Charity Fundraising on Twitch
Determine The Charity
When deciding on a charity to fundraise for, there are a few questions you can ask yourself:
- Why do I want to fundraise?
- Is there a fundraising event I’d like to support?
- Am I impacted by what the charity is working to solve?
- Does this charity’s message and goals align with mine?
Identifying what charity aligns with what you are most passionate about will make picking the charity easier. Once you’ve selected the charity that speaks to you, it’s time to start planning your event.
First, you will want to identify which fundraising platform the charity uses. Fundraising platforms allow you to create campaigns to support charity organizations, and they handle all of the donations and campaign management, so you can focus on energizing your community!
Twitch now provides our own charity tool that allows you to easily start fundraising for the causes you care about in just a few clicks. A new tab in your Creator Dashboard will get you started. You can learn more in our Help Article or use your Creator Dashboard.
Some fundraising platforms with tools for creators are:
Have more questions about making or collecting donations, check out our charitable donation help page .
Goals, Milestones, and Incentives
Goals, Milestones, and Incentives are not just ways to challenge your community but are a great way to reward them! Some fundraising platforms provide tools that can help you easily track these, so be sure to look through what’s available to see which might work for you.
Goals. Every campaign needs a goal. Setting a goal lets your community know what to work towards collectively. $100? $5000? Set a realistic goal for your community to reach.
If this is your first charity stream or new to streaming, you might set a goal that you, your friends, and your family could reach together. You can continuously increase goals, and you can apply stretch goals later. Just be sure to prepare for them!
Stretch Goal Example: “Hey everyone, we’ve hit our initial goal of $2500 for charity _______! Our new stretch goal is $5000….and if we hit it, I’ll be dying my hair purple!”
When setting goals, it’s important to remember that every dollar raised counts! After you have fundraised for charity a few times, you will better understand what you and your community can do.
Milestones. Similar to goals, milestones are like sub-goals. Using Milestones can help drive donations, so you hit that goal. If your goal is $5000, setting Milestones in an alternating manner can aid in reaching your main goal. For example, your first milestone might be $500, next is $1000, then $500 again etc.)
Examples:
- Every $500 triggers a peripheral giveaway!
- Every $1000, I make a mystery shake with ingredients chat votes on!
- “Once we get to $500 raised, I’ll take a pie to the face!”
- “If we get halfway to our goal, I’ll jump into a pool fully clothed.”
Incentives are perks you can offer to your audience to motivate them to take action. The two types of incentives we typically see are virtual and physical. When deciding on incentives, there are a few questions you’ll want to ask yourself.
- Is this incentive something that resonates with my community?
- Is this something I’m okay doing over and over?
- Is this incentive easy for me to do?
The best part about incentives is that you get to decide what they are! Don’t forget to remind your community of your incentives throughout your stream!
Examples:
- Hey all, don’t forget every $25 raised I eat a Bean boozled!
- Every $10, I’ll put a temporary tattoo on my arm!
- Hey, chat, don’t forget, if we hit our goal, I’m dying my hair, AND we’re playing that scary game I hate!
- If we get halfway to our goal, I’ll do a contemporary dance in a chicken costume.
Take a look at our Community Guidelines ↗ if you are unsure about an incentive you designed.
Hype up your charity stream
So you’ve scheduled your charity stream, what do you do next? It’s time to spread awareness and prepare yourself and your community for the upcoming event!
Here are some practical ways of driving awareness to your upcoming charity stream:
- Gather educational resources about the charity you are raising for
What is the charity you are raising funds for with your community? What is their mission? How do the donations make an impact on their mission?**Make sure to research and have information on hand to educate your audience, provide excellent insight, and more!
Examples:
- I’m fundraising for __ charity because _ is important to me. Here’s how they help _.
- “We just raised $250, which will pay for an entire child’s blood transfusion!!”
When your community understands their donations’ impact, it’s a great feeling.
Let them know in advance. Give your community at least two weeks notice from the start date of the event. Providing your community and moderators with details in advance can allow them to prepare better for your charity event!
Hype it up on stream! Be sure to talk about your upcoming charity event in the streams leading up to it! This hype ensures it’s at the forefront of your community’s mind and gives them more opportunities to look forward to the stream.
Inquire with your community. See what incentives they are most excited about seeing met during the stream! Use this as an opportunity to recognize what incentives resonate with your community and possibly identify new or surprise incentives for the upcoming campaign!
Schedule your event in your channel settings! This way, your community is aware of when to tune in and support! Check out the Channel Setup Page ↗ for info on using the Stream schedule tool if you are unfamiliar.
Post on social media leading up to your event! The more people that know about your event, the better! You’ll want to utilize all the social media platforms you have accounts on to spread the word.
- Share your fundraising goal, date, time, and link to your Twitch channel, so people know where to go.
- Post your incentives and let your audience know how you’re rewarding them!
- Are you collaborating with anyone during your event? Be sure to tag them in your posts.
- Let your community know to support and retweet your social media posts to spread awareness.
Rusty on Social Media? We’ve got a Social Media Strategy Creator Camp article to help you prepare to share your charity event!
- Prepare your moderators! Double-check to make sure your moderators are up to date with current Twitch tools surrounding moderation and safety. Need to brush up? Check out our Moderation and Safety Creator Camp ↗ page.
Ensure you are implementing these best practices, and you will hit the ground running before your events even begin!
Going Live
When preparing to go live with your charity event, there are a few tools to consider to aid in your fundraising endeavors. Let’s talk about Extensions, Overlays, and ChatBots.
Extensions are interactive overlays and panels that integrate directly with your stream on Twitch. Most fundraising platforms currently have extensions on Twitch available for use.
Charity Extensions | What they do
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For more information on how Extensions work and how to best utilize them check out the extensions article. ↗
Overlays are the perfect visual element to display your goal. Overlays come in various forms, so you can choose which works best for your setup. Be sure to check and see if the fundraising platform you’re using connects to your current overlay/alert service for easy integration.
Chatbots are one of the most critical tools creators use to manage their channels’. Chatbots make streaming easier for creators by moderating chat, starting mini-games to increase viewer engagement, providing responses to viewers in chat, and more. When it comes to fundraising, chatbots can be utilized for call-to-actions (CTAs) and providing information to the audience about your cause.
CTA’s will draw your audience’s attention, pique their interest and guide them to what you would like them to do.
CTA Example: Today ______ is raising money for ________. Help us meet our goal of $1000 and Donate Here: htt://Link.Link.Link.Link. Every dollar helps!
Don’t have a chatbot yet? Here are some popular bots we’ve seen around:
If you have any questions about Charity Fundraising on Twitch, reach out to us at Charity@twitch.tv .↗