Leveling Up Fundraising: A Blockchain-Powered Philanthropic Future

Gaming is becoming a popular fundraising tool as the elements of challenge fit well with established methods such as sponsorships and tournaments. Blockchain offers new opportunities for creative solutions.

In recent years, fundraisers have woken up to the possibilities offered by gaming. If you can get sponsored to run a marathon or climb a mountain, why not to join a tournament, or even do a 12-hour Twitch stream? All the elements are there: a personal challenge, an emotional connection as you cheer the player on, a fun spectacle, public accountability. And as a bonus, gaming is more accessible for many big sporting events.

It also offers charities a channel to target new audiences. Gen Z has turned off the TV, but you’ll find them on Twitch – and very likely their parents too. JustGiving reported in 2018 that two-thirds of parents regularly played video games with their kids, and since then Covid has provided a major boost to the numbers of adult gamers. So a live-streamed gaming marathon (perhaps with an interactive element?) makes perfect sense as an updated, more cost-effective version of the classic telethon. But what else could you do?

Charities looking to leverage games for fundraising can find plenty of advice on how best to approach it: to test their ideas; to extend their reach through relevant influencers; to keep a leaderboard, and so on. But one area that doesn’t seem to get much attention is the wealth of possibilities opened up by blockchain gaming. And that’s a shame, because those possibilities are pretty exciting.

How blockchain can benefit charities

Blockchain itself has many proven advantages for charity. To start with, decentralized payments cut both costs and delays, meaning less value lost from each donation. Blockchain transparency can also allow donors to track how their contributions are spent. This can improve confidence and trust in the organization, together with smart contracts, which could be used to guarantee that funds are only spent on the intended purpose by releasing donations once conditions are met. This removal of doubt would do away with a significant barrier to donations.

Even better, though, leveraging those smart contracts, or other blockchain-specific technologies such as NFTs, could spark exciting new ideas for fundraising. NFTs can be minted that tie in to an organization’s mission, providing intrinsic value for its supporters (as Fins Attached did with its NFTs of shark videos and other memorabilia) or piggybacking on a wider trend (like the Sandbox’s charity land auction in support of Unicef). The royalty capability of NFTs could perhaps be leveraged to ensure ongoing support for the originating charity.

Some organizations have already shown great creativity in pursuing these opportunities. One particularly interesting experiment was Ubisoft’s sale of NFT Rabbids in support of Unicef. Rabbids are characters known from Rayman, Mario and other games. For the fundraising effort, Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab designed a range of tokens with some intriguing quirks. Perhaps most surprisingly, given that collectibility is a key feature of NFTs, Rabbids were designed not to be permanently owned. Forget royalties – each one could be “nabbed” at any time by anyone willing to pay the set price, which went directly to Unicef.

Nabbing a Rabbid triggered two side effects. One was the evolution of the Rabbid into a new form. The other was the creation of a “proof of probable ownership” (POPO) token for the previous owner to keep (so they didn’t go empty handed). There were five original Rabbids, each of which could evolve up to eleven times, resulting in a grand total of 55 POPO tokens. So supporters could still enjoy exclusive on-chain evidence of their support, even as the unique Rabbids kept changing hands.

The playfulness of this concept was perfectly suited to the mischievous Rabbids, and made great sense for a children’s charity. It may also have been ahead of its time. The campaign raised a fairly modest sum (around 36 ETH over two months, which at the time was worth little over $12,000), but this was in 2020, before the big NFT boom. If a charity were to try a new spin on this concept today – combining the cachet of NFTs with an element of unpredictability – they could expect a bigger audience and no doubt greater rewards.

Creativity unlocked

It’s clear that charities have only just begun to explore the potential. Blockchain platforms could pave the way for gamification of fundraising, making participation more fun and delivering tangible rewards to donors at low cost. Not only that, but in a gamified campaign, rewards themselves could keep donors hooked, keep them engaged and support viral recruitment of new donors.

For fundraisers, the goal is clear: create a game that links thematically to the charity’s concerns and provides fun gameplay, while building in tangible, tradable rewards that can trigger further receipts down the line. Using Ajuna’s toolkit, any game designer can easily integrate such assets, even without any blockchain knowledge. Who’s up for the challenge?