Whether you have heard of the social gaming platform called Twitch or not, it is definitely something to keep on your radar for potential uses for fundraising and audience engagement.  Founded in 2011, Twitch began its business focusing on video gaming, however in 2015 it added a creative channel where “streamers” could specify their artistic content.  In recognition of the platform’s rapid growth, Amazon purchased Twitch for $970 million and then scaled it to become one of the top 4 visited websites by 2019.  Recently, Twitch has been highlighted as a premiere location for raising significant funds from dedicated fans who are moved by a cause.   In fact, last year Twitch raised $75 million for 100 different charities.

For those new to Twitch, here is how it works.

TYPES OF STREAMS

Twitch streaming is generally broken down into three main categories; channels that focus on professional level game play, channels that focus on community interaction, and channels that produce multiple types of stream content or have no genre specialization. Although video games and e-sports are the company’s founding focus, a wide variety of content is seen on Twitch including; cooking, crafting, singing, music, podcasts, IRL(in real life) streams, and more. Three main streamer archetypes can be identified and defined: Community Engager, Professional Player, and Variety Streamer.

Community engagers often utilize their charisma and ability to converse with multiple viewers to grow their streams. Community engagers excel at interacting with each audience member in an authentic way and are sensitive to the different personality types of their community members. Streamers that fall into this archetype focus their attention on the chat box functionality of their stream. Though conversing with their audience is important, alone it is often not enough to create engaging content. As such, community engagers often create content that stimulates conversation or relies heavily on community participation.

Professional players often leverage their high level of skill as a method of attracting audience members. These viewers are often interested in learning high level concepts and methods that they can apply to their own gameplay or to simply enjoy watching the best players compete with one another.

The variety streamer is the most diverse streamer archetype on Twitch and serves as a catch all term for streams that produce non-specialized content. Variety streams include content such as video game walkthroughs, crafting videos, how to guides, streamers that play several different games, and more.

With an understanding of Twitch content classification, who are the viewers? Interestingly, the viewers skew to those who also tend to be the arts organization’s current core desired audience: millennials. 55% of Twitch users are between the ages of 18 and 34. And, perhaps not surprisingly, over 80% are male. It may be surprising that Twitch reaches half of all Millennial males in America but it is important to remember that in 2019 Twitch.tv accounted for 1.8% of all internet traffic, putting it ahead of Amazon, Hulu, and Facebook. Significantly, the average time per day on the platform is 95 minutes.

With this significant audience, how can you monetize a stream? Using Twitch is free, so how does a content creator make money? There are 3 primary pathways: subscribing to a stream, Twitch bit cheering, and direct donation.

Subscriptions:

Audience members can choose to opt into a monthly subscription of $4.99, $9.99, or $24.99 per month to show support for the streamers they like. Twitch takes a portion of this subscription revenue and depending on whether the streamer is at the affiliate or partner level, will receive a larger proportion of that subscription revenue. At the affiliate level the streamer shares 50% of their subscription revenue with Twitch.

Twitch Bit Cheering:

Instead of prohibiting the use of 3rd party payment processors, such as Paypal, Twitch introduced Bit Cheering. Users can use real life currency to purchase an animated Twitch digital currency known as bits. Each bit had the equivalent value of one United States cent. The idea is that a user can purchase bits and then donate them as they wish to which ever streamer they want. Since the user is paying for the bits at a higher than a 1 to 1 rate, they essentially cover the streamers portion of revenue sharing. When receiving a bit donation, the streamer receives 100% of the revenue without having to share with Twitch.

Direct Donations:

Many streamers will include a link to a 3rd party payment processor, like Paypal, in their information tiles so that users can donate to their stream. There are many reasons for a streamer to use a 3rd party payment processor for donations rather than rely on subscriptions. A few reasons include: streamers who have yet to reach affiliate level do not have access to a subscribe button, to avoid or reduce the amount of revenue sharing with Twitch, or simply to reduce barriers to donations, like having to input credit card information into a new account.

Leveraging Twitch to solve problems facing nonprofit art organizations

 Understanding these statistics are essential for nonprofit art organizations if they would like to position themselves to expand and engage their audiences in the face of an eroding donor base. In response to the erosion of the nonprofit donor base, many organizations are looking to attract millennials as donors. Yet, perhaps due to a shift in societal values, a lack of arts education in schools, or tougher economic conditions, nonprofit arts organizations are finding it difficult to attract younger donors. Whatever the cause may be, nonprofit arts organizations need to increase their attractiveness as institutions to younger generations.

A potential solution to the nonprofit art organizations’ difficulty engaging millennials is to engage them on their own terms, meaning that nonprofit art organizations should understand and utilize the technologies millennials relate to - especially those that serve as social gathering hubs or digital third places. While Twitch is the topic of research, other comparable examples of digital third places include: Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Forums, Blogs, or any other digital location that serves as a community gathering hub.

The fundraising myth is that millennials are difficult to engage with or that they are selfish and spoiled, in reality millennials may be one of the most generous donor groups in America. In 2014, approximately 84% of millennial employees donated to a charitable cause, while 70% of them donated at least one hour of their time to one. While the 2014 average yearly donation total from the Millennial cohort is just $481, compared to Boomers at $732 and Gen Xers at $1,212, Millennials are still early in their careers, simultaneously bearing more debt and tougher economic conditions than previous generations. Therefore, it is likely that the average yearly donation from the Millennial cohort will increase over time.

Nonprofit Barriers to Additional Investment in Marketing and Technology

 A well-known, but stereotypical perception of nonprofits held in America, is that these organizations are poor, poorly managed, and bad with their finances. This perception is backed up in a 2018 Give.org Donor Trust Report, where only 19% of survey respondents said they highly trust charities to utilize their donations effectively. Given that the average nonprofit organization does not heavily invest in marketing, it is difficult to change this perception.

Nonprofits only spent an average of 3.2% of their total budgets on technology. Underinvestment in technology typically stems from budgetary restraints, a perception that the technology will depreciate rapidly, a perception that technology is to expensive, specific conditions applied to grant funding, or underestimating the impact additional investment will have on the organization. Moreover, under-investment in technology not only reduces operational efficiency within an organization, but has the potential to expose organizations to risk. Risks include inadequate technology training, security risks, infrastructure and service down time, increased maintenance costs, and more.

Additionally, some barriers to solving nonprofit art organizations’ donor acquisition and audience engagement problems, stem from an underinvestment in marketing. In 2016, nonprofit organizations had an average digital marketing spend of just 4 cents per dollar of revenue generated. Furthermore, 70% of respondents reported that the marketing budget was dedicated solely to lead generation and donor acquisition. At a time in which high public trust in charitable organizations is at a mere 19%, dedicating 100% of an organizations marketing budget to lead generation and donor acquisition, has the potential to alienate potential donors and give the perception that the organization only cares about the money an individual can donate. Millennials value understanding the impact they have on the organizations and causes they support, and often donate both their time and money.

With the large value placed by millennials on impact, when asking for support from this cohort, it’s important to clearly communicate how their support will impact the organizations’ mission, finances, and operations. This can be done through effectively communicating the urgency of the organizations need or story telling devices. Additionally, keeping the ask of support simple will reduce communication errors and make it easier for supporters to spread information about the organization on social media.

Potential nonprofit arts use cases for Twitch

Nonprofit art organizations may feel that engaging on a social media platform dedicated to gaming is a waste of time, not realizing that the gaming cohort is teeming with social, family oriented, educated, optimistic, successful, and socially conscious individuals. Additionally, the Twitch audience is receptive to the concept of charitable giving and would not require an explanation on its value to society. While only a small proportion of all online charitable giving, between the years of 2012 and 2017 twitch raised over $75 million for nonprofits.

The overlap between the nonprofit arts and Twitch business model presents a unique opportunity for nonprofits to engage new audiences that already understand the value nonprofits create within their communities, as well as the value of any contribution the viewer makes. Having defined the conditions that make Twitch.tv’s audience uniquely attractive to nonprofit art organizations, the next step is to evaluate several use cases that can be employed by nonprofit arts organizations to expand and engage new audiences. These use cases include: Esports event hosting, creating an organizational Twitch channel, fundraising on Twitch, and advertising on Twitch. Of these options, the best suited to the arts are creating your own Twitch channel and/or fundraising on Twitch.

Create an Organizational Twitch Channel

 If opening your organization’s venue is not an option or your organization doesn’t have a venue it can utilize, creating a Twitch channel is a low cost and easy alternative. While the specific use case of an organizational Twitch channel will vary based on organization type, the general uses include; free advertising, content distribution that promotes the organization, community building, educating the public about your organizations’ mission and values, and generating passive income.

While the idea that you can gain free advertising by streaming on Twitch is technically true, its effect on an organization is limited. While each channel is broadcast to a global audience, the reach and effect of the advertising is only as large as an organization’s online audience. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the viewers you do reach with your content will be local. Twitch users are always looking for new and engaging content on the platform.

Due to much of the content produced being created by individuals with limited resources, along with the rapid growth in the number of content creators on Twitch, viewers are beginning to be more selective in the content they consume. The growth in the number of streamers has increased the relative competitiveness of the industry and it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate the value of one’s stream from another.

Fortunately, it seems there is very little evidence of a nonprofit arts presence currently on Twitch. Organizations that begin to experiment with the platform now, stand to benefit most from the perceived novelty of the channel’s content. Nonprofit art organizations that can establish a presence on Twitch before mass adoption by the nonprofit community takes place, if it does, can avoid the brand dilution that is currently effecting streamers as the streaming market continues to grow. Unfortunately, being the first to market does not guarantee success.

Finding unique ways to engage your stream audience around your organizations mission and content will be instrumental in the continued growth and success of your channel. While many users on Twitch will stop to investigate content they haven’t seen on the platform before, what motivates viewers to return to a channel again and again, are the interactions they have with the streamer and the other viewers that are a part of the community. Using Twitch users’ motivations, it is recommended that an organization actively and intentionally foster its’ organizations’ stream community to maintain and accelerate the channels growth.

Fundraise on Twitch

 Thanks to the similarities between the business models of nonprofit organizations and the method Twitch employs to pay its content creators, the Twitch audience understands and is receptive to the concept of charitable giving. Education may be required for users to understand the differences between how a donation circulates through a nonprofit organizations’ budget and an individuals. However, some of the most complex topics such as; the collective impact of individual giving, the benefits charity provides to society, and the value in raising money for a cause, are widely understood and accepted on the platform.

Though only a small proportion of all online digital fundraising, between the years of 2012 and 2017, Twitch raised over $75 million for 100 different nonprofits. As a fundraising tool, Twitch has the potential to revolutionize the way in which we as a society think about charitable giving. Through a combination of third party partnerships, sponsorships, and rallying their community of streamers and viewers, Twitch can make donating to an organization effortless and fun.

Twitch, by utilizing its’ massive server infrastructure, user data analytic capabilities, and intuitive interface, can effortlessly nudge viewers, that would otherwise be uncertain, into becoming a donor. When a Twitch audience member decides that they would like to support a streamer, they can simply press the donate or subscribe button to instantly send a charitable contribution.

While streamlining the donation process eliminates one of the major barriers to charitable giving, Twitch’s true success was in creating an engaging and community- oriented method of charitable giving that incentivizes both small and large donations.

On Twitch, the method that transforms charitable giving from a perceived obligation to a fun community experience is known as the alert system. The alert system is a part of the overlay and actively notifies the streamer of important events that should be attended to. For example, if a viewer donated $5 to a streamer, an animated message with the donation amount, donor name, and donor message, will appear on the stream. Alerts can be triggered by events such as; a new follower, a new subscriber, a new donation, or a new Twitch bit donation. These alerts not only give a donor recognition for their donation, but often is accompanied by a rise in excitement in both the streamer and their community.

Twitch.tv’s success in streamlining the donation process while simultaneously making it rewarding to both the individual donating and community members present, is possibly the most underappreciated fundraising innovation of the 21st century.

Conclusion

While Twitch.tv on the surface is a social media platform dedicated to video game content, there exists an extraordinary opportunity for nonprofit art organizations to utilize Twitch as a tool to expand and engage their audiences . While this paper explored several strategies nonprofits could employ on Twitch, there are countless ways to succeed on the platform. Understanding what your organizations position and priorities are, will help when determining what strategy to use.

Existing research about the Twitch.tv platform is limited, with much of the available information relating to marketing. Without additional research in the areas of viewer motivations, community perceptions of the platform’s content types, and the differences between gamer demographics, it is unclear whether or not the Twitch.tv audience will engage with the content created by a nonprofit art organization’s channel. However, due to the potential power Twitch possesses as a fundraising tool and its’ audiences’ unique receptiveness to charitable giving, there is a strong case to be made for most nonprofit arts organizations to begin experimenting with the technology. Its Free! What do you have to lose?