It sounds like a drunken slur you mumble to your pals after a night out on the town, but William Shatner—who pronounces it precisely like that—assures us that Gishwhes (the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen) is so much more.

“It’s a terrific game with good-natured competition,” Shatner says from his nondescript office off Ventura Boulevard as he pulls on and off a Union Civil War soldier’s outfit, complete with sword, for item number 115 in the weeklong annual hunt. “Social media elects people—it makes them popular, it destroys them, it makes them killers, it makes them religious. It spans every aspect of human behavior. With this, we raise money for charity.”

Gishwhes was invented by Supernatural’s Misha Collins four years ago because, among other things, he has a fond memory of his car being stolen during “Scav Week” at the University of Chicago in order to smuggle sheep across state lines. “It was awesome,” he tells VF.com over the phone from the Supernatural set. It’s now a worldwide scavenger hunt joined by over 20,000 people from over 100 countries each year, and boasts multiple Guinness world records, including the longest safety-pin chain and the largest online photo album of hugs. The goal of the whole game lies somewhere between “do good” and “be funny.” The other M.O. is to activate all of the participants to donate food and volunteer at food banks, give blood, become bone-marrow donors, and generally do good. (All proceeds from registration fees after paying operating expenses go to the charity Random Acts.)

“For at least one week,” Collins explains, “this shatters the routine of ordinary life. Everyone who participates and everyone who comes across the participants are shaken out of the mundane for a moment. It’s nice to be a part of something that I hope shocks people or wakes them up into a different state of reality.”

Jonathan Scott, in a camel costume, at the New York Stock Exchange. Copyright 2015 GISHWHES

Team Shatner includes not only Chloe Dykstra from SyFy’s Heroes of Cosplay and Jonathan Scott from HGTV’s Property Brothers, but also an architecture student from Iran, a Geekdom blogger from Florida, and an astronaut. The point of Gishwhes isn’t to get a photo op with Hillary Clinton, although that is number 45 on the items list; it’s to go out and perform acts of kindness, and have fun while doing it.