Social Currency for Social Good: Foursquare x NY Tech Gives Back
At this week’s New York Tech Meetup, Dennis Crowley from Foursquare announced that users of the popular mobile service will have a chance to DO something with the "status points" they rack up.
To benefit NY Tech Gives Back, a volunteer event raising money for CampInteractive, Foursquare is turning its leaderboard into a fundraiser. By checking in at the event's afterparty, users can turn their social currency into donations for the Camp.
Crowley tells us that they are looking for someone to sponsor the leaderboard of the day/weekend. Whoever it ends up being, they will figure out a points to dollar arrangement. This has big dollar potential. For example, last Friday in NYC, users generated 20,000 points. So if they were to do $0.50 a point, that's $10k or $0.25 = $5,000.
According to the guys behind NY Tech Gives Back Day (Simon Kirk and Adam Gillman), anyone interested should go to techiesgiveback.org. They have a form on the site where people can register their interest in sponsoring the leaderboard amongst other volunteer and donation opportunities. The event will take place on December 13.
Not only is this a great cause, but it's a great, early example of how we can turn social currency into real currency—definitely a trend to watch. This could also be the donation model of the future as it counters the passive "armchair (or Facebook) activism" that has taken shape, encouraging actual offline participation in a cause.
