Doofl is a platform that helps fundraisers to raise more money, more efficiently and with more fun. The app helps individuals collect donations for specific causes by performing and sharing a variety of dares on social media.
Why we love it
Everyone loves charity, amirite? Animal charities are more popular than charities for humans – you can decide your own ethics on that one – but, essentially, people love to feel like they have done their one good deed for the day. Fundraising or donating to charities is just one option.
Doofl, a new age quirky spelling for Do Full – i.e., do a lot of different things to your fullest potential – is an app that helps with the fundraising process. What more could guilty-feeling millennials and generation-z-ers want than a fundraising app that exists on their smart device? According to founder Ted Decareau, Doofl was created to take the apathy out of charity events, which had grown stale with re-runs of walks, bake sales and so on.
So what’s the idea? Well, Doofl makes charity more sociable. Those who want to do the fundraising can pledge to do dares, and then their friends can vote and donate for the dare they want to win. It’s a simple idea, but actually quite effective. Fundraising typically takes a very long time – months in the case of marathons with charity ballots. Doofl speeds this up, making it easier for busy people to get involved with the charity process.
As Decareau points out, charity events are often not overly stimulating for the donor, the person parting with cash for the worthy cause. Similarly, sponsoring someone to do something ‘scary’ but actually quite amazing – such as skydiving or bungee-jumping – seems a bit one sided, right? Like the UK’s Comic Relief, Doofl takes a much more pro-audience approach when it comes to charitable acts.
And this is all very well and good, but isn’t it a bit silly? Perhaps to the younger millennial, (and gen-z-er behind them) doing dares is still fun and not in the least bit humiliating. For the rest of us, charity bake sales and marathons are well, kind of convenient. Selling cakes to co-workers who are dying for a chance to procrastinate: easy. Getting sponsored to run a marathon: not difficult, and combines charity with staying fit at the same time.
Still, for its target audience, Doofl has appeal. The Ice Bucket Challenge took the internet by storm a few years ago, raising some $115 million dollars in the process. If this sort of peer-to-peer donating pattern continues to generate interest (and it seems to be moving in that direction) then Doofl has every chance of becoming the sector leader it hopes to be.
Tweetable
For millennials wanting to put the fun back into charity fundraising, look no further than @DooflApp – raise money doing dares on camera
