Chive Charities has been one of GoodBookey’s most active charity partners, going beyond our foundational peer-to-peer model to experiment with special events ranging from taco-eating contests to beer pong-inspired “Champong” fundraisers on New Year’s Eve.  

 

Now, the dynamic duo of Chive Charities and GoodBookey has taken event-based fundraising to a whole new level.  On February 22, Chive Media, the for-profit company behind Chive Charities, hosted its first-ever spelling bee, pitting five teams of three Chive staffers apiece against each other.

 

According to Tyler Eshraghi of Carimus, the collaborators behind the spelling bee wanted to really shake up the traditional event-based fundraising framework and create entertainment that transcends tradition. “Chive Media had this great idea for a spelling bee, to be hosted at their headquarters and benefit their charity,” he explained. “They asked us, the experts at creative gameplay, to take a crack at coming up with our own unique form of a spelling bee.”

 

The GoodBookey team took the challenge and added twist upon twist that allowed the participants—both spellers and the community of donors on the GoodBookey app—to make the event as fun and entertaining as possible. “First, we added “Jeopardy”-style playing elements, as spellers from each team would step up and answer during rounds styled on Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy, racking up points along the way,” said Eshraghi.

 

But the best twist involved the audience. “So, we asked for a donation to Chive Charities in order to play, and we also had a free version,” he said. “Those who donated could bet on teams to win, place, and show, and as the teams received donations, they hit certain thresholds for donors to ‘sabotage’ their competitors. Watching the teams unlock sabotages and spin a wheel to reveal the competitor’s punishment was crazy. Spellers would have to spell while taking a shot of bourbon, getting licked in the face by a dog, or spell backwards.”

 

The results speak for themselves, with typical Chive fervor delivering big entertainment and big money for a host of great causes supported by Chive Charities. The event raised over $15,000 for the nonprofit, with an average donation of $70. The online broadcast topped a whopping 27,000 streaming viewers at its peak, during the two-hour live event. The grand prize winner took home an all-expenses-paid trip to Austin, Texas for the Chive Charities Green Gala event held annually in September.

 

“The secret to our success was keeping it simple on both ends,” Eshraghi explained. “The people at Chive Media and Chive Charities stuck to staging the event, while we focused on gameplay and optimizing the GoodBookey app platform. We were able to take the existing framework of a spelling bee and turn it into a 360-degree experience that was fun and entertaining for all, financially rewarding for Chive Charities, and a great proof-of-concept for GoodBookey as we move these innovations forward to other partners.”

 

For more information on Chive Charities, visit www.chivecharities.org.