Gaming for Good: how to find gamers

This ‘Gaming for Good’ strategy involves targeting gamers to link up with charities to raise funds, often through sponsored live streams and other gaming events.

 

Charity fundraisers are focusing on gamers for good reason. The global gaming market is set to reach £185bn by 2025 and there are currently more than 2.5bn people worldwide who play games.

 

But how can charities find gamers and streamers to help raise money for good causes?

 

 

Search Twitch

 

The Twitch platform is key to staging live gaming fundraising events and reaching donors within the gaming community.

 

The platform is easy for gamers to use to livestream their gameplay. Their followers can watch and comment in real time. Playback of previous streams can also be watched.

 

Twitch is also a great database of streamers and in particular their strong following among Generation Z.

 

Charities are advised to search through Twitch to find potential fundraising gamers, who can earn more than £100,000 a month though streaming.

 

Big names can often be found on Twitch’s front-page carousel, which the platform showcases each day.

 

Some of the biggest accounts have several million followers. Tyne ‘Ninja’ Blevins, for example, has 16.8 million followers and is the most popular gaming streamer on the platform.

 

Other major accounts include Turner ‘Tfue’ Tenney, who is popular among those playing the games Fortnite, Minecraft, and Warzone. Another is Michael ‘Shroud’ Greziek, who is popular among first-person shooter gamers.

 

Other ways to search include using game categories. Searching Twitch also offers charities a chance to gauge the type of person the streamer is and whether they are likely to be a good fit for their good cause and mission.

 

 

Use search tools

 

A range of free tools are available to help charities search for streamers. This includes PowerSpike, where searches can be filtered by genre, average views, geographic location, as well as community activity and community sentiment. This also allows users to search to find out if they have mentioned the charity’s brand name before.

 

Gaming streamers and influencers also regularly use social media. Searching Twitter using hashtags such as #Twitch and #gaming can also prove useful.

 

 

Don’t just focus on big name gamers

 

Charities are advised not to only target the big-name gaming streamers. These famous names, with thousands of followers and subscribers, may already be targeted by charities globally.

 

Instead, a successful tactic used by charities already is to target a wide range of gamers, irrespective of the number of subscribers they have.

 

Presenter on the Cane and Rinse gaming podcast Leon Cox urges charities to “temper expectations” when identifying and approaching gamers for fundraising activity.

 

He recalls how talks started with one charity that got in contact “but nothing ever really came of it”.

 

“They were very nice but they needed a bit more from us than we were able to offer in terms of time and commitment, as we’re part time,” Cox said. “Smaller outlets will be incredibly keen to get involved but also can’t offer what the big players can”.