- What's up guys, welcome back once again
to the Gaming Careers YouTube channel.
Today's video is going to be talking about
how to successfully run a charity livestream.
Now just over three weeks ago,
I actually did my first ever charity livestream.
And it wasn't a typical playing games at your computer
interacting with chat, shaving your head
when you raise $200 type livestream,
it was actually an IRL one where I wore a camera
on my shoulder, some batteries in my backpack,
along with some livestreaming equipment
and I attempted to run a marathon.
And the lessons that I learnt in the month
leading up to this charity livestream apply to anybody
that wants to do a livestream and raise money for charity.
It doesn't matter if it's IRL or if it's you playing
games at your computer or whatever the content is,
these tips apply to everyone.
And we'll be diving right in after a quick message
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Okay, so tip number one is to choose a charity
that means something to you.
There are literally thousands of different charities
that you could choose to raise money for
and there's some great causes out there,
but the biggest advice I could give is to choose a charity
that has some sort of personal connection to you
or to a friend or to a family, because that connection
is come across when you are streaming to your viewers
and make them more likely to donate because you can
really tell when somebody is plugging a charity
that has had some sort of effect on their life.
There are of course some charities that are
specifically aimed at gamers, so if you're looking
for ideas, I would suggest looking at St. Jude,
Special Effect, Gamers Outreach, Extra Life, Child's Play.
There's literally hundreds out there so just do some
research and find a charity that means something to you.
Tip number two might be a bit of an obvious one,
but it's to choose the platform
that you're going to be livestreaming to.
Now Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, wherever you're going to be
livestreaming, think about where your audience lies.
For me personally, I had obviously, a much bigger audience
on YouTube then I do on Twitch, but I had
such a good connection with Twitch and for raising money
for charities in the past, I'd seen lots of events happening
on Twitch, that I reached out to my partner, manager
here in the UK and was able to arrange some front page time.
So I thought that that was the platform
that made the most sense, but certainly think about
where your audience lies and where that kind
of charity stream content is going to do best.
Tip number three is to think carefully
about your schedule for your charity livestream.
Not only planning the date, time and day of the week
that that's going to be, but think about the length
of your livestream, are you going to try and do a longer
livestream because it's for charity?
Maybe six, 12 or even a 24 hour livestream,
have you thought about how difficult that will be
and to keep things entertaining?
Maybe you're going to need to bring in guests.
Reach out to some fellow streamers that you enjoy watching
or maybe that enjoy watching you and bring them on
as guests as part of this longer
charity livestream that you're running.
People love to feel important and it's
a great way to keep your content fresh
and the charity stream entertaining.
Also, you should probably think about the schedule
of games that you're going to play.
If you're going to be doing one of these longer streams
for charity, it would be worth publishing a schedule
of which game you're going to be playing when
so that your audience can choose when to tune in,
maybe tune in for their favorite game.
So think about the game schedule as well as possibly,
the guest schedule if you're going to
be bringing people into the stream.
Tip number four is to use a charity donation platform.
There is absolutely no reason to be accepting donations
to your personal PayPal for many different reasons.
Firstly, it's a hell of a lot more work for you
if you're having to take PayPal donations yourself
and then send that money to charity.
Especially when it comes around to tax year
where you have to declare that income going in
and then declare that you've donated it to charity.
It's just going to be a massive headache
and there's no reason for you to do it.
But secondly, you're going to have
a better trust from your audience.
Some people stopping by your charity livestream
probably haven't seen you before and if you're accepting
donations to a personal PayPal account,
they're probably not going to donate.
Whereas if you're using a donation platform
that's specifically built for charities,
they are much more likely to trust you.
Now the two platforms that I would recommend
that have specifically been built for this
are Tiltify and JustGiving, both of which are implemented
into Streamlabs or StreamElements so that you can
still get alerts from people donating,
but you never have to handle any of the money yourself.
It just goes straight through to the charity
that you're raising money for.
You can still trigger things like alerts
when somebody donates or have a donation goal
going across the bottom so people can see the progress.
You can have the top donator shown
or most recent donator shown or even like an event list.
You can still do all the cool things that you usually do
using Streamlabs or StreamElements, but you'll be raising
money through one of these charity donator sites
rather than through your own personal PayPal.
Tip number five is to organize and promote
and to give yourself a lot longer than you think.
I would typically advise at least a month to plan
a charity livestream because you're not
just representing yourself on stream,
you're also going to be representing a charity.
You're going to need this month not only to create
a lot of visuals, but the actual promotion
needs a lot of work as well, so you can obviously
do a lot of promotion on Discord if you've got
a personal community Discord, or if you're a member
of one of the larger gaming Discords,
reach out to the owner or one of the mods
and see if it's okay for you
to promote your charity livestream.
You've also got your social platforms though,
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.
Create video for YouTube talking about
what you're going to be doing and when it is.
Twitter posts, Instagram posts
of behind the scenes of getting ready.
All of this to build hype to a specific event,
a special event which is your charity livestream.
As part of your promotion, you should also think
about contacting some game devs.
So if you have some specific games that you're playing
as part of your charity livestream, reach out
to those game devs, maybe they'll give you a key
to give away to your audience or they'll just help
with the promotion by retweeting it when you go live.
You'd be really surprised at the response you can get
from especially, some of the smaller Indy game devs.
And the worst that they can say is no.
You should also definitely contact the charity
that you're raising money for.
Tell them a bit about what you're doing
and exactly why you're raising money for them.
They'll probably help promote your livestream as well
and maybe even, you know, send you a tee shirt
or something to wear on your livestream.
Finally, as part of your promotion and organization
in this month leading up to your livestream,
I'd recommend having a central page or a central location
that people can go to, to find out everything
about this charity livestream that you're doing.
So this could be a Twitch or YouTube event page.
It could be your Tiltify page or your JustGiving page
where you have all the information
or simply a page on your website if you have one
where people can go and find out everything
to do with when it starts, who you're raising money for,
and all the details about the schedule
and the games that you're going to be playing.
Tip number six is to prepare some unique designs
for your livestream, for this charity livestream
so it doesn't just look like your standard livestream
that you do multiple times a week.
But it's specifically built for this special event
which is a charity livestream.
You obviously want to have some kind of donation goals
or trackers or alerts or something to show
when somebody donates as some kind of incentive.
But really, feel free to change up your color schemes
here a bit, maybe you could use some of the colors
that your charity are using and just design something
really bespoke for your own livestream.
For me and the marathon livestream that I did
when I was running, I tried to make it
a little bit more interesting for viewers
by pulling in some stats and having an overlay
that showed heart rate, calories burned,
how far I'd run and how long I'd been running
as well as obviously, the donations that were coming in
from people that were watching.
The final tip, tip number seven is one of the more important
ones to think about and that is
how you're going to incentivize donations.
So what I would recommend doing is setting
some sort of net goals, so when your community
as a whole raise a certain amount, you will do
some sort of silly thing like shave your head
or take a cream pie to the face
or whatever it is you decide to do.
This really helps band the whole community together
as they're raising money for a good cause
and then you are doing something to incentivize that
which will be entertaining for them.
Obviously make sure that you're thanking every donation
that comes in, so keep an eye on that recent event list
for any donations that come in and really make a big deal
about anybody that is giving any amount of money
and just remember that it's not about you,
this is all about the charity.
So even if you only raise $5 over the course
of your charity livestream, that is still $5
that the charity will be able to use in some sort of way
to help people, so it's not about you and gaining followers
and trying to hit big view accounts or anything like that.
It's about the charity instead.
But most of all, just have fun because it's
a really great thing that has become popular on Twitch,
these charity livestreams, obviously raising
a lot of money for these charities.
So have fun whilst you're doing it.
If you would like to watch some of my marathon livestream,
I have just edited down a sort of compilation
of the best bits that happened during the marathon run
and the livestream, so I will leave that link
in the top card as well as down
in the description below this video.
A massive thanks to all of you that came by and watched,
it was just the most crazy experience ever.
A huge success of the livestream.
So thank you to all that watched and also,
massive thanks to this months patrons.
These people keep the Gaming Careers channel running
allowing me to do this as a full-time job
and creating content for you guys.
And subscribers, I'll see you in the next video, peace.
(upbeat music)