1) Augmented Reality Blood Donations Boosts Awareness for The NHS
The National Health Service (NHS) created a billboard showing a patient needing blood donations. Pedestrians were given stickers to put on their arms, and when they hovered a smartphone over the sticker, it showed them donating blood. The billboard then showed the patient getting better and personally thanking the donor.
2) Artist Creates Snapchat Filters to Boost Donations
Artist Baron Von Fancy partnered with W Hotels to create a Snapchat filter that promoted the Hotel chain during Pride Month. Every time the filter was used, W Hotels donated $1 to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). By the end of the month, the filters were used 19,893 times and W Hotels donated the same amount to the Human Rights Campaign — a win in awareness for Pride, HRC, and W Hotes.
3) Nonprofit Lets People With Disabilities Virtually Swim With Dolphins
A dutch nonprofit called The Dolphin Swim Club uses underwater VR goggles to allow people with disabilities to virtually swim with dolphins in their community pool as a form of therapy.
“Some 82 percent of our clients feel actually relaxed by seeing the films,” said the organization’s policy adviser, Johan Elbers. “It takes them away from the world they are in, they enter a new world in another mindset, think differently, feel differently, see differently, and relax completely.”
4) Animal Shelter Uses Pokemon Go to Walk Their Dogs
The Muncie Animal Care Shelter in Indiana jumped on the hype of Pokemon Go and allowed Pokemon Go players to walk their dogs while they played the game. Overall, the campaign ended in six dogs getting adopted.
5) AR Gives Museum Visitors a More Engaging Experience
A number of museums are implementing Augmented Reality to show museum visitors more information about the exhibits. Visitors can download an app and hold their phone or tablet up to an exhibit to receive more information about it. Here’s an example of a life-sized 3D model of a gladiator school being augmented onto a field (see the GIF below).
6) The Hydrous Uses VR to Connect People to Ocean Life
The Hydrous, a nonprofit with a mission to create open access oceans, uses Virtual Reality to allow people to experience their ocean excursions. Viewers can see what it’s like to dive and interact with marine life. The Hydrous also partnered with Google to make their dives accessible through Google Earth.
7) AR Coral Reel Thrives off Tweets in Real Time
Paper Triangles teamed up with Los Angeles Industry Gallery to create a unique augmented reality experience for gallery visitors with proceeds going to The Hydrous nonprofit.
The exhibit used realtime tweets to create or destroy an augmented coral reef with fish swimming around. Tweets with hashtags like #recylcing or #conservation made the reef thrive, while tweets with hashtags like #sushi or #coffee, created trash in the reef, destroying it.
8) Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt Boosts Conference Engagement
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) created an augmented reality scavenger hunt at one of their conferences to encourage conference attendees to visit more exhibits. They placed a number of beacons (short range, low-energy transmitters, which cost about $20 each) around their showroom. Attendees who downloaded their app competed to become one of the first three players to collect all the beacon badges to win a digital camera.
9) City Puts Bins onto Pedestrian Heads to Encourage Recycling
In Buenos Aires, the city government offered pedestrians a chance to play an AR game to help increase recycling awareness. The game projected people walking by onto a huge screen and, if they faced the screen, a giant yellow recycling bin appeared on their heads. They were then challenged to “catch” recyclables falling from sky into their recycling bins. The game promoted the city’s initiative to become waste free.
10) The Royal Opera House Brings in New Audiences With A Virtual Reality Nutcracker Performance
The Royal Opera House created a VR video to allow people to experience The Nutcracker behind the scenes and watch dancers practicing, sets being built, and what it’s like backstage.
After the VR video was published, it received over 3,000 likes on Facebook and over 230,000 views on YouTube.
11) Charity: Water VR Video Raises $2.5 Million
Charity: Water created an immersive 360 video of what it’s like for a 13 year old girl to make the trek to get water for her family.
The video was shared at their gala and inspired attendees to give nearly $2.5 million.
12) United Nations VR Video Raises $3.8 Billion
The United Nations created a VR film about a Syrian refugee in Jordan. They showed the video to donors at a fundraising conference and nearly doubled the amount of donations they expected to $3.8 billion.
5 Ways to Create an Augmented Reality Campaign for Your Nonprofit.
If you’d like to explore creating an AR or VR campaign for your nonprofit, you will need some technical skills and investment. Fortunately, there are companies making it easier and cheaper to create AR experiences every day.
Here are a few places to start making your own Augmented Reality campaigns right away:
1) Create a Snapchat Geofilter
Do you have a conference you’d like more attendee engagement at? A fundraising campaign happening in your city? How about a fun-run?
If so, Geofilters are an excellent tool that can engage your supporters to a new level (plus they’re super shareable). A Geofilter is simply a custom-made filter based on a smartphone user’s geographic location.
One of the best things about Snapchat Geofilters is that they’re fairly inexpensive to buy, at around $5 per 20,000 square feet (that likely covers the geography of your next event).
If you’d like to create a Geofilter for Snapchat, start on their website here. If you need help, talk to Geofilter Studio. They’ve build over 30,000 geofilters for organizations around the world.
2) Create an Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt at Your Next Conference
If you’d like to incentivise your conference attendees to visit more booths in your showroom, or simply create some friendly competition, a scavenger hunt can be a great way to go.
Simply place beacons (small transmitting devices) around various locations at your conference, and get your attendees to download an app that can find them.
One app that makes this easy is Topi’s conference app which can allow you to set everything up (you will still need to get beacons).
3) Film a Virtual Reality Video
If you’ve got a great videographer on hand, talk to them about creating a 360 degree video (like Pencils of Promise did), which your supporters can experience.
If you don’t have the proper equipment, you can buy the Samsung Gear 360, which costs about $350 to record everything. Then, once you have your video, simply upload it to YouTube. Here’s an easy tutorial on the whole process.
4) Build an Augmented Reality App
If you’ve got a great idea for your own AR experience, like NHS’s blood donation campaign, you might consider building your own customized AR app. To get started, get in touch with ZapWorks, who can help you set everything up.
5) Use Apple’s ARKit
If you have some technical expertise, you can build an App for the iPhone using Apple’s ARKit.
I hope these examples have sparked some ideas for you to use at your nonprofit. Best of luck with your AR campaign!
