Streamers are making millions for charity — and they’re just getting started

YouTubers running charity streams on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming have become a staple of the medium. It says something about the streaming community that they’ve been trying to give back for as long as streaming has been a source of income. But now it’s no longer merely a charitable impulse. Now major streamers can — and do — make millions on behalf of charities. And it’s clear from speaking with some of them that they want to make even more.

As content creators have carved out a chunk of the entertainment arena for themselves, they’ve galvanized their growing communities for positive change. This is not a universal motivation, of course, but it’s fairly ubiquitous among popular streamers. While charities and pleas for charitable donations have been a regular feature of the content creation community for at least the last decade, it’s really taken off in the last few years.