The Good Cards: transforming businesses for the better

Take a game and mix it with the passion and the commitment to creating a better world: the result you get is The Good Cards, a real life game for individuals and organizations to achieve collective goals, co-founded by Dorota Sobieszczuk, an AIESEC Alumna, entrepreneur and change maker. The project is currently raising funds on Kickstarter and it has already reached the goal and started the overfunding phase ten days before the campaign ends. I had the the opportunity to interview her for the AIESEC Alumni blog. Enjoy the reading.

AAE: Dorota, what’s your AIESEC experience ?  What do you do in your life?  

D: I’m an AIESEC Alumna and since I finished my over 3 years AIESEC career I’m continually following the path of the change maker.  My AIESEC experience was all about the working with Local Committee Poznan in Poland. Mainly working in the incoming exchange area. Firstly I was a team member of the project than I become project manager, executive board member and local president. In the meantime I was engaged and helping out with notional working groups. Recently,  I co-founded The Good Cards – a real life game for individuals and organizations to achieve collective goals that can help create a better world. I’m living in Bali, the wonderful island where I can connect with like-minded people and grow spiritually and in the business wise way everyday. My mission is to help transform businesses into more socially responsible entities and  empower women to love themselves fully and become more courageous with persuading their business aspiration.

A: What about your project?  

D: Well, I do believe in the individual power of the collective action. How wonderful it would be to be a part of the community that creates habits to become more kind to each other and the planet. And we can all measure it and don’t feel anymore that “my small action doesn’t matter”. When we really see what’s happening in the world it’s obvious that people want change, but not necessarily now what they could potentially do to change anything.So The Good Cards helps you to take action to make a change and motivates you to repeat it by providing fun and gamified experience of leveling up in your good deeds action.

The Core idea comes from the Pay It Forward movement which emphasizes repaying the good deed to the others. The main attribute of the game is “The Good Card”: this is a physical card that gives a user access to the mobile app. He has to scan the QR code on the back of the card in order to find the set of missions for doing something good e.g for his/her family and friends, for strangers and more.

To accomplish the mission the user has to commence an action, share his experience and pass the card to the next recipient.

The next person that gets the card through the good deed has to go on a mission in order to pay it forward. As the card travels from hand to hand, the initial user is able to track it, and see the chain reaction: various stories are shared with the whole community of players from all over the world. The process of how to play the game could be found here:

There are a lot of changes in front of us, before we find the way the really engage millions into doing good. But nothing is impossible.

AAE: What about impacting the business world?

D: Due to my personal experience I’m very passionate about transforming the business world as well, that’s why we want to closely cooperate with business around The Good Cards. That’s why I see The Good Cards as a way to transform businesses for the better, according to the philosophy “do good and do well” at the same time.  The core idea of the game is very simple: people are sent on a “good deed mission” and they share the story in the mobile app. The app is connected with The Good Card – a biodegradable plastic card that users pass on to other people, challenging them to keep the good going. On the app, everybody can track how the card travels, learn what other people are doing, and see the current location of the card on the global map.

The app can be customized for use by brands, and adjusted to their vision of their social impact. It can be used as a tool to do more good, collectively, with all of their employees and customers. I would underline three main aspects of the magic of The Good Cards for businesses:

• Making their internal culture more kind and loving
• Co-creating social impact with their customers
• Increasing their bottom line

It all starts with the leader. Imagine a CEO doing good by challenging employees to do something good as well – and later customers are also challenged to do something good and everybody contributes to the brand’s collective goals that are aligned with their CSR strategy.

We’re entering an era where communication of a company’s impact is not enough. Today, people want to be part of the brand experience and social impact is becoming a more and more important factor for customers when it comes to choosing the brands they stick to. What is personally important for me is that brands have the power to shape their customers’ behaviour and create global trends. Imagine what would happen if doing good deeds became very trendy and customers were engaged in playing The Good Game through their favourite brands – and then they got rewarded for it.

At the end it’s all about our Good Game Prime philosophy, which is win-win-win  for the world, customers and companies

AAE: Why did you decide to launch a crowdfunding campaign?

D: We decided to launch this project on the community platform because the B2C side of the The Good Cards is purely based on the community building mechanism and crowdfunding is a great test.  Nevertheless we have reached our funding goal we need much more support to really put this project on the new level and be able to fully focus on its development, that’s why the support and feedback from the AIESEC network would be great. Thank  you all in advance.

Find out more about The Good Cards at thegoodcards.com

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