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SALT LAKE CITY — The good feeling you get from helping others is always rewarding. But what if you could actually see the ongoing positive effects from your deeds? A new Utah-based website created by Eli Baird helps you do just that.
Baird works as a web developer for a health care staffing company in Midvale. When he’s not building websites to help hospitals find doctors, he has been pouring most of his free time into creating the GivingGame.
To play the game, individuals create a free account on the website and then perform acts of kindness for each other. They give the recipient of each deed a "Giving Card," which has a unique code on it. When the recipient enters the code on the website, it records the act of kindness. As the recipient pays it forward and helps someone else, a giving tree is created.
“This is something I’ve been trying to build since I was 14 years old,” Baird said. “I created a super simple version when I was 16, where I had a single webpage and people could send me an email to register an act of kindness.”
“It’s really fun for people because you can start as many kindness chains as you wish. You get notified when you inspire kindness down the line and with the interactive map, you can see that kindness spread out into the world.” — Eli Baird
The technicalities of the website proved to be challenging, and Baird eventually put the idea on hold. As a freshman in college, however, he felt an overwhelming desire to take another crack at the project.
“I used the college startup strategy of beg, borrow and scrounge up money from family,” Baird said. “Most importantly, I found some great developers to build an actual functioning site.”
From these efforts, a website called benevolentstar.com was born. Baird had bronze coins with trackable serial codes made for participants. The idea was that each time an act of kindness was performed, the person would give the coin to the recipient. That way, the good deeds could be passed on and tracked with each unique coin.
But it turned out that the handmade coins were valued as collectibles and rarely passed on. While the website didn’t go quite as Baird had hoped, the experience of working with talented web developers inspired him to follow a new career path.
“Participating in that project made me fall in love with the whole web development process,” Baird said. “And now, six years later, it’s provided me with an enjoyable career in development. But the idea of ‘pay it forward’ and ‘viral kindness tracking’ has never left the back of my mind.”
In creating the GivingGame, Baird focused on making it include three things: fun, free and limitless. And based on early feedback from participants, it seems like he has accomplished those goals.
“It’s really fun for people because you can start as many kindness chains as you wish,” he said. “You get notified when you inspire kindness down the line and with the interactive map, you can see that kindness spread out into the world.”
