Virgin Mobile Canada Uses Rewards to Inspire Volunteers

Trying to make life better for Canada's youth, Virgin Mobile Canada is working to encourage people to volunteer to help at-risk and homeless teens through its RE*Generation program. People who donate their time can earn rewards such as concert tickets and events across Canada -- starting with the Katy Perry California Dreams tour.

Virgin is using technology from Los Angeles-based Causecast, which offers Volunteer Tracking and Rewards, a cause integration platform for nonprofits and brands that lets companies incorporate volunteer opportunities into their campaigns and digital media efforts. The technology enables potential volunteers to find opportunities in a specific area and to track their activities and earn rewards points while giving Virgin Mobile control over which nonprofits are supported and allowing the company to track the program's impact.

So far, RE*Generation has raised more than $800,000 for youth-serving agencies in Canada.

"Programs like this help engage youth to give back and learn more about the issues facing their generation. Causecast has made it easy to track and manage the volunteer efforts on a massive scale, giving us the ability to help more at-risk and homeless youth than we would have otherwise been able to impact through the RE*Generation program," says Andrew Bridge, director of brand and communications, Virgin Mobile Canada, in announcing the effort.

According to Virgin, more than 2 million youth in North America between the ages of 12 and 24 will be homeless at least once each year, while more than 100,000 will be homeless for six months or more. Youth homelessness -- usually the result of such problems as poverty, drug abuse, homophobia, mental illness and domestic violence -- leads to adult homelessness, Virgin says.