donations, investing in advertising and finding sponsors. The Donate2play model provides a fun, fresh and engaging way for charities to raise funds, while capitalizing on the growing trends of social media and online gaming.

The first beneficiary of this new model, the Ancient Forest Alliance, has been working through public education and mobilization calling on the BC government to protect the province’s endangered old-growth forests, ensure sustainable logging of second-growth forests and ban raw log exports. Of particular note, the organization has built huge public momentum for the protection of a grove of old-growth trees nicknamed the “Avatar Grove,” near the town of Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island.

Donate2Play was the brainchild of Victoria residents Tomas Ernst, Adrian Pereira and Kelly Pereira. Ernst, having spent the last five years working on development projects in the South Pacific for the World Bank, realized the need for NGOs to develop new, more effective fundraising channels. “Having worked with a number of charities, I’ve always felt the process of giving needed a rethink. So we asked, how could we transform the traditional fundraising process and offer a more value-added experience to the donor?” said Ernst, Co-Founder of Donate2Play Media.

Together with the Pereira’s, who have over a decade of entrepreneurial experience building successful online businesses, the idea to bridge the gap between gaming and fundraising was developed.

“We’ve chosen to support the Ancient Forest Alliance as beneficiaries, as they are a highly respected and deserving new grassroots organization with a most worthy cause,” stated Adrian Pereira, Co-Founder. “We really enjoyed working with AFA – incorporating their brand, high resolution images and interesting facts into the game allowed us to produce an experience that would better educate the player and increase both awareness and funds!”

According to Ken Wu, Co-Founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance, “Donate2Play’s games for a better world could lead to a mini-revolution of increased support for the environmental movement and progressive causes. The concept is genius and we’re happy to work with the founders of Donate2Play who are cutting edge entrepreneurs with a conscience.”

THANK YOU to Victoria Skafest for their Generous Donation!

Sep 7 2011/in Thank You

A big thanks goes out to the Victoria Skafest organizers who made a generous donation to the Ancient Forest Alliance as part of their carbon offset program. The organizers also provided space for the AFA to table at the event which gathered hundreds of petition signatures and many new friends.

As North American’s largest and longest running ska festival with 4 Days of Ska, Reggae, Punk and Dub it’s not an event to miss!

You can visit their website to find out more information here: https://victoriaskafest.ca/

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