Our Story

On January 14, 2018 US Bank stadium erupted in the heart of frigid but beautiful Downtown Minneapolis as the beloved Vikings earned their way into the NFC Championship game for the first time in nearly twenty years. This miraculous ending had an amazing postscript.

The game in question finished with a game-winning touchdown as the clock expired. The stadium erupted and the New Orleans Saints walked off the field in shock and dismay. Unfortunately, some bookkeeping was still required. In order to officially end the game, the Saints needed to return to the field so the Vikings could take a knee on the extra point attempt.

A Saints kicker (Thomas Morstead), complete with bruised ribs and no requirement to be in the play, urged his teammates to get back on the field and allow the Vikings to snap the ball and take a knee to finish the game.

A good sport begets good sports

Some Vikings fans noticed this display of sportsmanship and a single Reddit post the next day praising Morstead resulted in over $250K in donations over the next three months to Morstead’s foundation. The gratitude on day one was palpable and could not have even begun to touch on the hundreds of thousands of dollars that would follow:

“This is Dennis. I'm Executive Director of Thomas Morstead's foundation. The donations that have been pouring in all morning are heart-warming, to say the least. 100% of your dollars will be going to Child Life services in pediatric programs across our state [Louisiana]. I never thought my morning would be brightened this morning by a group of Vikings fans, but life has surprises! Thank you again for the amazing gesture of sportsmanship!” —Morstead’s Reddit account

We here at CauseLine Labs (originally Good Game) watched this whole sporting drama turn to real, meaningful impact and thought, “Anyone who says people don’t like giving money is missing the point — it’s about inspiring donors and removing the hurdles.”

Behavior Science and Disruptive Technology

Two things came immediately to mind in our initial discussions: behavior science and disruptive technology.

A bunch of us at CauseLine Labs spent a significant chunk of our careers in the world of behavior science. We start with a very important foundation of behavior understanding originated by BJ Fogg: a behavior happens when a trigger moves someone over the line where motivation and ability meet. In simple terms: people act when their motivation overcomes the difficulty of the behavior. The harder something is, the more you need to be motivated. And if you just have motivation and the ability, you do not get the behavior without triggering a prompt.

ScoreSide (originally Good Game) is here

What resulted is a mobile application and engagement platform, ScoreSide. Our platform connects a user to a combination of a team, a cause, and a supporting sponsor. As the team performs, in-game events trigger real-world donations. We’ve built our platform to directly connect the fun of being a fan with the impact of being a donor. With ScoreSide, the fan experience is even better because of the added impact to the surrounding communities.

We have found our platform to be 14x more effective at bringing in charitable donations compared to other sports-related methods. In one pilot program, we worked with a 400 person cohort and raised 20% more money than a 4,000 person cohort we used as a control. Not too shabby.

Contact us to get in the game!