What do Zynga and Marc Benioff Have in Common?

Answer: they both understand the value of game play.

Playing games is something we generally think of as for kids. But in reality, we all play games. Whether it’s Farmville, online poker, or watching Jeopardy, game play allows us to relax, unwind, and have fun. And while fun is good in itself, game play can also be an effective way to encourage others take action on behalf of a cause.

Game play can take many forms, but at its core always takes advantage of peoples’ innate competitiveness and desire for recognition to promote involvement. In addition to being fun, games give your support team additional resaons to act on behalf of your cause. Plus, playing games makes you feel like a kid again, and who doesn’t want that?

One recent campaign that has done a remarkable job of using game play is the UCSF Challenge for the Children, a collaboration with the online fundraising platform Causes.com for the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay. The eight-week fundraising competition, which kicked off on October 26 and runs through December 16, is designed to reach out through Facebook and Twitter and encourage people to contribute as individuals or become team leaders in support of the children’s hospital.

As Marc Benioff, the CEO of salesforce.com who already donated $100 million toward the hospital, explains, “To raise the money, it’s not just about who has the biggest checkbook, it’s also about who has the most influence. …We know that we’re on Facebook, we’re on Twitter. We’re using these social networks. And the ones that are on there are not the ones with the biggest checkbooks. How do we empower and enable them to make this the best children’s hospital in the world? The way to do that is with the UCSF Challenge for the Children. We’re going to empower the influencers with social networking to create the next level of success for UCSF.”

The individual or team that rallies the highest number of donations at any level will claim the naming rights to a prominent space in the new hospital. The campaign’s primary goal is to increase community engagement with the future hospital at Mission Bay, so the winning team will have the largest number of individual donations, rather than the highest total donated. That puts a school on equal footing with a corporate executive. Just as the Obama Campaign raised 80% of the $639 million dollars from donations that were $20 or less, the UCSF Challenge for the Children aims to raise small donations from a large number of people to reach its fundraising goals and gain grassroots support.

So far, the Challenge for the Children has enlisted prominent team leaders from Silicon Valley’s high-tech community to kick-off the campaign, including Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch; Ron Conway, angel investor and vice chair of the UCSF Foundation; Om Malik, founder of technology blog GigaOM; and David Morin, founder of Path.com. The campaign also has received celebrity support, with Ashton Kutcher and MC Hammer both signed on to lead teams. Kutcher and Hammer together have nearly eight million Twitter followers. But if you look at the Project Leaderboard (a great way to fuel competitiveness), you’ll see that currently, the fourth place slot belongs to Team Lani, named after a trained CCI dog at UCSF. While few are going to have the star power of MC Hammer, the power of social networks is apparent when a dog (or rather, the people that work at a hospital and want to use a dog as their mascot) is able to recruit more donors than Ron Conway.

There are 20 days left in the Challenge, and 989 donors have already raised over $80,000. The incredible success owes much to the use of game play. If you want to use game play as part of a fundraising campaign, consider incorporating the following elements:

1. Status symbols: status symbols, such as badges, cost nothing yet provide players with a sense of satisfaction and achievement.

2.Display metrics: There are exact donor counts and dollar amounts for each group in the competition. The availability of real-time data ramps up motivation for others to donate because they will see their impact on the competition immediately.

3. Create leader boards: On the Challenge for the Children page, you can see who has recruited the most donors, raised the most money, and donated the most money.

To learn more about the UCSF Challenge for the Children or to register and donate online, check out their causes page at www.causes.com/ucsfchallenge, or through the UCSF Facebook page,www.facebook.com/ucsf.