Idea: WotC and/or D&D Beyond (sponsors) + America's Blood Centers and/or Red Cross (agents) team up. Donate blood, get loot.
Business rationale: IF sponsoring blood donations can get the sponsor a tax write-off, and if that write-off is worth more than the sponsor's cost* of the loot to be distributed, then it can be financially beneficial to do so.
* Merchant cost, not retail price. Implementation costs shouldn't be ignored; they could be low or impossible, depends on what infrastructure everyone has in place.
If it's a limited time promotion, it should be long enough that someone who just donated would be eligible to donate again after the program goes into effect.
Ideally, it wouldn't be a limited time promotion. People would be encouraged to go and donate blood regularly because each donation gets them a $5 site-credit (or some amount that, after any tax deductions, would not require D&D Beyond to take a loss.) $1 per donation would probably not get anyone to start donating but would be a perk for people already donating. $5 per donation could possibly get people to start donating. One-time offerings, like dice or an adventure with maps, mobs, and spells, would probably have better results than a character frame, but I'm sure anything would be appreciated by both the players and the blood banks!
Also, the community rising up to save lives would be pretty dope.
My credit card has points that I can use at sites like Amazon. What if blood banks could do something similar, where you get a blood bank credit per donation, and you can apply that at any supporting merchant?
Regular Red Cross Red Cell donor here. Some other affiliated blood banks, and occasionally Red Cross Centers/Drives do in fact do this. That said, in medical ethics there's a whole issue of "selling blood" (or really any aspect of your body, registered organ donor here too) that a lot of folks frown upon, seeing it as socio-economically predatory as opposed to the more community spirit orientation of "doing one's part" that the Red Cross usually relies on, Red Cross needs _regular_ donors too, and those folks who do become regular donors tend to do so eschewing incentives.
That said there are many ways the TTRPG industry as a whole, including DDB does involve itself with medical charity, Extra Life being the probably the most recognized. If you want to be part of the community stepping up, a little research will show you that it does in fact do so.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Altruism is undoubtedly better and nobler, but pragmatism may save more lives. The people on the table, their families, and the medical professionals trying to save them are probably happy to use any blood that was willingly provided. It would be nice to have a world where more people regularly donated blood like you, but alas that is clearly not the world we have.
At any rate, there's currently a "free pair of socks" incentive going on for blood donations; I think it's more about PR and persistent awareness than incentive, but a regular rewards program might accomplish the same purpose more effectively without any increased cost. I don't know, but I assume some actuaries do.
TTRPG Community Efforts
I did not mean to imply that WotC/D&D/DDB/the community does nothing. All I meant is that it'd be cool if people said, "I hadn't heard anything about D&D since the satanic panic, and now it's making the national news because the community is turning out to help the nation's blood banks in a significant way. What's this? They have a lot of other initiatives to help with mental health? It looks like they're actually a warm and welcoming community that cares about helping people, even to the point of donating blood!"
The publicity alone would be worth ten times more than any tax writeoff, but might also be a reason for the Red Cross to prefer not to have a partnership like this. Commercialism doesn't mesh well with the stated principles of the Global Red Cross Network. Something like a yearly Blood Drive, for instance connected with a themed Adventurers League one shot, could work though.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
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Idea: WotC and/or D&D Beyond (sponsors) + America's Blood Centers and/or Red Cross (agents) team up. Donate blood, get loot.
Business rationale: IF sponsoring blood donations can get the sponsor a tax write-off, and if that write-off is worth more than the sponsor's cost* of the loot to be distributed, then it can be financially beneficial to do so.
* Merchant cost, not retail price. Implementation costs shouldn't be ignored; they could be low or impossible, depends on what infrastructure everyone has in place.
If it's a limited time promotion, it should be long enough that someone who just donated would be eligible to donate again after the program goes into effect.
Ideally, it wouldn't be a limited time promotion. People would be encouraged to go and donate blood regularly because each donation gets them a $5 site-credit (or some amount that, after any tax deductions, would not require D&D Beyond to take a loss.) $1 per donation would probably not get anyone to start donating but would be a perk for people already donating. $5 per donation could possibly get people to start donating. One-time offerings, like dice or an adventure with maps, mobs, and spells, would probably have better results than a character frame, but I'm sure anything would be appreciated by both the players and the blood banks!
Also, the community rising up to save lives would be pretty dope.
My credit card has points that I can use at sites like Amazon. What if blood banks could do something similar, where you get a blood bank credit per donation, and you can apply that at any supporting merchant?
Just ideas kicking around in my head.
Regular Red Cross Red Cell donor here. Some other affiliated blood banks, and occasionally Red Cross Centers/Drives do in fact do this. That said, in medical ethics there's a whole issue of "selling blood" (or really any aspect of your body, registered organ donor here too) that a lot of folks frown upon, seeing it as socio-economically predatory as opposed to the more community spirit orientation of "doing one's part" that the Red Cross usually relies on, Red Cross needs _regular_ donors too, and those folks who do become regular donors tend to do so eschewing incentives.
That said there are many ways the TTRPG industry as a whole, including DDB does involve itself with medical charity, Extra Life being the probably the most recognized. If you want to be part of the community stepping up, a little research will show you that it does in fact do so.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Ethics
Altruism is undoubtedly better and nobler, but pragmatism may save more lives. The people on the table, their families, and the medical professionals trying to save them are probably happy to use any blood that was willingly provided. It would be nice to have a world where more people regularly donated blood like you, but alas that is clearly not the world we have.
At any rate, there's currently a "free pair of socks" incentive going on for blood donations; I think it's more about PR and persistent awareness than incentive, but a regular rewards program might accomplish the same purpose more effectively without any increased cost. I don't know, but I assume some actuaries do.
TTRPG Community Efforts
I did not mean to imply that WotC/D&D/DDB/the community does nothing. All I meant is that it'd be cool if people said, "I hadn't heard anything about D&D since the satanic panic, and now it's making the national news because the community is turning out to help the nation's blood banks in a significant way. What's this? They have a lot of other initiatives to help with mental health? It looks like they're actually a warm and welcoming community that cares about helping people, even to the point of donating blood!"
The publicity alone would be worth ten times more than any tax writeoff, but might also be a reason for the Red Cross to prefer not to have a partnership like this. Commercialism doesn't mesh well with the stated principles of the Global Red Cross Network. Something like a yearly Blood Drive, for instance connected with a themed Adventurers League one shot, could work though.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].