Why doesn’t a newspaper do this:
For each online crossword, sudoku, or other daily quiz, that is correctly completed by a reader, (within a certain time period), the paper donates, say, $1 to a local charity. The chosen charity can change daily or weekly.
The daily quiz would be sponsored by an advertiser which will make the charitable donation. The advertiser’s logo and message would sit right next to the quiz. Fifteen minutes to do the quiz means 15 minutes of exposure to the ad.
How many readers will take the time to complete the daily quiz knowing that it will do some social good? Word-of-mouth will help this spread as readers get their friends to join in and help fund raise for a charity.
Win Win Win Win
– Readers have fun and get a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing they doing some good.
– The sponsor gains goodwill, exposure and a tax deduction.
– The newspaper gains goodwill and readers.
– A charity gets attention and some needed money.
A time-limit would be placed on the quiz. For example: the puzzle has to be completed by 1:00 PM each day. The paper would then tally up the results and announce the donation the next day. Readers will come back to see how much money they helped raise. They will continue doing the daily quiz in an attempt to top the previous day’s donation. Advertisers will want to be part of this.
The contest could be geo-blocked and linked to IP addresses to block repeat entries. It might also be possible to minimize cheating, (prevent people from copying answers from someone else), by slightly changing the quiz each hour.
Readers want to do the right thing, they want to help, they want to make a difference. On their own, readers are just different dots on different pages. Why doesn’t a newspaper put them all on the same page so that when the readers connect themselves, they can produce a nice picture?
Examples of this in action are Free Rice and Free Poverty. There are a few other similar sites.
