The Giving Games Project is delighted to make available a customizable Giving Games Platform and instructions for each stage of its use. This is a core component of our efforts to improve and systematize our impact tracking. The Life You Can Save and the Giving Games Project would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Luke Freeman for his tireless work creating the Platform and for his guidance on each stage of our impact tracking and David Moss and Catherine Low for their guidance on the concept and survey design.
How do we measure our impact?
The Giving Games Project’s new approach to measuring our impact primarily looks at three core criteria:
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Changes in participant attitudes toward prioritizing those factors associated with impactful, informed, intentional giving
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Changes in participant plans to donate resources effectively going forward or to engage with an organization that encourages high impact philanthropy
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Money donated to effective nonprofits
We heavily rely on the administration of surveys and facilitator reports to enable us to identify strengths and weaknesses in our approach and to evidence our impact. Since the beginning of 2019, we have administered surveys immediately before and after the Giving Game. We additionally request email addresses from participants in order to contact them one month later with a follow-up survey. You can find further details in our recent post, “How the Giving Games Project Tracks Its Impact,” on The Life You Can Save’s Blog.
Why a Platform?
In the 2018 Giving Games Annual Report, we identified that the biggest priority in the near term was to encourage as many Giving Game facilitators as possible to administer an online survey immediately after their Giving Games were held. This priority was identified due to a gap in our data; we only had survey data for ~20% of Giving Games participants. This was a serious limitation in our impact tracking and particularly problematic due to the importance we place upon post-Game survey reports and survey data in evidencing our impact.
We have since introduced a number of measures (described in detail in “How the Giving Games Project Tracks Its Impact”) which have ensured that surveys are administered in each of our sponsored Giving Games. We hope that the platform will provide a user- and facilitator-friendly way to incorporate the surveys into Giving Games, while providing us with one centralized place to collect and analyze data. Critically for our very lean team, the Platform automatically subscribes participants who opt in to the relevant mailing lists, records the amounts to be donated through our Donor Advised Fund (DAF), and completes automatic calculations on the difference between the pre-and post- Giving Game survey responses for our impact tracking.
How to use the Platform
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All stages of running a Giving Game are now managed through the Giving Games Platform. We have updated our materials, including our Instruction Manual, to reflect that survey administration is essential in all sponsored Giving Games. We would be grateful if anyone running a Giving Game which is not sponsored by The Life You Can Save can help us to track our impact. We can assist you in any aspect of setting up the Giving Games Platform and are happy to provide customized options. Instructions can be found in our resource library. The Platform has information for Giving Games Facilitators and Giving Games Participants. “Giving Games Facilitator” allows facilitators to:
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Apply for Giving Games sponsorship through an online form which is then automatically emailed to the Giving Games team
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Create a Giving Game with customizable featured charity and subscription options
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Manage existing Giving Games, including viewing the results of the preliminary and final votes during your Giving Game
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Complete a report after your Giving Game, including the amount donated, feedback, and insights gained during the Game.
“Giving Games Participant” allows participants to:
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Cast a preliminary vote
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Complete the pre-Giving Game Survey
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Cast a final vote
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Complete the post- Giving Game Survey
What next?
If you are facilitating Giving Games, please move onto the Platform and give us as much feedback as possible on how it is functioning by contacting Kathryn. If you have questions about the Platform, please reach out. Thank you so much for helping us to live our values of supporting evidence-supported interventions!
