Bounties attract serious brainpower to the challenge.
Do something nice for your local community that week to qualify for your city's "weekly lottery for good people." Do good deeds and potentially win prizes like a month's worth of free parking, free bus passes, swimming pool access, etc.
Why?
People who do good deeds for the prizes might learn that they actually enjoy doing them even without the prizes.
Those who help create or shape something appreciate it more.
Reward good deeds.
Encourage an altruistic culture.
Fun city-wide activity that bonds people.
Interesting to follow and see the people and projects that won each week.
How it works
Do something nice for the community that week, to enter into the city's weekly "lottery for good people". Earn multiple entries by doing multiple good deeds for the community.
Citizens can win prizes such as:
a month of free parking anywhere in the city
a month of free public transportation
a month of free anything that is under the control of the city
a free fishing license
sponsors could step up and offer all kinds of additional prizes
what else?
At the end of each week, there is a lottery where multiple different prizes are drawn.
Submissions
Each good deed has to be documented (photo/video, time, and geolocation). On the city's official website, "evidence" and participants' names are submitted. All submissions are reviewed. All accepted submissions are listed publicly. The good deeds are public, but the identities of the participants are not.
Scam prevention
If multiple people claim to have done something, all are called in for a meeting to clear up what happened.
Flip prizes and make money
The winners can give/sells the prizes to others. However, only one change of owner is possible per pass. Only the owner gets to use it.
End of the year lottery for good people
Citizens who can keep a streak going and qualify for every weekly lottery also qualify for the "yearly lottery for good people" at the end of the year.
What else could a city offer its residents as prizes?
I love this idea, I do wonder about the submissions though, it seems like this might become quite difficult to keep track of and verify.
Perhaps another way to implement this, that might be easier to administrate, is for the organizers of the lottery (probably the local representatives) to pick a cause each week for which volunteers are needed, people who volunteer to help will be allowed to enter their name after a set amount of time has volunteered. This might be an easier way to keep track of the entries while still encouraging volunteer work. People who want to have better odds can volunteer longer to submit their names more times.
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Making the most of a bad thing
Contrived _voiceFeb 28, 2022
Everyone is in agreement that gambling is not exactly a good thing. Gamblers however will gamble, there's no changing that.
I see this as a win-win. A good deed lottery would have higher odds of winning than the usual lucky draw or scratcher card lottery and gamblers will quickly catch on. The prize is usually a side bonus for gamblers with an addiction, the real reward is the adrenaline rush they get get waiting for the results of the gamble.
Now instead of spending time in gambling dens or wasting their income betting on horses or any of the other countless things you can now bet on, Chanelling that drive into community service would be great. It could save city councils alot of money on social and custodial services.
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Spook Louw2 years ago
I don't know that gambling is inherently bad. But I agree that this would be a more positive form of the lotto than the classic lotto.
One could argue that doing charitable work with the hopes of reward might mean that it is no longer charity, but in cases like this, I think that the overall result is positive regardless of the motivation.
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Add your creative contribution
General comments
jnikola2 years ago
What would be the criteria for the selection of the "best" good deed? The number of people the good deed affected, the number of individual's good deeds in total, or creativity? How can this be solved in the most transparent way?
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Darko Savic2 years ago
J. Nikola best doesn't matter. It's a lottery drawn among all the people who qualify that week
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jnikola2 years ago
Darko Savic yes, but you mention winners. How are the winners selected? Or everybody is a winner and gets something?
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Darko Savic2 years ago
J. Nikola somebody's name is drawn as a result of a random/fair mechanism. I didn't think it through but there are many ways of doing it. For example, a televised drawing where every participant gets assigned a 4 digit number. Then air-blown number balls are mixed for a while before being released into a funnel that has only 4 slots. This produces a 4-digit number that is as random as it gets. If there are fewer participants, reduce the number of digits.
Darko Savic Feb 23, 2022
