Capturing and Honoring Donor Intent

Direct Relief developed the new system to help it better honor the intent of its donors. While contributors who make large donations offline often direct how their money is used, online donors and those making small donations to charities have traditionally had less discretion. Under Direct Relief’s new system, online donors giving even the smallest amounts can direct their contributions to the programs that most inspire them.

A bedrock principle for nonprofits with respect to donations is to honor donor intent,” says Direct Relief President and CEO Thomas Tighe. “It’s simple. We can’t honor a donor’s intent unless we allow them to express it. That’s why we built this.”

Beginning Dec. 7, Direct Relief’s donation page has offered contributors a set of sliders to allocate their funds according to any combination of their preferences. The current options include “Where Needed Most,” Emergency Response, U.S. Programs, and International Programs.

When selecting Emergency Response, donors can choose to further divide their funds among relief programs for the Syrian Refugee Crisis, Hurricane Matthew – Haiti, Zika Virus Outbreak, and Direct Relief’s Rapid Response Fund. As new emergencies arise, Direct Relief will be able to update the list quickly.

Initial results during the critical year-end giving period suggest a strong positive reaction to the new system. Both the new donor-directed and pre-existing interfaces were tested between Dec. 8 and Dec. 20. Among those using the donor-directed interface, 37 percent of people initiating a donation completed the process, compared to 26 percent using the pre-existing interface. Direct Relief experienced 179 percent increase donations over the same timeframe.

Direct Relief expects the donor-directed interface will better allow it to fund its work, not just on immediate crises but also on a range of lower-profile yet critical interventions throughout the world. A large portion of donations to disaster relief agencies comes in response to natural disasters. Direct Relief has long-committed to donors that when they designate their funds to a particular emergency, 100 percent will solely be used for that emergency. Now, donors have the option to allocate a portion of their contribution to ongoing programs as well, including those that focus on maternal and child health and support community health centers in low-income and rural areas.

Borrowed from a Video Game Company

Direct Relief developed the new donation interface after being unable to find existing charity software that provided the flexibility it was seeking. It was inspired by a San Francisco-based video game company called Humble Bundle that lets its customers decide how much to pay for software and how to divide payments between Humble Bundle (the distributor), the software developer, and a charity. Humble Bundle customers have donated more than $1 million to Direct Relief since 2014.

Direct Relief plans to make the software code available at no cost to other nonprofits that wish to use it. For charities that choose to do so, the software could help alleviate a persistent source of friction: the amount of money they spend on fundraising. The new software allows donors to decide how much of a contribution should be dedicated to fundraising. Currently, Direct Relief has locked the fundraising slider at zero percent, as a generous bequest supports all of Direct Relief’s fundraising costs.

The post Direct Relief Puts Spending Decisions into Donors’ Hands appeared first on Direct Relief.

These generous developers included Grapefrukt, Ludocity, Glitchnap, SLMN, Coffee Stain, and developers from Mojang such as TheMogMiner and Kris Jelbring.

People were asked to donate an amount of their choice in exchange for all of the games created during the event. 100% of proceeds will benefit Direct Relief’s work to stop Ebola. A big thanks to all the developers, the Humble Bundle community, and everyone who purchased one of the bundles.

If you have a cool fundraising idea, be sure to let us know. Email our team at info@directrelief.org or leave a comment below.

The post Games Against Ebola: Developers for Direct Relief appeared first on Direct Relief.

As likely the only one at last week’s Games for Change festival in New York City who played “Pong” when it first came out (at a now long-closed arcade in Palo Alto, where I grew up), I was an unlikely speaker at the event.  But what a treat it was to glimpse the state of the art digital gaming industry, meet the astounding talent involved in it, and see the energy being harnessed for a broad range of great causes, including Direct Relief.

With the go-go digital gaming industry generating $20 billion in revenue and reportedly engaging 59 percent of Americans, it’s easy to overlook the industry’s current significant and potential profound contributions to social and humanitarian causes.  Direct Relief has been keenly aware of both since receiving an offer to help from Zynga three years ago following the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

The excellent Abby Speight of Zynga.org, the charitable arm of the online gaming company and a sponsor of the festival, led a “Designing for Good” plenary panel (of which I was a panelist) discussing two basic tracks of gaming and social causes:

• leveraging commercially successful games to support charitable causes, as Zynga has now done with Direct Relief on multiple occasions to support humanitarian health assistance in emergencies and Pixelberry has done with its “High School Story” to generate awareness and funds for important anti-bullying efforts;  and
• designing games themselves as a means of educating, training, advocating for, or otherwise advancing something good (the Minecraft creators helping the United Nations engage communities so they can plan better public spaces, SIMS working with GlassLab to accelerate new educational tools for students) or avoiding something bad.

It’s impossible not to be impressed by the astounding creative, engineering, design, research, and analytical talent that goes into making a good game – and it seemed that most attendees had one or more in scary abundance – and all the business acumen obviously inherent in a $20 billion-and-growing industry.  But, it’s also refreshing to know that the current of insight into what makes people tick, engage, and have fun is being increasingly channeled to help people, issues, and causes that don’t lend themselves easily to games that are engaging and fun.

Zynga’s efforts have encouraged 250,000 people to support Direct Relief’s humanitarian health efforts through the purchase of low-cost virtual goods embedded in their games, and the nearly $1.3 million raised has translated directly into people who are sick, hurt, or at very high risk receiving medications they need and otherwise would not have received.  They’ve also made Direct Relief’s work visible to millions of players worldwide, in a soft-touch way that doesn’t interfere with either the company’s interests or the players’ enjoyment.

And, just this week, the good people at  Humble Bundle, which allows consumers to pay what they want and support charity for games developed by independent game creators, is channeling all such charitable donations to Direct Relief.

As online gaming evolves, it’s nice to see that the evolution of the virtual worlds being created have embedded within them an increasing recognition of the wonderful qualities of compassion and empathy and a desire to help people in the physical world, which they’re doing already in very creative ways.  It’s a cause for hope and, in Direct Relief’s case, for deep thanks.

The post Virtual Goods to Actual Good: Gamers & Direct Relief appeared first on Direct Relief.