Tips: How to start a charity livestream.
So you have seen Nostalgiathon or other gaming livestreams that raise money for charity, and you want to try it yourself but don’t know how. Well you are in luck I’m here to say that it is not hard to get started.
I am assuming you will have already looked up how to stream to a site like Twitch.tv or Youtube.com. If you haven’t I suggest searching Google for a bit, since this is more about how to get started on the charity side of things. There are 3 things you will need to think about when getting started:
What charity you want to raise for.
How long/what kind of stream you will be doing. (Marathon, daily, etc.)
Who your audience will be.
For choosing your charity, there are always safe charities to raise for like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or Direct Relief. You can also choose to raise for something more close to home like a local foodbank or animal shelter. The biggest thing with this is do some research on the charity you want to raise for. Sites like charitynavigator.org make it really easy to see how the charities use their money and what kind of programs they have. At the end of the day choosing a charity you feel comfortable and called to help is the best thing to do even if they aren’t well known. What is great is that most charities have easy ways for you to setup a campaign page that you can link to and keep track of how much your event raised. Another great tool is tiltify.com or Facebook Fundraising which have a lot of charities on them and can allow for things like donation incentives and milestones.
A lot of the larger events like Zeldathon, GDQ, ESA, and so on will stream for up to a week at a time. Unless you have a LOT of people taking shifts I do not recommend trying that on your first charity stream since everyone will likely fall asleep (my friends and I did on our first 16 hour stream). If you do not have the time to be able to stream all day that is okay you can also do something where you stream everyday from 4-10pm. Make sure to take care of yourself and your responsibilities, and don’t be afraid to have people help.
Lastly is your audience, it is unlikely that you will have a HUGE audience on your first streams unless you are already a known streamer, but this isn’t a problem. Tell your friends, family, neighbors, and ask those people to tell everyone they know too, as well as posting a few messages on your social media of choice to let people know when your streams will be.
To wrap things up, don’t worry about how many people you have watching or the total you raise. Bringing attention to your charity of choice and having any amount raised that wouldn’t have been raised without your stream is something to be proud of. I wish you the best of luck on your streams!
-Chandler Wright (Cawright)