01. Games are a craft, not a genre.
The skills that make games engaging — systems design, motivation modeling, accessibility, iteration on real users — transfer to civic work, learning, and behavior change.
Game for America deploys the talent and methods of the game industry in service of the public good. We pair designers, developers, producers, and researchers with nonprofits and public agencies to ship games and gameful experiences that help people learn, decide, prepare, and participate.
Tens of thousands of designers, developers, producers, and researchers in the game industry know how to build things people genuinely want to engage with. That craft is mostly aimed at entertainment. We’re channeling some of it toward public-interest problems.
The skills that make games engaging — systems design, motivation modeling, accessibility, iteration on real users — transfer to civic work, learning, and behavior change.
The best public-interest work happens alongside the organizations that own the problem, not on contract from outside. Fellows ship under the host’s constraints, with the host’s users.
Every project commits to a measurement plan before launch. We publish what worked and what didn’t, because the field gets better when failures are visible.
Reusable components release under permissive licenses (Apache 2.0 for code, CC BY for content). The point is replication, not protection.
$90,000 stipend, full benefits, W-2 employment. Public-interest work shouldn’t require a financial sacrifice from senior practitioners.
We don’t make work that advocates for candidates, parties, or religious doctrine. That’s a hard line, codified in our scope statement.
Public & mental health. Environmental literacy. Education & workforce. Civic services UX. Disability inclusion & aging well. Other areas may be added by board action; we don’t take projects that fall outside an approved area.
Game for America does not produce or accept commissions for work that:
This isn’t a values statement — it’s a legal and operational requirement. Both the Board and the Programs Committee can pause or terminate any engagement that drifts into these areas. Read more in our transparency materials.
A small nonprofit can still take governance seriously. Here’s how ours works.
A five-to-nine-member board with staggered three-year terms. Sets strategy, approves the annual budget, hires and supervises the Executive Director, and ensures we stay within scope.
A board-appointed committee that reviews and approves every host engagement and Partner Studio relationship for scope alignment, fit, and conflict of interest before they begin.
Annual independent audit once we’re large enough to require one. Form 990 published here annually. Donor restrictions documented in writing; major-donor naming opt-in only.
Policies referenced above are documented in our internal policy manual, available on request to funders and prospective hosts.
Request governance documentsWe’re actively recruiting the founding board. We’re looking for two to three people from the game industry, two to three from public-interest sectors (civic tech, public health, education, environmental), and one to two with nonprofit governance, finance, or legal experience.
If you’d like to be considered, or know someone who would be a strong fit, please reach out. We’ll share the board recruitment letter and full term description.
Day-to-day operations are run by a small founding team. We’ll publish names, bios, and photos here as roles are filled and offers accepted.
A short bio will appear here once the founder is in place. Background spans game-industry leadership, public-interest work, and program operations.
First hire after fundraising milestones are met. Will run fellowship operations, host intake, and the Open Library. Express interest.
Game for America began as a conversation that kept happening: senior practitioners in the game industry, mid-career, asking each other variations of the same question. Could the craft do more?
The answer, increasingly, was yes — but there wasn’t an organization sized to receive it. Civic tech, public health innovation, environmental learning, education research: each field had its conferences and its grant programs and its slow tradition of asking game designers to volunteer at the margins. None had a structured pipeline.
The Code for America model is what we’re adapting. It worked: take experienced practitioners from an industry, embed them with public-interest hosts for a paid year, ship something real, document what you learned, build an alumni network that compounds. The model has been replicated for civic data, for civic AI, for design. There’s no reason it can’t be replicated for game craft.
We’re building it now. The 501(c)(3) application is in. The founding board is forming. Cohort 01 launches Fall 2026.
If any of this resonates — as a potential fellow, host, partner, donor, or board member — we’d like to hear from you.
Apply as a fellow. Host a fellow team. Become a partner studio. Or give — every dollar funds a specific piece of cohort 01.