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Shopkick and Causeworld
The folks who started the non-profit Causeworld wanted to find a way to raise money for charitable causes. So they put together a mobile app that provided a way to “bring the physical and virtual worlds of retail together. Causeworld is a mobile app by the makers of Shopkick which lets users check-in to stores to earn money to be used for donations.
Causeworld is a similar check-in application where users can only give their points to nonprofits. When Causeworld users went to the new for-profit version, Shopkick, the community grew to almost four times the size of Causeworld, and a sizable part of the users still decided to give their rewards to charities. Though a smaller percentage currently donate, the massive growth in users means that a greater number donate, making the aggregate contribution more charitable than under CauseWorld.
Shopkick is a good example of how the for-profit industry can sometimes make a greater social impact than the nonprofit world. Shopkick has created a more charitable community since it decided to ditch its charity business model and focus on giving users rewards with virtual currency for completing various check-in tasks at selected retailers, which can then be exchanged for products or used to give equivalently to a charity.
Here a few numbers on to compare CauseWorld to ShopKick in july 2011:
A carbon offsetting project:
- CauseWorld: 2,133 donations per month
- Shopkick: 2,673 donations per month
A charity to prevent child abuse:
- CauseWorld: 667 donations per month
- Shopkick: 1,257 donations per month
A breast cancer charity:
- CauseWorld: 533 donations per month
- Shopkick: 964 donations per month
Shopkick is one of the company that proves that combining charity and profit is more beneficial to all involved. Thanks to Shopkick, some charities received double the number of monthly donations.
However, Shopkick is forbidden from disclosing actual donation numbers, so there is no way to verify if the total dollar amount going to charity has increased but we know that users are giving more often.
Sources : http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/07/shopkick-spoonful-profit-helps-charity/
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