Games are fun and social change is serious. Right? We talk with Asi Burak, the president of GamesForChange.org an organization that leads the sector in thinking about the intersection of games and social change. Their annual Games For Change conference brings together the leaders in the gaming and social sector fields to learn about cutting edge advances in the field.

Our conversation covers some examples of successful games and how nonprofits can start exploring gaming for social impact. Creating games can be very expensive, though there can be great upside when it comes to engagement with a target audience and potential growth to a new one.

Never Alone Trailer

Full disclosure – Games For Change is a former client of Whole Whale and they are awesome.

Episode 29 – What is the role of games in making social change?

Speaker 1: This is Using the Whole Whale -a podcast that brings you stories of data and technology in the non-profit world. This is George Weiner, your host and the chief whaler of wholewhale.com. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1: Games are tremendously powerful and I think most of our interactions with them come in the form of tiny little candies that we slide around and help companies make, you know, billions of dollars crushing those candies. Today I am excited because we are talking with an organization called Games For Change and Asi the president there has lot of insight on how the field has develop

We talk with Jereme Bivins, Digital Strategist at The Rockefeller Foundation and RJ Bee, SVP of Hattaway Communications.

The platform they created is called HatchForGood.org

Hatch acts like a concierge, connecting you to a suite of tools and a growing community to help you leverage storytelling to drive social impact and improve the lives of the poor and vulnerable around the world.

Our conversation covered some of these questions:

Hatch for good resource: Turning dashboards into action

Episode 28

Speaker 1: This is using the whole whale, a podcast that brings you stories of data and technology in the nonprofit world. My name is George Weiner, your host and chief whaler of WholeWhale.com. Thanks for joining us.

Welcome to this week’s podcast for what we are talking about items about things with stuff in them. very clearly sometimes we need help where there is story telling. That’s actually exactly what we are talking about this week with Rockefeller foundation, Jeremy Bevans there, who has led a project as their digital media manager creating HatchforGood, really putting some science and teeth behind  storytelling trainings. And they worked with a great firm called Hattaway. we will be talking with RJB, the SVP, a lot of letters and his work putting together HatchforGood. Welcome to Episode 28 –here we go.

Speaker 1: And I am here with Jeremy Bevans from Rockefeller Foundation and RJ from Hattaway. Guys, Thank you for joining us today. I am super excited. But, just to start, Jeremy, can you introduce yourself and then tell us what’s  going on here.

Speaker 2:  Sure. I am Jeremy Bevans. I am the Digital Media Manager at Rockefeller Foundation. I am here to talk about , HatchforGood, our digital storytelling platform.

We talk with Jereme Bivins, Digital Strategist at The Rockefeller Foundation and RJ Bee, SVP of Hattaway Communications.

The platform they created is called HatchForGood.org 

Hatch acts like a concierge, connecting you to a suite of tools and a growing community to help you leverage storytelling to drive social impact and improve the lives of the poor and vulnerable around the world.

Josh Tabb is the Global Digital Strategist at Malaria No More. In the US, Josh is using web analytics and assisted conversions to drive increased donations. In Africa, Malaria No More is leveraging text messaging to keep medication stocked and to fight the spread of fraudulent medicine.

Episode 27

George Weiner: This is “Using the Whole Whale”, a podcast that brings you stories of data and technology in the nonprofit world. My name is George Weiner, your host and the Chief Whaler of WholeWhale.com. Thanks for joining us.

Malaria has plagued humankind for thousands of years, literally. This is first documented going back to 2700 BC, in China. They originally used herbs and distilled quinine from trees to fight it, then, later realizing, closer to the 20th century, of the impact of mosquitos as a carrier for malaria, leading to bed nets and mosquito control, and now, I’m particularly excited because Malaria No More has evolved to using text messaging and web data to fight malaria, and finally stamp out this disease that has plagued humankind for quite some time. I’m incredibly excited. As you all know, I do love me some data and technology, but we’re talking with the Head of Global Digital Strategy, Josh Tabb, at Malaria No More, and we’re going to see exactly how they’re doing this.

Speaker 1: I’m excited today because we are talking with Josh Tabb from Malaria No More. Josh, how ya doing, man?

Josh Tabb: George, thanks for having me today. How’s everything on your side?

GW: Oh, you know, just hanging out, podcasting. I’m excited, though, but, tell folks what you do at Malaria No More and what exactly, the goal, really, with Malaria No More is.

JT: My position is the Global Digital Strategist, and for those of you who aren’t quite as fancy, that just basically means I’m the web guy. So that means I’m helping with our email strategy, building and refining our websites, our social media strategy; anything that touches the web. And with that new global title thrown on at the beginning there, really, recently trying to expand on my efforts and take it outside of our marketing to donor countries in the US and the UK and really focus on mal

 Sarah Durham, the president of the nonprofit digital branding agency Big Duck, discusses the results of a rebranding survey of over 350 nonprofits. If your nonprofit is considering a rebrand of the logo, website, or communication materials it is important to understand the key ingredients that can make the difference for success.

Download the full report at Big Duck. Learn whether rebranding can help a nonprofit increase revenue from individuals and other supporters. Find out if it creates a boost to fundraising, recruitment, activism, or media attention.

Episode 25

The top of the year is a common time when large projects such as rebranding are brought up inside of organizations. Welcome to episode 25, where we’re talking about some of the research and thinking behind whether or not you should rebrand. Sarah Duram, the president of Big Duck, a really great branding agency for non-profits, actually commissioned a research report last year that sought to address this exact question by talking with not-for-profits that had gone through major rebrands to decide whether they were better off, the same, or sometimes worse-off for the activity. Hopefully this will help us in our potential decision of whether we should stay or, should we go with internal branding.

Speaker 1: Alright so I’m here with Sarah, Sarah can you tell us who you are and what you do.

Speaker 2: Sure! I’m the president of a company called Big Duck, and big duck is a communications firm that works exclusively with non-profit organizations to help them communicate more effectively.

Speaker 1: Thanks, and thanks for being with us today. I’m really excited because you did something very interesting that I haven’t seen in the past. You created a data backed exploration of what it means when you rebrand and you called it the rebrand effect. Can you tell us a little bit about this work?

Speaker 2: Yeah absolutely, well, you know big duck has been working with non-profits and helping them rebrand for over a dozen years. We have seen anecdotal evidence that when brands rebrand they receive all kinds of benefits, but there has never been any hard d

Giving Tuesday raised $45.7 million for non-profits on the December 2nd, 2014 day of giving meant to follow the commercial wave of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This was the third year of Giving Tuesday and Givkwik.com undertook the daunting challenge of creating a live online event on the day. In this interview Jason Rosado (GivKwik.com Founder) and Jorge Fontanez (Advisory Council Member) discuss the importance of visual story telling and developing your organization’s ‘baseball card’ that can quickly tell the story of impact to supporters on giving platforms.

This section is for the numbers geeks, so feel free to skip over.

2014

2013

2012

Episode 24

Speaker 1: This is “Using the Whole Whale” a podcast that brings you stories of data and technology in the nonprofit world. My name is George Weiner– your host– and the chief whaler of Whole Whale.com. Thanks for joining us.

On December 2nd 2014 . . . “Giving Tuesday” as it is called . . . reaction to “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday”. . . I had the chance of sponsoring a great event that “give kwik” put on. I met Jason and Jorge there while they were putting on a live event that went along with “Giving Tuesday” where they were showcasing great nonprofits and sharing different stories about the day.

We