Streamers on the Twitch platform will be able to directly solicit donations for charitable causes. The business today introduced Twitch Charity’s closed beta to a select group of partners and affiliates.
Donations will be handled by the Paypal Giving Fund and will be monitored in the chat and activity feed of the stream. Streamers have historically relied on third-party charity portals like Tiltify to actually send money to their preferred organization after viewers donate through subs and bits. Twitch will eliminate the middleman and probably make it simpler to both hosts and donate to fundraisers by launching its own charity product.
In recent years, Twitch fundraising has grown to be a significant revenue generator. Especially if a prominent streamer or other celebrity is involved, charity streams can easily bring in six or seven-figure sums. Streaming for charity can help well-known creators raise millions of dollars; the Z Event last year, which featured multiple streamers, raised $11.5 million for Action Against Hunger in just over 72 hours.
The fact that creators won’t be charged for a third-party feature is another advantage of a native fundraising feature. Twitch has made the decision to allow creators to donate 100% of their revenue and will forego a tax incentive, in contrast to Tiltify (which takes a 5% cut of any money raised).
Creators will be chosen at random for Twitch Charity’s closed beta. The feature will be made available to most partners and affiliates later this year for everyone else, according to Twitch.
