Good Match — Double Up on Charity
Giving to charity is a way of putting your money where your mouth is. But what if you could double your donation by sponsoring your gift? That’s what the concept of Good Match is about.
The phenomena
Our thesis is that there is an untapped need to tell about one’s own charity in social media. For sociological reasons, it may be stigmatizing to tell others that you have donated money for charitable purposes. The risk of being perceived as self-righteous leads to people avoiding to express their position and donation.
At the same time, we are experiencing an increased crowd in social media raising their voice at things considered unethical, immoral or generally problematic from their perspective. Ironically, this can also create negative reactions; “Why don’t you do something about it, instead of just pointing fingers in social media?”.
The idea
What would happen if individuals could take a stand in social media by donating money to charity? They already can, of course. But what if people got their money doubled by sponsorship?Like this:
- There is something you’re passionate about.
- You decide to donate a little money for this cause.
- You look up an appropriate charity organization.
- You make your donation and tell about it in your preferred social media.
- For telling about it, a company doubles up your donation.
With this set up in mind, we tried to figure out: who would win on such transactions? Everyone, it turned out.
- The individual donating to charity gets to give twice the amount to their cause. And they get a valid reason to tell about it in social media, without seeming boastful or self righteous. Taking concrete action is probably also more satisfying to the mind than just pointing fingers.
- Companies sponsoring the donation gets publicity in a credible and positively charged context. They get associated to true commitment. This sponsorship also works recursively — for each sponsored dollar, an individual will pay the corresponding amount. In practice, the sponsoring company doubles its budget for charitable purposes.
- For charitable organizations the benefits are obvious. Thy simply get more money to do good.
- Ultimately, of course, the individuals or purposes that donations are aimed at will also benefit from this increased funding of good causes.
The concept
We decided to visualize our idea as a mobile app. In order to streamline the idea concept, we made some initial assumptions and set some boundaries:
- Legal restrictions to posting on social media in exchange for sponsorship can be handled correctly.
- Money can only be donated to approved non profit organizations
- Sponsoring companies can not reserve their funding to specific causes. They simply have to lose a bit of control for the greater good.
- Costs for operation, sales and administration of the service is financed jointly by affiliated charitable organizations and sponsoring companies.
Investigating some thoughts and idéas together, we started by sketching out a set of flow charts for various scenarios.
The result
We ended up creating a first version of interaction design and visual design for the Good Match phone app.
The lab session also resulted in a click-through prototype, created in Invision. Go ahead, try it out. And feel free to tell us what you think of it. Perhaps there is something similar out there already up and running?
About ODI Labs
Things can’t be all work & no play. Sometimes we kick the budget and just run with the idea. For fun, for giving back to society, for nurturing creativity and greater innovation power into all other work.
More labs can be found at: http://onedayinteract.se/odi-labs/
We are One Day Interact. We design and code for humans, machines and a brighter future. Talk with us at: www.onedayinteract.se
