Forget about cashing in on ‘gaming’— what NGOs really need to know about video games and fundraising
We are Dulcie Ireland and Oli Welch from the Innovation team at Cancer Research UK. We’ve recently explored opportunities for charities and NGOs in the gaming industry and want to share what we’ve learned. We’ll outline the importance of developing an adaptive long-term strategy and explore how cross-organisational collaboration is crucial to implementation.
Gaming is a hot topic for charities and NGOs right now. Every conference agenda features at least one presentation on the subject. Live streaming platform Twitch and donation tool Tiltify facilitate particularly good sessions. But when we look for charities and NGOs doing it well (especially in the UK), the examples are thin on the ground. War Child are pretty much the exception. TLDR: Do what they’re doing.
The barriers to entry are high and you’re competing with the biggest global brands, with even bigger marketing budgets. But there is massive potential for charities and NGOs to engage new supporters. As a sector, we have the one thing these corporate brands desperately want and need — we have a meaningful and authentic cause. We just need to know how to leverage this critical advantage. Spoiler alert — it’s not traditional fundraising campaigns reskinned with generic stock photos of ‘gamers’.
Here are the most important things we learnt about how to unpick this exciting yet complex opportunity.
There’s no simple way in
One of the biggest challenges we’ve observed across the sector are unrealistic expectations from senior management to quickly generate significant income. This creates pressure to deliver traditional product-led propositions which then miss the mark.
If there’s two things we could magically erase from every presentation up and down the land, they would be:
‘The Pink Mercy skin in Overwatch raised $12million for Breast Cancer Research.’
‘The global gaming market is worth $150bn and there are 2.4bn gamers.’
Why? Because ‘big stats’ are at best irrelevant and at worst, dangerously misleading. Yes, the Pink Mercy skin was unbelievably successful, but it’s an outlier. And yes, the gaming industry appears huge but it is extremely fragmented. Industry-level financial values contribute to unrealistic expectations.
There is no simple way in, and it’s essential that senior management in particular understand this.
There’s no such thing as a ‘gamer’
There are a bewildering array of genres, fandoms and communities, each with their own values and codes of behaviour. If the 91 million active monthly players of Minecraft formed a country it would be the 15th most populous in the world. But this isn’t one homogeneous group of people and it’s the same across all the major titles.
There are a diverse range of communities and players, and many of these are insular and hard to reach. Evidence tells us that traditional fundraising propositions targeted at generic ‘gamers’ are unlikely to achieve significant income. The aim has to be finding the right fit with specific communities of players.
Communities can be quick to judge but remember — we have a meaningful cause
Communities can be quick to judge, highly critical and very vocal. They can be wary of any corporate activity. Many are just plain toxic and all have the tools and potential to reject a proposition en masse.
There is a significant risk to brand reputation if an organisation gets something wrong. Just to put this into perspective, many communities are actively hostile to the developers and publishers of the titles they play.
Community perception, credibility and understanding are therefore critical.
But remember our advantage. We are cause-led organisations trying to change the world for the better. Having authentic meaning is a great start for building engagement, but this needs to be about more than making money. How can a community genuinely help achieve a charity’s vision? What is relevant to these players? What activities will they find rewarding? What are their motivations?
Finding the right fit with the right communities
In this vast universe of gaming, it is hard to know where to start. It’s easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis. How do we find the right fit with the right community? Our approach is to make a first best guess at what this might be, then reach out and start to actively build an understanding of these communities through research and testing.
Questions we asked included:
- What does existing supporter-led activity look like? Are there streamers or influencers with links to the cause who may already be fundraising?
- What language or calls to action have they adopted?
- How can we offer to support or boost existing fundraising activities?
- How can we co-create propositions with these supporters?
- Who are the communities’ top influences and talent that we need to build solid relationships with?
It’s also important to consider the corporate partnerships which need to be developed. Ultimately, the biggest returns come from in-game content or cause-related marketing and this can only be achieved through strong relationships and demonstrating value to the publishers who own these spaces.
There is no one size fits all answer here. To really understand what this means for a specific charity or NGO, it requires an adaptive mindset and a long-term strategic approach.
Design around your users — test, test, test
As gaming culture is unfathomably complex, user needs are either extremely hard to pin down or are contradictory to other users within the same sphere. This will take time to understand. It is essential that propositions are tailored specifically to user needs, with iterative testing and learning uncovering what works and what doesn’t work with an audience as you go.
Collaborating with existing supporters and testing a wide range of quick to deploy activities can help to build an understanding of a community’s needs and motivations. Can the reach and returns be grown by targeting similar communities (e.g. different titles within the same genre)? How can you leverage your growing community presence to initiate and build corporate relationships?
The importance of collaborative cross-functional teams
External research agencies may struggle to commit the resources or time with the ongoing and in-depth research that is required to properly understand these audiences. It is likely to be more efficient to ensure you have internal capabilities within a cross functional team.
A ‘traditional’ charity fundraising approach, team structure, governance structure, culture of work and hierarchy may not have the agility and responsiveness required. As will a team which prioritises delivery over learning about an audience’s needs. A lean, agile approach is recommended to enable the rigorous navigation needed for their exploration through gaming communities.
It is essential that this team has high-level senior buy-in, cross-organisation reach, and centralised control of the portfolio of any other gaming activity.
Skills and capabilities are more important than headcount. To execute the testing strategy, we believe the following are required:
- User Experience (UX) researcher
- Portfolio management
- Measurement/financial management
- Visual design
- Corporate partnerships
- Community partnerships
If you’re going down the rabbit hole, take a guide. Recruiting gaming industry specialists to help guide you around the complexities of each community is a great head start.
Using a ‘theory of change’ supports strategic development and accelerates learning
When we started this journey of discovery, we initially assumed we were identifying and testing individual propositions. A significant learning has been that to really make an impact, a long-term strategy with a multi-pronged approach is required.
We have found that developing a theory of change helps to clarify exactly what we are trying to achieve and how, by mapping:
- The various strands of activity which contribute to achieving the final goal
- The shorter-term intermediate outcomes that are essential to making progress
- The key assumptions being made and where further evidence is required
It can also be used for reporting and governance. It’s a fantastic tool for managing those senior-level expectations we mentioned earlier.
This is not about planning a strategy and sticking to it, the early versions of our theory of change have many assumptions. The strategy is continually iterated and adapted as we learn what is working and what isn’t. Outcomes, OKRs, income targets, timescales and target audiences are made more specific.
Where else can we apply this?
For many organisations, this is an attempt to engage with a new generation of supporters in unfamiliar channels. So, can this approach be applied to other areas of opportunity beyond gaming? Absolutely, but this isn’t about being market-led and applying it to the Next Big Thing. It needs to be about understanding audiences, being supporter-led and building authenticity based on your cause.
This isn’t new thinking. Fragmentation of media and changing giving behaviours have long been key drivers of change. But it appears that now we’re finally reaching the tipping point where a significant proportion of potential donors (including, but not limited to, younger demographics) no longer engage with ‘traditional’ mass campaigns.
We as a sector need to catch up pronto, especially as COVID-19 just fast forwarded us right into the middle of this new normal.
Let’s work together!
We’re bringing together a group of charities and NGOs to discuss how we can collectively and collaboratively develop the sector’s approach to gaming. Want to get involved? We would love to hear from you — please get in touch via LinkedIn (links below).
About the authors
Dulcie Ireland is senior innovation portfolio manager at Cancer Research UK and her passion is creating social change through innovative, data-driven strategies.
Oli Welch is senior product manager at Cancer Research UK and specialises in helping organisations test, learn and iterate using evidence-based decisions.
The gaming strategy has been a collective effort by the Innovation team at Cancer Research UK, which comprises Dulcie, Oliver, Julia Begley, Robert Green, Alejandro Romero, Adam Tomassi-Russell and Eleanor Gibson.
Kindly edited by the very talented UX designer Julia Begley (thank you!).