Wanna buy a T-shirt?I’m at Springfield, MO gaming con VisionCon helping staff the booth for the other Springfield con, SpringfieldGAME. This seems like an appropriate time and place to reflect further upon the DriveThruRPG Doctors Without Borders charity drive that I covered a few days ago.

According to the site, gamers have donated over $117,000 so far. DriveThruRPG will accept donations until further notice, but the bundle will only be given out through the end of January (though the downloads will remain accessible afterward to those who have already purchased it). For those curious about where their donations are going, BoingBoing has a great feature on the mobile hospital Doctors Without Borders set up in Haiti.

The giveaway has been mentioned on MobileRead, BoingBoing, and Tor.com, among other places. One observation a few people have made, and that I feel ashamed for not making myself in my earlier post, is that this kind of giveaway is only possible with e-media—books and mp3s that can be downloaded repeatedly at effectively no marginal cost.

Other fund-raising freebies, like the mugs or DVDs you get from PBS pledge drives, have practical limits. Most notably, the value of the thing you get is usually considerably less than the money you have to donate to get it. A $50 donation might net you a $20 retail value DVD.

After all, there has to be enough money left over from buying the pledge gift (even at wholesale prices) to make offering it worthwhile. Even if the gift is donated, the pledge price is usually set that high just because people are used to it and it maximizes the income. When you pledge to PBS, you are mostly “buying” the satisfaction of knowing you helped support a good cause.

But since electronic media do not have a marginal cost to crank out, DriveThruRPG can assemble a bundle of $1481 worth at cover price (or over $1000 even at DriveThru’s normal “discount” prices) to give out in return for a $20 donation.

Not only does this entice people who don’t care about (or even may be ideologically opposed to) donating to Haiti under normal circumstances to kick in, but it may also mean the gaming companies can claim everything they give away as a tax deduction. (Or so some people think anyway. I’m not a tax accountant so I don’t know for sure.)

Nobody is out printing or shipping costs for any of it so they can give away as many as they like. (Granted, it does impose a cost on bandwidth, as the number of people responding has hammered their servers, but that’s trivial compared to how much it would cost to print and ship the equivalent amount of paper books.)

As far as I know, this giveaway is the first of its kind (or at least the first so widely publicized). Perhaps it will serve as a model for future fundraising drives. It certainly is a remarkable example of how electronic media provide a fundraising solution where everybody wins.

If you haven’t donated yet, there is no time like the present to kick in and help Doctors Without Borders. Remember, the offer is only good through January 31st.

NO COMMENTS

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.