Misnomered, Misused, Miscategorized, Maligned: Livestream/Gaming
RIFs in gaming departments continue, with more and more organizations re-positioning streaming and gaming experts. This article sheds light on the evolving social good market shaping these shifts. Key focus—transitioning from streaming as a singular effort to content creation as a ubiquitous opportunity across revenue channels.
One organization that first took this different path is Save The Children US (STC). Lisa Smith is the Managing Director, Social Media & Influencer Relations. Her title reflects a more holistic view of content creation and its positioning inside an organization. She said, “Save The Children has been in the space for over 10 years. We were never fully focused just on gaming as a fundraising source. We were always more about ‘content creation” as the norm for us. Of what I managed only a portion was livestream, lots more was other content creation. It was always ‘creator fundraising’. Gaming and livestreaming is part of this.”
How did gaming/livestream end up a singular category in the first place? The tools got “.com’ed.”
Tool versus category
In the late 80’s, entire companies were categorized by the way they communicated with their audiences. They were called “.coms.” They were companies that did much of the same stuff other companies did but relied on the internet to communicate. Amazon is a great example.
Now, we can look back and see this categorization as clearly illogical. Amazon is a retailer that uses the internet as a tool to great effect. But it’s a retailer.
The use of the internet to communicate had mistakenly become a category of business. This was an easy mistake to make because the tool was so revolutionary, but it was still a tool of business. Business didn’t change; the tool set changed.
Similarly, in social good, our use of streaming tools has been mistakenly made a category of fundraising, when they are simply a means of communicating while fundraising. They are a tool of fundraising, not a type of fundraising.
First, some nomenclature.
Interactive fundraising tools - polls, milestones, targets, schedules, rewards. Example: the most familiar and embedded supplier in the US nonprofit sector is Tiltify
Livestream – what your parents call “stream” (Thanks @Sam Mihelich)
Stream – a way to view content (other ways would be recorded content, written content, or posted images)
Gaming – a type of content
Content – whatever you can see, read, or hear
Content creator – someone who produces any kind of content; potentially an influencer
Influencer – someone with a following of people who like the content they produce; also called “content creator”
Fundraising category – a way to fundraise, like “I will fundraise by asking my friends for donations,” or “I will throw a giant party, call it a gala, and fundraise,” or “I will host a golf tournament.”
Fundraising tool – digital or in-real-life tools that help people fundraise, like email templates, print brochures, stamps and envelopes, a fundraising web page, content creator tools, ballrooms, golf courses, microphones, numbered paddles for bidding, etc.
Content creation tool - online tools to interact with an audience or community. These include streaming, polls, rewards, milestones, etc.
When we invite constituents to fundraise for our causes, we do not invite them to do letter-writing, email-sending, or even show-up-on-a-doorstep fundraising. We invite them to fundraise and then we supply tools for them to use.
But we currently DO invite constituents to do “stream or gaming fundraising” as a separate and different kind of fundraising. As you can see from the above definitions, this doesn’t make sense. We have “.com-ed” content creator tools. We have taken a tool and made it a category.
Market size
Why does this matter? We are ignoring a very large group of people. According to a study by Linktree, the 2022 Creator Report, there are 200 million creators worldwide, and 89% have 1,000 or more followers. These content creators cross national boundaries, and many operate in the US.
Depending on what source you use, between 13% and 50% of the US population are content creators, that’s 40 to 162 million people, each of whom have at least 1,000 followers (their community).
Depending on what source you use, between 13% and 50% of the US population are content creators, that’s 40 to 162 million people, each of whom has at least 1,000 followers (their community).
And they raise a lot of money. According to Tiltify Founder Michael Wasserman, “Our benchmark study showed us that content creator campaigns raised an average of $1,193. This average was after removing outliers of over $100,000 and below $5 in fundraising. Factors yielding higher fundraising averages included use of interactive fundraising tools and participation in charity-led fundraisers versus solo content creator fundraisers."
But streamers are a tiny fraction of content creators, and gaming streamers are an even smaller fraction.
Content creation as a category encompasses streamers and gamers. But streamers are a tiny fraction of content creators, and gaming streamers are an even smaller fraction. Forbes published its top 50 creator list in 2023. Of that list, only three celebrity influencers streamed, and only one celebrity influencer raised money for charity through streamed gaming.
The way we set up our fundraising paths on our website entry points do not reflect this reality.
When we set up our fundraising paths on our websites, we immediately limit our numbers and success by:
Funneling potential registrants down a stream fundraising path when they are not streamers or gamers.
Not offering registrants content creation tools to use in whatever program they choose (walk, DIY, gala, golf, bake sale).
The sheer number of content creators indicates these tools should be available in all fundraising paths. While we may have briefly had an argument for teasing out livestream into a separate category, that time has passed.
To quote Mahatma Ghandi: “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
Evaluate your fundraising path. When a new fundraiser comes to your site, is it easy for them to find the creator fundraising pages and tools? Are creator tools an entire category? Are creators funneled into this one channel? They are more likely to be walk participants who want to use their community (developed through content creation) for the WALK. But you only offered them the “livestream/gaming” path.
What we recommend:
Eliminate “stream/gaming” as a category of fundraising (unless that is the specific thrust of your nonprofit, like Gamers Outreach, where it makes perfect sense).
Offer the tools to all your fundraisers.
Offering the tools to all your fundraising audience will take strategic work and some digital infrastructure movement. Not addressing this societal trend will make for a terrible black swan event later. Some nonprofits will have brilliant success that will make the rest of us feel silly in hindsight.
Streaming and gaming experts are unhelpfully misnomered
This brings us to an awkward part of the conversation. Not only have content creation tools been siloed in a limiting way, but so have the experts in content creation. In a recent survey of content creators conducted by Turnkey For Good, most people in charge of content creators had the word “livestream” in their title. Most considered themselves a one-person department and interacted very little with other departments. Many of these professionals have struggled to advance in their nonprofit careers and to bring their skills outside of the livestream space. Similarly, revenue results have not been stellar.
Sam Mihelich is an expert in content creation and content creator fundraising. Sam’s background spans esports commentary, content creation, live hosting, and virtual event logistics. A recent long-term engagement at Children’s Cancer Research Fund as the Content Creator and Gaming Specialist gave him a bird’s eye view of the changing industry.
“A gaming department is not a reality anymore.”
—Sam Mihelich
Sam says, “A gaming department is not a reality anymore; it should be a broader 'creator' department. As I look at engagements, ‘where I sit’ is very important to me. Some of our best programs were not gaming or streaming but encompassed all sorts of content creators. We supported people on multiple platforms, each one with specific needs. Influencers are not a monolith.”
To encapsulate, we limited inbound content creator traffic by either funneling all to livestream and gaming or funneling content creators to walk or DIY programs with very poor or no content creation tools. Then, we decided that livestream and gaming were the problem. They are not the problem.
Content Creators Signal Community
Lisa said, “Our job at Save The Children is to create community. We use digital tools to do that.” But she said that STC still struggles to use content creation to build community due to a lack of understanding both inside and outside the organization. Lisa does many internal and external roadshows to help transfer knowledge. To help your organization move forward, she recommends hiring from within the content creator industry to help one’s organization gain a knowledge foothold. This path has value, she believes, because “Low level influencers (content creators) are active at scale in legacy walk programs.”
The biggest challenge to community-building (and thus revenue building) in the digital peer-to-peer space is that merging legacy fundraising and content creator communities is difficult when most legacy peer-to-peer fundraising is happening on digital tools that have no content creation or community functionality.
“(Focus on livestream or gamers) is kind of like using a smartphone only to make phone calls.”
-Michael Wasserman
Michael concurs. He said, “When we created Tiltify 10 years ago it was because I saw an unserved audience. Ultimately that audience was a growing number of people adept at online communities. We focused on livestreamers through Twitch initially. At the time, gaming was the only content allowed on Twitch. As the market expanded, we continued to grow and adjust to the content creator community. In 2024 we would never focus on a content segment like gamers for multiple reasons, but ultimately, it’s because doing so misses the point. It’s kind of like using a smartphone to only make phone calls. Gaming or livestream is a subsegment of the larger creator world, which is now mainstream and focusing on that as a category instead of a tool is causing charities to massively miss opportunities. When charities understand that up to 50% of their fundraisers already have communities, and unlock the tools for them to flourish, they are going to massively increase potential.”
Is content creation the new “walk”?
Sam has repositioned streaming and gaming similarly: “In my ideal organizational structure, whoever is doing influencer or content creator fundraising, their goal should be to create a space that creators feel good coming to fundraise. Think about a walk. In a traditional walk environment, you come to the walk and paint your face purple in support. In the content creator event, you bring your audience, and you paint your face purple when you’ve raised $500. But it's live or in a video where your supporters can see you do it.”
In our next blog on this subject, we’ll explore whether traditional walks and content creator fundraising is “horse-shoeing” into the same thing. Feel free to give us your thoughts (we're going to keep writing about this) or reach out if you need help navigating this terrain. Feel free to give us your thoughts (we're going to keep writing about this) or reach out if you need help navigating this terrain. info@turnkeyforgood.com