Pitch FTA: You Pitch Ideas, We Build Them

Last month, we launched Pitch for the Animals, an interactive mobile-friendly app, in time for the inaugural Animal & Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit in Washington, DC. Given that many of our team members attended AVA, we were excited to roll out and promote Pitch FTA, which crowdsources innovative app ideas for the animal protection movement.

Through Pitch FTA, users can submit their own ideas and vote on their favorites. To stack the odds in their favor, users can also complete both in-app and live activities to earn badges and more importantly, earn more votes. Some activities were live and interactive (attending our talk and participating in a scavenger hunt) or through the app (drawing artwork and answering vegan trivia questions).

We were inspired by the opportunity of convening brilliant minds and answering the question: what bright app idea could we collectively come up with? After the conference, we spent time reviewing winning app ideas and figuring out how to put ideas into action.

Now, we are excited to share with you not just the top idea but also the runner-ups in order of popularity, and how we're planning to bring them into fruition:

• A game depicting the experiences and horrors of slaughterhouses. As an organization, we are incredibly interested in exploring out-of-the-box ideas. We think games can be an effective and hands-on learning opportunity to showcase the lived realities of slaughterhouse workers and animals who are killed for food. While we are not a game development shop, we understand that this would be a long-term project and are keen on conducting a search in the future for talented game developers to help contribute.

• An app that gamifies and awards daily acts of taking steps for the animals. We love the concept of empowering people to perform actions that would improve and save animals' lives. We currently have our heads down figuring out what this app would look like: what kinds of actions can anyone do on a regular basis? How can we build in activities and incentives that keep users engaged? We look forward to scoping out this project and working on the UX design of it soon.

• A database that manages animal resident info at sanctuaries. We understand that managing internal data at any organization can be varied and bespoke, especially with different systems and comfort levels with tech. We are collaborating with The Open Sanctuary Project to make this idea a reality. (We were excited to see its executive director Mckenzee Griffler, who has also contributed to our blog, at AVA!) After user research and interviews and design, the project is currently in the beginning of its development phase, meaning our software engineers are building out the project. We are so excited that this already on the docket and there is so much interest in a platform.

As a team, we were successful in launching and promoting our first-ever activation app. This gave us the chance to increase awareness of our organization and services, while also showcasing what we can deliver, as we networked with others in the movement. We look forward to building more innovative projects for the movement and though Pitch FTA has closed its door post-conference, we're always interested in hearing your brilliant ideas for the animals.