Engagement that PDFs can’t solve
Public-health screening, civic education, beneficiary outreach — something important to communicate, and current channels aren’t landing.
Host a small team of senior game-industry practitioners for a 12-month engagement on a real project. We pay them. We support them. You scope the problem, give them access to the people who matter, and ship something with them at the end.
We’re not a software vendor. We’re a fellowship. The problems where we add the most value need engagement, behavior change, learning, or radical accessibility — and a clear public-interest case.
Public-health screening, civic education, beneficiary outreach — something important to communicate, and current channels aren’t landing.
Benefits enrollment, court navigation, eligibility screening — people who should be making it through your funnel aren’t.
Workforce certification, clinical decision-making, harm reduction — classroom or video isn’t producing the behavior change you need.
Climate, land use, public-health policy — you need a simulation that lets people feel tradeoffs they otherwise wouldn’t.
An existing tool that needs to genuinely serve people with disabilities, low literacy, or limited English — not minimum-compliance retrofits.
If you have a public-interest problem and a hunch that game craft might help, talk to us. Worst case we’ll say “not this cohort.”
~60 minutes with our Partnerships Director. We learn about your problem, audience, and constraints. We tell you whether we think it’s a fit and what would need to be true for us to move forward.
If we both want to move forward, we co-author a Scoping Memo: the problem statement, audience, mission alignment, deliverables, evaluation approach, and host responsibilities.
Host MOU governing IP, confidentiality, accessibility, evaluation, and termination rights. You set up system access, identify the Primary Point of Contact, and handle any background checks.
Months 1–5. The fellow team embeds with you, talks to end-users, and produces working prototypes. Weekly check-in, milestone reviews. We support with curriculum and mentorship.
Months 6–10. Build the product to a quality your operations can support, pilot with real users, iterate on findings. You’re a co-owner of the work, not a client.
Months 11–12. Handoff documentation, published evaluation, open-source releases. Your team owns ongoing operations; we stay in touch as alumni.
No surprises. A clear split of responsibilities, lifted directly from our standard Host MOU. We tailor specifics to each engagement, but these baselines hold.
Each fellow-year costs us about $123,000 all-in — stipend, benefits, training, evaluation, program support. We don’t expect hosts to cover that. But we do ask for a contribution proportionate to your size, because skin in the game produces better outcomes for everyone.
The default model below is a starting point. We waive or reduce it where the public-interest case is strong and resources are constrained.
Priced through standard procurement at a level that covers fellow team cost plus a modest program contribution. Most federal/state hosts use existing technical-assistance authorities.
A typical contribution covers roughly the direct fellow team cost. Often funded through a designated grant from a foundation aligned with your mission.
Reduced cash contribution offset by significant in-kind: senior staff time, end-user access, evaluation infrastructure, or co-funding from a third-party funder.
Where the work is high-impact and resources are limited, we cover the fellow team cost from our own funder pool. Strong scope, strong sponsorship, and demonstrable end-user access matter most.
A real human reads every submission. We respond within five business days.
Anything else? Email hosts@gameforamerica.org — happy to talk before you submit anything formal.
It’s a fellowship engagement, governed by a Memorandum of Understanding rather than a procurement contract. The fellows are our employees, not yours. Where federal or state procurement rules require a contract instrument, we can structure as a cooperative agreement or technical-assistance vehicle.
Default is joint ownership, with each side holding the licenses needed for ongoing use. Reusable, generalizable components default to permissive open-source licenses so others can replicate. Where you require exclusive rights, we accommodate in the MOU and retain rights to publish anonymized learnings.
Standard. We sign a Data Protection Addendum before any personal data moves between us, with breach notification, sub-processor controls, and security measures appropriate to your sector. We have templates aligned to common federal and state requirements (HIPAA, FERPA, CJIS, COPPA).
Yes, and we treat that work seriously. Our Safeguarding Policy governs how fellows engage — informed consent, training, chaperoning, age-appropriate design, mandated-reporter compliance. Background checks are completed before placement when required.
Most don’t. Our scope is broader than entertainment games — simulators, decision-support tools, learning experiences, accessible service flows, gameful interactions inside otherwise plain interfaces. If your problem benefits from systems thinking, motivation design, or interactive learning, the “is it a game?” question is the wrong one to ask first.
Either side can terminate for material breach with 30 days’ notice and an opportunity to cure. We also have explicit pause and termination rights if a project drifts toward subject matter outside our scope. We’d rather have an honest off-ramp than push through a bad fit.
It depends on the project. For behavior-change or learning interventions, pre/post measurement with appropriate comparison; for service redesigns, drop-off and accessibility metrics; for decision tools, qualitative feedback from real users. We work with your team and any academic partners to land on something meaningful and feasible.
Generally yes — with your sign-off. Publication of generalized findings and case studies is part of how we build the field. We never publish without your review, and we never disclose sensitive information about your operations or end-users.
Plenty of other paths. Forward to a colleague, apply as a fellow, or become a Partner Studio.