YouTopia

This concept is the result of a Better Giving Studio 3-day collaborative sprint focusing on Small Dollar Donors. Riya Patel (Global Giving), Jessica Sloan (RaisedBy.Us), Rachel Klausner (Millie), PJ Rosa (DonorsChoose) and Katie Cowling (Facebook) championed this idea. You can read the brief the teams worked from for more context.

Why BGS is Excited

• It uses game mechanics to educate donors on the value of their contribution to increase motivation towards giving.
• Creating an engaging environment for collective impact from donors of all types, ages, and experience levels.
• Provides feedback on community and individual impact, helping to close the loop on giving and encouraging repeated action.

The Opportunity

First time donors don’t always know which causes to support or how to give, which can make it hard for them to know where to start. Donors also want to know their donations have an impact, which is less likely to happen at lower donation levels. YouTopia uses game mechanics to help new and small dollar donors learn about cause areas that interest them and engage with nonprofits in those cause areas via challenges in the game.

The Concept

YouTopia leverages research and gaming mechanics to keep donors engaged:

• Research shows that completing a set of tasks is highly motivating to people, and is a tactic that many products employ, including Duolingo and Apple Fitness.
• Randomness of rewards—sometimes small, sometimes large—creates a more addictive experience. Think: state lotteries.
• Additional research shows that individuals are more motivated to give when presented with emotional storytelling about impact.
• Creating a donor identity like “I am a climate supporter” is more effective at retaining donors than simply acknowledging donations, “I donated to a green organization.” 
• Social visibility and virtue signaling play a big role in individual actions today. Building a next-level YouTopia signals deeper engagement and generosity.
• Being in a group with like-minded people establishes social norms that encourage members of the group to act in a certain way.
• Achieving something with others leads to accountability, which then leads to action.

While YouTopia can appeal to middle-aged donors who get excited about new tech platforms and gaming, its main target is young donors who are just starting their philanthropic journey, either on their own, with friends, or through a workplace matching program. Donors like Brandy.

Brandy is a 17-year-old socially engaged high school student. She has a part-time job after school, so she has a bit of money to donate, but doesn’t know where to begin. A friend invites her to YouTopia. In the game, she can explore what other players have already built—virtual schools, hospitals, homes—and create her own avatar and donor identity based on causes she’s passionate about. 

She chooses a virtual project, and earns tools and supplies to build it by completing challenges. Challenges include reading articles about nonprofits that support causes she’s interested in, making donations, volunteering, and inviting friends to the platform. Completing all of the challenges allows her to build her virtual YouTopia project. Throughout the game, Brandy can also see the contributions she’s making in the real world, as well as read about her impact. Plus she can join group challenges with other players who share her philanthropic passions, and view their collective impact. 

By completing challenges that involve learning, volunteering, donating, and sharing, donors create tangible impact both in their virtual world of YouTopia and the real world. The wide spectrum of challenge options enables donors to engage regardless of their available budget or time.

What Do You Think?

Are you working on something similar? Have feedback to give us or insights that we should know about related to this exploratory concept? Did you test out this idea, and how did it go? We’d love to hear from you! Please write us a note at [email protected]