Garden of Good: Farmville meets innovative fundraising

I discovered something pretty cool today on TikTok. Want to find it too?

Open TikTok app on your phone

Click on your profile — the last of the five options on that bottom menu

At the top left, see that sparkly carrot? Click It.

TADA

Welcome to Garden of Good, an app that lets you play a farm simulation that then sends real donations to Feeding America. Cool right?

Apparently, this game was released in June, but I am just now discovering it and no one I know personally has mentioned playing it. Probably cause it’s a tiny icon hiding on your personal homepage.

You start the game off by earning water for your watering can and planting some carrots. You earn more water by completing tasks like inviting other friends to play.

Once the current crop is fully grown and harvested, you can then select to make a donation towards Feeding America. While waiting, you can read fun little food facts like “Carrots can be traced back to 5000 years”.

Clicking the litte red heart icon takes you to news and progress for the app. Here you can see how many pounds of each type of produce have been donated. 1.5 Million lbs of carrots have been donated.

At the release in June, TikTok stated that for every virtual pound donated they will donate 10 cents to Feeding America. They have a minimum donation plan of $150,000 and a maximum of $5 million.

According to Feeding America Gardening for Good is accessible to all US users over the age of 18 and can be found on your profile page through June 6, 2022.

Multi-purpose games like Garden for Good have always existed. Adulting for RP points. Playing games for Swagbucks. Playing trivia for charity through Quingo. This is the first farm simulator I’ve seen though and I hope it encourages more games like it!