Virtual Reality's Role In #GivingTuesday
The best measure of #GivingTuesday is the raw dollar results. But one company is making the fundraising day more visually understandable.
CrowdRise, the charity-focused crowdfunding platform founded by actor Edward Norton five years ago, developed a free virtual reality app for #GivingTuesday. It will show a tower being built in real time, brick by brick with each donation made to one of the over 1,000 charities. People who have Google’s virtual reality Google Cardboard viewer will be able to fully experience the app. Even those who don’t will still be able to see the tower being built amongst some of the world’s most iconic buildings. The company first rolled out the app last year. Giving Tower raised $4.1M last year and constructed a tower that nearly reached the tallest building in the world: the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
CrowdRise co-founder and CEO Robert Wolfe says the idea for the virtual reality app came from several of the charities that raise money through CrowdRise wanting to do something a little more notable on #GivingTuesday. The #GivingTuesday organization also told CrowdRise how hard it was to really tell the story of what happens on this one day per year. CrowdRise hired Secret Location, a Canadian company that specializes in virtual reality technology, to build the app.
Robert says the number of young people giving online is growing, and he expects this year’s campaign to surpass last year’s. One interesting trait of Millennials is that they like to share with friends and family how they’re giving back to the community, whereas older generations would think it inappropriate. Robert, who also founded the third-largest outdoor gear retailer, says doing something crazy like a virtual reality app is what the charitable giving space needed. CrowdRise takes ideas from private sector companies like Nike and Patagonia to continue innovating the charitable world.
