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Blue Dot World
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Blue Dot World Is a company that developed a social currency (Blue Dots) which encourages people to support charitable causes . The aim is to transfer the concept - already established in retail - of earning points that can be exchanged for rewards, into the context of charitable giving. History The company’s name, 'Blue Dot' was inspired by the American astronomer, Carl Sagan. He described our planet, as seen from the farthest reaches of space, as the "Pale Blue Dot" and wrote a famous speech about our responsibility to cherish it and to deal more kindly with one another. In 2009 Blue Dot World Founder and Chairman Chris Ward spent a year as Creative Director of UK charity Comic Relief, raising £82 million through Red Nose Day. He then went on to become Director of the FIFA World Cup legacy project, 1GOAL, which raised £400m from global governments in aid of education for deprived children around the world. According to Ward, his inspiration in setting up Blue Dot World came from the fact that in one year shoppers at his local Shopping centre in Westfield, London, had spent over £870 million, dwarfing the amount that those high-profile causes had attracted. His aim was to engage the masses with charity in a context that used earning, shopping, rewards and currency to make charitable giving something that people did on a daily basis, like shopping. Concept The company provides virtual currency - in the form of “Blue Dots” - to record people’s good actions and offers them rewards that can be redeemed with them. Blue Dot World uses justgiving.com to allow users to make donations directly to charities. It takes no money from the charities themselves. As well as promoting donations and volunteering, Ward puts forward the idea that people are able to actively help charities through use of social networks, for example by becoming an ‘active fan’ of a cause on Facebook. The company’s website was officially launched in September 2011 and is currently in Beta. Active CV All activities that engage individuals with charities result in Blue Dots being awarded to that person’s “Active CV” This is a record of what type of activity each person has done, detailing what charities benefitted. The concept behind this is that employers are interested in candidates’ interests outside work, and that being seen to be actively engaged with social causes will prove beneficial to individuals in the marketplace. 
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