Over the course of two five-day campaigns, users raised more than $130,000 to benefit Water.org and the Huntington's Disease Society of America (HDSA) by purchasing limited edition items. For the HDSA campaign, 24,000 Mafia Wars players bought a virtual teddy bear, which will help with research efforts related to Huntington's Disease. For the Water.org campaign, FishVille players purchased around 70,000 special fish. The funds raised from that effort will help bring water to more than 500 Haitians who are still living in makeshift dwellings and quickly approaching the disease-filled rainy season.
"Even before the earthquake, the water crisis in Haiti was severe," Water.org Co-Founder Gary White said. "Like so many other places on our planet, people living in poverty struggle to obtain the basic needs of water and proper sanitation. The partnership with Zynga will allow us to more quickly scale our efforts to reach the people of Haiti with life-saving safe drinking water projects," he added.
Zynga's also told us that more than 60,000 FishVille players went to Water.org to learn more about the cause; this number is 10 times greater than the site's usual traffic.
Thus far, Zynga has raised more than $3 million from all of its social good campaigns through purchases from players. Most of this fundraising has focused on helping Haitian women and children in need.