Donate Life America is a nonprofit organization leading its national partners to increase the number of donated organs, eyes and tissues available to save and heal lives through transplantation while developing a culture where donation is embraced as a fundamental human responsibility.

In the United States, 17 people die each day waiting for an organ and over 110 thousand people are on the transplant waiting list. Every eight minutes, another person is added to that list. It is imperative for this organization and our nation to register more people to become organ donors.

Because every person who becomes an organ donor could heal up to 83 lives with their organ, eye and tissue donation. And every donor has the potential to save eight other people’s lives with eight of their lifesaving organs. But 46% of Americans are not organ donors. Our campaign aimed to change that last fact.

We created The Healing Dice, a set of beautifully designed dice with organs in them — eight dice to represent the eight organs that save lives. Each of the eight resin dice encased a tiny hand-painted sculpture of an organ or tissue: Kidney, Intestines, Bone, Eye, Pancreas, Liver, Lungs and Heart.

Dice are an integral part of DnD game play to save players’ lives. Our set had an extra D20 die that was made specifically for these “death saves.” The extra die was named “The Lifesaving Die.”

If you’re into DnD, you get it immediately. If you aren’t, that’s okay, because they were still really cool dice. But in order to win the dice, you had to become a registered organ donor. We only sent The Healing Dice to people who promised to become organ donors and heal in the real world.

Instead of making a campaign for a general audience, we reached a niche group in the Dungeons and Dragons gaming community. The game’s themes of teamwork, selflessness and heroics made DnDers ideal targets for organ donation. We created a campaign that fit neatly into their world, but nudged them to become organ donors.

We identified influencers who are incredibly popular in the DnD community: Wil Wheaton, Roll For Sandwich and Felicia Day. And they offered to post about The Healing Dice completely pro bono because they loved our message.

We created social videos that directed the DnD community to the site to register. The launch video was set in that fantasy world and called out characters and scenarios that could happen in gameplay. We made sure to speak in the language of this specific game, so it felt like we understood their community and their passion for the game.

In order to win the dice, people had to register to become organ donors. Each point of communication pushed DnDers to the Donate Life organ donation registration page, which allowed them to enter to win The Healing Dice.

Wil Wheaton, Roll For Sandwich and Felicia Day, influencers in the world of DnD, posted videos showing them using the dice and talked about their personal relationship to organ donation. Through those placements in this niche but passionate community, we had an explosion of interest in the dice.

We timed the release right in the week before the US’s Organ Donation month in April. With a few strategically placed social posts and calls to gaming reporters, we then got picked up in the press for not just the gaming audience, but a wider mainstream audience as well.

During the run of the campaign we had no paid media, but through accumulated social and free press, we garnered 563,987,807 impressions. Not only did the community talk about these dice, they also signed up in droves to become organ donors.

750% spike in mentions

89% increase in registrations in first month, compared to previous year

268% increase in organ donation discussion in the DnD community

Just one donor could heal over 80 bodies in need, and registrations almost doubled during the first month of the campaign. Most importantly, that many new registered donors could potentially heal up to 1,912,221 more lives.