JustGiving has launched a new initiative to encourage gamers and game publishers to grow the world of charitable giving through computer gaming. JustGiving’s new Gaming for Social Good hub, the first of its kind from the giving platform, will offer players tools and resources to help make gaming for a good cause easy, accessible and engaging.
JustGiving’s Gaming for Social Good hub will launch with some notable early innovators across the charitable sector—including SpecialEffect, War Child UK, the National Autistic Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK—who have already signed up to support this initiative. Gamers will be able to donate to the charities of their choice through the hub.
Features of the Gaming for Social Good hub include:
- How-to Guides that help gamers launch an event and integrate their JustGiving page with an existing Twitch account
- New streaming overlays that connect fundraising pages to Twitch and other platforms enabling fundraising features, including donation alerts, donation tickers, fundraising progress bars and latest donors.
- A monthly ‘Hall of Fame’ to recognise fundraisers gaming for good causes
- A calendar of events detailing upcoming gaming events on the platform encouraging gamers to join to grow the world of giving
Keith Williams, General Manager of JustGiving in the UK and Ireland, said:
“Our mission has always been to build great technology to connect more people to causes they care about and grow the world of giving. Today we release a new gaming hub to connect our users to one of the biggest and fastest-growing communities in the world.
Over the last year, we have seen a huge increase in gamers wanting to do good while they play. For example, Edwin Castro, a gamer from America, raised over £30,000 on his own stream. Charities have also used this medium to contribute to this movement, such as SpecialEffects’ Gameblast marathon which raised over £200,000 on JustGiving in 2018. We are proud to empower individuals and charities to easily connect gaming and livestreaming to their fundraising efforts and capabilities.”
Alex Brew, Gaming Partnerships at War Child UK, said:
“War Child receives amazing support from the gaming community, and we’re honoured to work with JustGiving to connect even more closely with gamers. The new hub allows people to continue their passionate support for charities more easily and will go a long way in continuing to help children affected by war.”
Leslie Gold from the National Autistic Society, said:
“We have received some brilliant support from gamers raising money for the National Autistic Society and we are so excited to be involved in JustGiving’s launch of the gaming hub.
Gaming plays to the strengths of many autistic people and is a hugely popular activity among autistic people and their families and friends. Gaming has been shown to help autistic children explore their imagination, feel more confident and make friends. And now we’re seeing more autistic characters represented in video games, like Symmetra from Overwatch.
This partnership will support our mission to create a world which works for autistic people.”
Lucy Squance, Director of Supporter-led Fundraising at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:
“Gaming for Social Good is an exciting opportunity for Alzheimer’s Research UK as it will open doors to a new and vastly growing audience. JustGiving is making it easy for people to support causes close to their hearts by simply doing something they love and, given the size of the market, we believe the potential growth could be a game-changer for the third sector.”
To access the new gaming hub, please visit gaming.justgiving.com
