The other day, a friend asked me if I’d consider the vocabulary quiz-game, FreeRice.com, to be a good example of micro-volunteering. In this game, each time you click a guess, FreeRice.com makes a small donation to a charity.
I’d just posted my definition of micro-volunteering (here), but thought I’d elaborate a bit with a blog post – in order to address this specific use case. Because in my book, while FreeRice is a really clever tool (and one I’m fond of) it’s quite far from micro-volunteering.
Here’s the distinction. FreeRice monetizes you by capturing your attention. They sell ads to sponsors who want to sell you their goods. You are being advertised to, plain and simple. In the screenshot above, Avis is paying for your eyeballs. And FreeRice gives a portion of that advertising revenue to charity. FreeRice is similar to most online and mobile phone games, where revenue is generated by selling ads. But in this case, you feel extra good about it because some of that money goes to a good cause.
It’s a cool model. It’s a fun game (i’m a logophile). But it’s not micro-volunteering. It’s advertising with a twist. And there are a ton of similar schemes like this across the web, where you can “click to donate.” It’s not that your click (or stellar vocabulary skills) results in work being done for a nonprofit. Each of your clicks results in you being advertised to – and the nonprofit gets a cut. At the core, FreeRice and similar schemes are monetizing the probability that you will purchase a product after seeing an ad.
If the Sierra Club asked you to come to their office to watch ads on television all day. And they told you that they were going to earn $15/day because advertisers were willing to pay to have you sit there, would that be volunteering? I think it’d be a very far stretch.
Let's use a more direct analogy. Let's say that Macy's is hiring cashiers for the holidays at $20/hr. But they have this special deal where you work as a cashier for two weeks and 50% of your salary will be donated to Greenpeace. And they're also going to pocket the other half. So, you'll get paid $0 for your work. And Greenpeace will get a total of $800 after two weeks.
Is that volunteering? I don't think so. It's an interesting model (and maybe Macy's should try it!), but it's not volunteering. Macy's is, of course, analogous to FreeRice in this example.
Love to hear your thoughts.
-ben
