Gamification

1. General informations

2. Technical possibilities and limitations

3. Setting up your Achievements

4. Pricing

1. General Informations

1.1 Why should you use Gamification?

To put it simply "Gamification" and achievements are a means to motivate people in their work environment by rewarding their performance in a playful manner. Not only does it have the potential to reward your fundraisers but also to make them feel more associated with your organization and gives them orientation for where they are in their career.

With our feature we not only managed to receive the Fundraising Award for Innovation of the year in 2019 but we could already help improve the performances of our customers fundraisers.

1.2 Where is it in the App?

Achievements can be viewed in different parts of the app, depending on who is looking at them.

Coaches for example can see the achievements in the activity and achievement stream of the cockpit, as shown in the picture below.

But also the fundraisers can have a look at their achievements. Not only do they get a notification once they go back to the dashboard but they also have all of their achievements together in the "My Achievements" section of the app:

2. Technical possibilities and limitations

A good rule of thumb to memorize what is possible, is by imagining an achievement as a bar that needs to be jumped over. The harder the achievement, the higher the bar.

So it is possible to have KPIs that stack up by time (e.g. total donations/donations per day) but it is currently not possible to have relative goals (e.g. an average of 5 donations per day in one week).

Please keep in mind that this is not a final, but an ever evolving list since as we always try to improve our features. So it pays off to pass by the helpcenter articles from time to time since we also update them with every new aspect of the feature.

We know that this is quite abstract to imagine, so we listed everything that is currently possible and not possible with our Gamification feature.

2.1 What's possible:

Donations

• X donations per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. sign up 5 donors in one day)
• X donations with sponsorship X per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. sign up 5 people with the "Formunauts" sponsorship in a week)
• Every n-th donation in total (e.g. sign up 1000 donations in total)

Age

• X donations with age >/</=X per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. sign up 25 people over the age of 27  in a week)

Amount

• Donations with yearly amount of X per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. sign up 3 people with 360€ yearly amount in an hour)

Points

• X points per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. receive 1000 points )

Feedback

• X donations with a rating of X per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. receive 30 5-star ratings in a month)

Petitions and Referrals

• X petitions per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. refer 20 new people in a month)
• Every n-th petition in total (e.g. get 1000 petitions signed)
• X referrals per hour/day/week/month/year/total (e.g. refer 10 people in a day)

Shifts

• Work for X shifts as fundraiser per week/month/year/total
  

Locations

• X Locations a fundraiser has worked at
   

Timeframes

• Choose a certain time frame when the fundraisers can unlook Achievements (e.g. Holiday Special for Decemeber)

2.2 What's currently not possible:

Average and procentual achievements

• E.g. “Have an average of 10 donors per week”
• The system checks for limits that have been reached since averages are too complex to calculate for an achievement
• Also it might distort the actual value of the performance. E.g. if the achievement says "Have averagely 5 donors per shift in a week" there might be a fundraiser that works only one day and signed up 5 people who receives the achievement, while a different fundraiser that works 5 days a week and signs up 22 people in total would not receive it then, even though it he/she helped raising more money for the organization at the end of the week.

Team achievements

• E.g. “Sign up 20 donors as a team”
• Achievements are linked to the datasets and not to the fundraisers, which means that we currently can't connect them to a team
• Teams might also be constantly changing the fundraisers that are in them, so you would receive achievements you didn't contribute to

Leaderboard Achievements

• E.g. "Fundraiser of the week - sign up the most people in a week"
• Since we can't compare performances with each other there is no way to define a fundraiser of the week

3. Setting up your Achievements

Now that we know the principles of Gamification, let's have a look at what is our recommended way of using them. 

An Achievement can be more than just a simple pop up when the fundraisers enter the dashboard.

Achievements can serve as a part of your payment model as well as a reference to big achievements of other fundraisers in your organization.

We summarized this in the follwoing image:

This graphic might seem a bit overwhelming at first, so let's break it apart into more digestible chunks.

Goals -> Culture -> Design

Let's start with the 3 elements that should be kept in mind when creating achievements. They all go hand in hand

Goals 

There are different reasons of why people want to gather achievements but regardless of their motivation, achievements should always follow the SMART formula:

• S - a goal should be "specific", so it should be clear what is trying to be achieved
• M - make sure that the goals are "measurable" so it is clear when a goal has been achieved
• A - goals only make sense if you can actually reach them so they need to be "attainable"
• R - to make them valuable a goal should also be "relevant" in your organization
• T - making achievements "timebound" makes sure that they are not lost out of sight

Another thing that should be kept in mind is that achievements can't and shouldn't be negative. For example "Sign up less than 10 donors in a day". Achievements should work as a reward and never as a punishment.

Culture

To use the full potential of achievements you should aim to implement your companies culture into them, to make the achievement a part of your culture in return.

Really anything goes here, as long as it displays the culture that you and your coworkers live everyday while working together.

May it be that achievements are references to jokes and stories everyone in your company knows or a way to display the impact a fundraisers work can have for different projects.

 The goal is to make an achievement more than just an additional KPI that is presented to fundraisers, by giving it additional value within your work structures.

Design

Just as important as the afor mentioned elements, proper design plays a key role in setting up an achievement.

Imagine being a fundraiser. You happily finish your very first sign up and while you go back to the dashboard to have a look at your updated results, you are greeted by heartwarming thank you message from the organization they are fundraising for. 

Or you chased an "epic" achievement for a quite a while now and you finally earned it. Curious of what it might look like you open your achievement list, only to find an uninspired "Thumbs Up" picture.

As you can see, design has not only the power to boost the feeling of gratification of an achievement but also dampen it if not used properly.

What you should keep in mind when choosing images for your achievements is discussed later in this section.

Coaching with Gamification

Now that we talked about the foundation for setting up the achievements, let's dive into the different steps that you can take to further implement them in your work environment and how you can coach your fundraisers with the achievements that you set up.

Integration into recruiting process: a gamification system doesn't only mean that you can create motivation inside of your company, but you can also implement it into your recruiting process. Telling your applicants about your innovative achievements and rewards can be a means to make you more interesting as a work place

Integration into training process: don't just let your fundraisers find out for themselves that they can achieve something. Implement it into your trainings, proactively tell them about it so they see that it is not only just a reward for them but also valuable for you as an employer as well

Reward infront of an audience: praise the people that just unlocked a new achievement infront of their colleagues. If you have a team meeting in the morning where you plan the day mention that they achieved something. This makes them not only feel noticed but can also  motivate other people to work for achievements as well.

Actively challenging: setting up easy achievements can be a good way to give people a taste of what's to come. But alltogether you should make sure that the achievements are genuinely challenging for the people. This way they not only have a reason to improve themselves but also can give them a feeling of being special by achieving something that not everyone has.

Linking to real gratification: show your fundraisers that the achievements are not just a virtual handshake and tap on the shoulder but also lead to bonuses and gratification in real life. You could set up achievements that would give them bonus payments when achieved or maybe they receive gifts from your organization. Good work should always be perceived as such and properly awarded.

Additional Achievements over time: when coming up with achievements we recommend adding more achievements over time. Not only will you get a better feeling for gamification over time but also you can gather feedback from your fundraisers to set up new achievements. Normally we recommend to start with 3 to 4 different achievement groups (e.g. total donors over time, donors per day, donation amount in total, referrals over time) 

Special Achievements: another way to motivate your fundraisers is to plan special events.  Maybe something like a "Power Month" and all the people that signed up e.g. 100 people during that time period are invited to join in on a trip with your organization. 

Design for the app

As already mentioned before, a good design is crucial to achieve the full effect of the gamification. 

In this section we want to have a look at what you should keep in mind when setting up a graphic design and description for the achievements. 

4. Pricing

Not only is gamification helping to improve the performance of your fundraisers but it also comes with no monthly subscription fees.

This means the only costs will come from the time it takes to set up your achievements which will be charged at our normal Professional Hours rate.

If you are interested in getting started with Gamification or if you have any further questions get in touch with our Customer Care Team.