Livestreams are the new telethons, and they’re raising millions for charities. The rise of video game streaming in the last several years has opened up a new avenue for philanthropy.
Streamers and charity organizations routinely partner up to solicit donations from the gamer’s thousands of loyal viewers. Instead of calling in like participants did for telethons, viewers funnel donations through a digital pipeline that makes the fundraising process instantaneous.
Twitch streamers raised $40+ million in 2018, $55 million in 2019, and $83 million in 2020 (Forbes). And if you're looking for younger donors, note that 70% of Twitch's users are between 18 and 34 years old.
My guest today is Shane Bailey, Head of Gaming & Streaming for Australian charity Cure Cancer spearheading Game On Cancer®, an initiative that partners with gaming brands, developers, publishers, creators and communities to help fund life-saving cancer research. In less than four years, Game On Cancer® has raised more than $1M AUD and isn’t slowing down.
In this episode, we discuss:
About Shane Bailey
Shane has worked in the Australian games industry, across a variety of different roles and disciplines, for the past 14 years. His work has included brand management, communications, retail, esports, events, trade marketing, community engagement and partnerships.
Today, Shane is the Head of Gaming & Streaming for Australian charity Cure Cancer spearheading Game On Cancer®, an initiative that partners with gaming brands, developers, publishers, creators and communities to help fund life-saving cancer research. In less than four years, Game On Cancer® has raised more than $1M AUD and isn’t slowing down.
Connect with Shane on LinkedIn
Other links:
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
Livestreams are the new telethons, and they’re raising millions for charities. The rise of video game streaming in the last several years has opened up a new avenue for philanthropy.
Streamers and charity organizations routinely partner up to solicit donations from the gamer’s thousands of loyal viewers. Instead of calling in like participants did for telethons, viewers funnel donations through a digital pipeline that makes the fundraising process instantaneous.
Twitch streamers raised $40+ million in 2018, $55 million in 2019, and $83 million in 2020 (Forbes). And if you're looking for younger donors, note that 70% of Twitch's users are between 18 and 34 years old.
My guest today is Shane Bailey, Head of Gaming & Streaming for Australian charity Cure Cancer spearheading Game On Cancer®, an initiative that partners with gaming brands, developers, publishers, creators and communities to help fund life-saving cancer research. In less than four years, Game On Cancer® has raised more than $1M AUD and isn’t slowing down.
In this episode, we discuss:
About Shane Bailey
Shane has worked in the Australian games industry, across a variety of different roles and disciplines, for the past 14 years. His work has included brand management, communications, retail, esports, events, trade marketing, community engagement and partnerships.
Today, Shane is the Head of Gaming & Streaming for Australian charity Cure Cancer spearheading Game On Cancer®, an initiative that partners with gaming brands, developers, publishers, creators and communities to help fund life-saving cancer research. In less than four years, Game On Cancer® has raised more than $1M AUD and isn’t slowing down.
Connect with Shane on LinkedIn
Other links:
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
You. This show is sponsored by Bloomerang, a solution that helps nonprofits like Shower up, which is a nonprofit providing mobile showers and personal care for those experiencing homelessness to efficiently manage their volunteers and donors in one place. And thanks to Bloomerang, Shower up increased their volunteer signups by 60% and first time donors by making it easy to give right on their site. Showerup's executive director, Paul Schmidt said Bloomering is an ideal marriage of volunteer and donor management. The deeper we get into it, the more we love it. And if you want to see how Showerup easily manages their volunteers and donors with Bloomerang, just go to jcsocialmarketing.com bloomerang. That's jcsocialmarketing.com bloomerang. Or visit the link in the show notes to learn more. All right, let's get to the show. Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello. Hi everyone. Welcome or welcome back to Nonprofit Nation. Really excited to be here with you today. The question we are answering how can nonprofits take the leap into gaming? So if you haven't heard, live streams are the new telethons and they're raising millions of dollars for charities. And the rise of video game streaming in the last several years has opened up a brand new avenue for philanthropy. Here's some statistics. Twitch streamers raised $40 million in 2018, 55 million in 2019, and 83 million in 2020. And the statistics are just looking like they're going to be doubling for the year after that. And if you're looking for younger donors, 70% of live stream users are between 18 and 34 years old. So my guest today is Shane Bailey, head of gaming and streaming for australian charity Cure Cancer, spearheading game on Cancer, an initiative that partners with gaming brands, developers, publishers, creators and communities to help fund life saving cancer research. And in less than four years, game on cancer has raised more than $1 million Australia Australian and isn't slowing down. Huge congratulations, Shane. Thanks for being here. It's absolutely my pleasure, Julia. Thank you so much. And you said you surpassed that this week. That's right. We've just finished an event here in Australia called Pax Australia. There are a couple of iterations in the states where the event started. We just celebrated the event's ten year anniversary down under, and we've been fundraising there the last two years, ever since it came back post Covid, and, yeah, raised around. We're still finalizing the exact number, but raised around$93,000 in three days while we were down there, which pushed us over that million dollar milestone, so we're absolutely stoked. Yeah, it's been an amazing couple of years here at Keal cancer. For myself, specifically amazing. And I just have to tell everyone that Shane is so gracious that he is getting
on a podcast interview at 04:00 a.m. His time
down under. It's 04:00 a.m. Tomorrow from where I am in Boston. So thank you. My pleasure. Yes, Shane and I met when I was invited to give the keynote at the Digirace conference this year in lovely Melbourne, Australia, in 2023. So, Shane, I went to your session on gaming and streaming for charities, and as you know, I told you, I was just blown away by the power and the potential that gaming and streaming has to not only just disrupt philanthropy, but really upend fundraising as we know it. Your presentation was amazing, and I'm going to put the link to your link tree in the show notes so that people can see your slides. But I want to hear from you. How did you get started with cure cancer? Yeah. Thanks, Julia. So I only started with cure cancer two years ago, and prior to that, I was working in the video game industry in a variety of different marketing and communications roles at a publisher called Ubisoft. So your audience might be familiar with some of their games, things like Assassin's Creed, the Tom Clancy games, Far Cry, just Dance, among many others. So I was there for roughly six years. Started off as a marketing assistant way back in 2015. Slowly climbed the ranks into trade marketing, where I sort of learned all about events and working with retail partners. Then moved into communications, so pr and social media, and ended up an esports and brand manager. So working on one of the company's biggest titles, Rainbow six Siege, which is a multiplayer first person shooter. Going to lots of different international events for all these esports competitors, chaperoning journalists, and then also leading the brand in Australia. So that was about six years there. At the same time, I was actually volunteering for an organization called Feel the Magic. They're Australia's leading grief education organization. They support grieving kids aged seven to 17 who have lost a loved one, typically a parent. And as someone who lost my father when I was 13 to brain cancer, it was a cause that really resonated with me. So I continued to volunteer for them. So that's been about eight years. So while I was building my career in gaming, I was also building a great passion for charity and volunteering. I was helping lead the internal charity committee at Ubisoft Australia, and we decided who in the games industry we were partnering with. There are a variety of different partners, including cure cancer. And then by the time it came to my end of my time at Ubisoft, I was looking for the next opportunity. And shortly after I left this role, the head of gaming at Cure Cancer popped up. And it was kind of a perfect blend of where I had been, but also where I wanted to go because I'd built up this love for nonprofit work that just seemed like I could take my talents, my experience, and my expertise, and then use it in a way to make a difference. So that was two years ago, last week, October 2021. And, yeah, it's been a roller coaster ride. So you built the team, the gaming and streaming team at Cure cancer. So tell me about how you built the team. And it's just so interesting because a lot of charities in North America are still getting on board with even taking this seriously as a real stream of revenue, but also even creating a department or ahead of gaming and streaming. Yeah. So when I joined in late 2021, the team had already been dabbling in gaming, but something our CEO and one of our digital managers at the time were looking into. So this was FY 20. Our financial years run July to June. So this is maybe six to eight months leading into Covid. So this is something they started dabbling with. They noticed a big opportunity and a couple of great examples from some north american organizations, specifically extralife, who had been fundraising via gaming since 2008, and St. Jude's Hospital as well. So it started off really small for them. They didn't have really any internal expertise on gaming, but it grew really quickly. But it proved to be a pandemic proof way to fundraise through FY 21 as well. And that kind of gave them the motivation to really double down. So heading into FY 22, they put together a business case to say, okay, if we're going to make gaming a core part of the business, we need to bring in external expertise to build an internal team. So they hired me as a head, we also have an executive who leads most of our social media and community engagement, particularly with our creators who fundraise for us. And then just early this year, we hired a third full time person, a gaming and streaming manager, who is now running and leading the major campaigns that I've been setting up over the past two years, as well as relationships with our key partners as well. Which is great because it frees me up to think more long term around how we can take gaming and grow it even further. So that's kind of how we got started in gaming. Something that you touched on in your presentation at Digira's that I thought was really interesting was the importance of creating these campaigns that are standalone from the charity. So for cure cancer, you created game on cancer. Can you tell me about that? And then why is it important that a nonprofit maybe have a standalone campaign? Yeah, sure. Tied to the charity, but not 100% the branding, 100%. So cure cancer, we've been around for 50 plus years, and before this gaming initiative, the majority of our audience skewed much older. So 45 years plus. When I joined the team, we discussed creating an initiative, a separate subbrand, if you will, called game on cancer. And the reason that's important is that if we're going to make it a core part of the business and constantly be communicating about it, doing that on our existing channels to our existing audience probably wouldn't make a lot of sense. So we decided it was important to create its own initiative, game on cancer. It has its own website, it has its own social channels, and we're going to build that audience from scratch. Well, not entirely from scratch, because we'd started engaging that audience for two years prior to my joining. That's where the idea for the game on cancer initiative came about. It allows us to speak directly to the gaming audience, and not just our preexisting audience prior to our gaming initiative. It also allows us to be a bit more free and creative with what and how we talk about things. Specifically, we have some pretty wacky streamers and fundraisers who are doing some pretty crazy things. Doing shoeys when they hit certain fundraising milestones or eating raw eggs or hot sauce. I don't know what a shoey is. Oh, a shoey. Okay, so a shoey is taking, typically an alcoholic beverage, pouring it into your shoe, and drinking popularized. Oh my God. The racer name is falling out of my head. But I believe an f one racer or maybe a MotogP racer. I'm not entirely sure. I don't follow either sports to forgive me there, but yes, so that's a popular australian thing to do, which I'm not too terribly proud to say. That's why it was important for us. And we found it a great way to, again, communicate in a very specific way to that audience. They're highly engaged because they are digital natives. They're on Twitterx Discord. We're not communicating to them via email or phone call, typically. So it really allows us to hone in on that audience. And like you said in the opening sort of briefing here, is that they definitely skew much younger 18 to 34 year olds on Twitch. When we look at the australian sort of makeup, the demographic here, the average age of the australian gamer is about 35 years old, and that's been steadily increasing. I remember when I joined the team at Ubisoft back in 2015, it was around about 30 and 80% of Australians play games. So that's around 17 million people of about the 2025 that we have here. Pardon me, more than that 21 million of the 25 that we have here. So it's important that we communicate authentically, directly to that audience. And it's just not something we could do via our existing channels. So that's why I think creating a gaming subbrand, if you will, within a particular organization can be important. I think if you're already engaging that younger audience, then maybe that's not entirely necessary. But we have so much going on in the gaming world that we couldn't possibly be communicating those campaigns that we run under gaming, as well as our traditional campaigns via the same channels. I just thought when I heard about the reasoning behind creating that kind of separate but adjacent brand, it's so smart, because you're not going to inundate the game on cancer crowd with your gala or your auction, or your more traditional fundraising methods that you might do at cure cancer. And you're not going to inundate your more traditional, older, mature donors with the game on cancer messaging. So it really creates this almost personalized space. And we know that people that are younger, Gen Z especially, they need messages that resonate with them, that they can really identify with, that they need to be feeling a part of that community. So I think that's so smart. So how do you make connections with the creators, the gamers? How do you connect with them and how do you find them? Yeah, it's a lot of work, particularly if you're starting out from square one. First and foremost is being where they are. So a lot of our communication with creators, specifically streamers, is usually on Twitch, where they are live streaming, following them, engaging with them in chat, finding where we can continue that conversation on another platform, typically Twitter. Some creators are still open to emails. I'll have it in their Twitter bio, and so we'll follow up that way, jumping into their discord servers and being a part of their community and really building that relationship. But most of it is done via Twitter or X. So yeah, I would say just being where they are, and that's probably our most engaged social platform right now. There are some streamers on content creators that will live stream on YouTube, but still not as big as Twitch. And then there are other platforms as well, like Facebook and kick, which are either sort of entering the space now with kick, for example, or seemingly winding down in the space which Facebook seems to be doing. Do you make a strategic alignment with these kind of creators, these live streamers that have already raised money for charity or have expressed some kind of interest in your mission? It's a bit of, we can, one of the platforms we use for fundraising, it's incredibly popular in this space is tiltify. And tiltify does a great job of integrating, connecting their fundraising platform with the live streaming platforms as well. So for instance, I can start a fundraiser on tiltify. I'll link it with my Twitch channel. So when someone donates to my tiltify page, a live alert pops up on my screen noting, Julia just donated$20 to your fundraising campaign and live on stream. I can thank Julia for that. I see it pop up. I see my fundraising thermometer go up $20. Maybe Julia's in the chat and I can say thank you to her directly. Maybe it triggers a particular milestone or reward. So donating $20 pushed me past 500. And so I've agreed to eat a raw egg or wax, strip my leg or something like that. I saw one where someone was going to smack his friend with a fish for every $50 donated. I'm going to write that down. That sounds like a great idea. Tiltify does a great job of building a fundraising platform that connects into those live streaming platforms. And on there you can see all of our past campaigns. I can also see past campaigns from every other charity who's engaged with tiltify. So I can go on there, I can, wow, you know, are you okay? Or Movember or the cancer council or anyone like that has run similar campaigns. I can see which creators and view their profiles and then follow their links as well, either Twitch, Twitter, et cetera. So that's one way to do it as well. A lot of our, I suppose, early, I would say community building was organic, though we had a small following on Twitter when I joined the team, so I was really doubling down on that. And then also, I suppose, just to segue a bit, the way we really grew game on cancer was leveraging relationships with partners and publishers specifically, and ambassadors, well known people and brands in the space that could help get our message out there, but also gave our brand credibility as well. And that's vitally important in gaming is making sure that when you do rock up into the space that you're doing so authentically and you're bringing some value back to the gaming space as well. Otherwise you're just not going to resonate. That's a really important point that actually I want to touch on about bringing value to the creator, because it's not just about the organization pushing their message out there and raising money. What I think a lot of organizations don't understand is that these influencers and creators have spent hours and hours and years and blood, sweat and tears creating this brand, this reputation and this trust with their audience, and they're not going to violate that for anything. So really, is that win win? Can you talk about that? Yeah, definitely. I think maybe just to wind it back a bit. Julie, is it okay to curse on the show or you prefer? Yeah, sure. We can market as explicit. It's fine. Okay, cool. The one thing I was even saying this to brands when I was working back at Ubisoft as a brand manager, and I was helping build the local esports scene for Rainbow Six Siege and trying to sell sponsorship for the broadcast. And we spoke to a lot of brands who were non endemic to the, you know, not gaming brands, but FMCG, QSR brands that may be looking to engage the gaming audience because they knew it was highly engaged and it was the way to reach them. And I always cautioned them, or just gave them some friendly advice, that you can't just rock up, whack your logo on a stream or a broadcast or anything like that, call it a day, and expect to receive any sort of reciprocal energy from that audience. Because the one thing I always say is the gamers know how to smell bullshit. And if you rock up inauthentically and don't speak their language, or you're not bringing some kind of value to whatever it is you're activating in, whether it be an event, a live stream, or any digital activation, if your brand isn't bringing value, then you might as well not be there. So what I always try to think of is okay, if game on cancer is going to activate in any stream, in any event or any other activation, how are we making it better? How are we making it more entertaining and more engaging, more meaningful? So that's the core question that I always ask myself when we decide what we're going to do. Because if we're not, then we're really just there with outstretched arms asking people to donate and not bringing any of that value back ourselves. So that is probably, I suppose, if I can give one piece of advice to any charity looking to enter the gaming space, is that think about how your organization, your brand is adding to that gaming community, the games industry, or the partnership or relationship that you have, or the event. So it's the same thing when I think about our relationship with our creators, how we engaging them and making things better, we do our very best to promote our fundraisers across our social channels. These aren't the biggest creators, right? These aren't the millions and millions of followers. This is the thousands of followers with maybe a concurrent audience of say 50 or less sometimes. So they're looking really to build their followership. And they have a small but very passionate and engaged community who tune into their streams and are more than willing to support. So how we can help is by making their streams more entertaining, by offering up all the information on how their fundraising is going to make an impact in a very small way, then also speak to the collective impact that our little community is making together. So, like I said, $1 million raised in the last four years. Half of that revenue has come in the last twelve months. So that illustrates the growth trajectory that we're on. And so, yeah, when I think about how we're adding value to creators, it's making sure that when we talk about our impact, we push them. Specifically, they are the ones who helped us get here. We're taking them on lab tours as well with our institutes to learn about our researches, building content around that. So again, we're really trying to nail down that authenticity. And we are incredibly thankful for these creators and what they've done for us. The least we can do is actually take them to meet the researchers that they've helped, whose careers they've helped fund, and learn about the actual groundbreaking research that these scientists are conducting. And that just motivates them more, that just motivates them more to come back and fundraise again, to rally their community and say, hey, look at the amazing work that cure cancer is doing. Come join the game on cancer community. And that's specifically, the feedback we got recently at Pax Australia, where creators that come up, they see us at the events, they say, we love what you're doing. How can you know? I have this creative friend who's been doing this for many years, and I'd love to jump on his fundraising team next time. Can I have more information? So, yeah, it was a lot of hard work in those early days, Julia, but I suppose that's the role here in our little three man team, and it's going really well. I think that's fantastic. And creators love content. They need content constantly. So giving them those tours or giving them access, giving them special interviews or ways that they can connect with the mission and the impact, that's only going to not only, like you just said, help inspire them and rejuvenate them and motivate them, but it's going to give them content that they can then show to their community and say, hey, everyone, remember when I did this fundraiser? This is what the impact is. And I'm going to do another one next year because it's really working. Hey there. I'm interrupting this episode to share an absolutely free training that I created that's getting nonprofits of all sizes big results. Sure, you've been spending hours on social media, but what can you actually show for it? With all this posting and instagramming and TikToking, does it really translate into action? In my free training, I'll show you exactly how to take people from passive fans to passionate supporters. And I'll give you specific steps to create social media content that actually converts head on over to nonprofitsconvert.com. Again, that's nonprofitsconvert.com. And start building a thriving social media community for your nonprofit. Right now, without a big team, lots of tech overwhelm or getting stuck on the question, what do I do next? Let me show you how it's done. I can't wait to see what you create. So tell me a little bit about the process, because I don't know if a lot of my listeners understand who reaches out to who. What are the kind of the steps that go into running one of these fundraisers? Yeah, sure. So I suppose I'll stick on the community fundraising element and engaging with streamers. There are a variety of other types of campaigns that we do, but this conversation is really all about that live streaming element. So I would say the first thing to do is I would look at the fundraising tools and platforms that are available. Like I mentioned earlier, tiltify is probably the go to platform so that's T-I-L tify.com for anyone wanting to check it out. There are a variety of different options on how you get your organization on board there, and I would say that is probably the one place to be if you're going to take gaming seriously. Twitch is stud to implement its own charity tool, which doesn't require an external platform like tiltify, so creators can select from a list of charities on the site. And if you're connected in with PayPal giving fund, then I'm pretty sure your charity is already available there. And people can run their own charity fundraiser via Twitch exclusively. So they don't need to build a external fundraising page if they don't want to, and you don't have to build an external campaign. It's very nascent at the moment. So a lot of the functionality that you see on tiltify that I mentioned earlier, those really sophisticated alerts and that sort of thing, but it's growing. So there are a couple of options there. So those are the platforms that I'd be looking at. And then also in terms of building an audience, I would question, I suppose throw a question back to your own organization in that are you already communicating with or do you have an audience that's already made up of that younger demographic, that 18 to 35, 40 year olds who are engaged in Twitch streamers? Do you have any partner relationships that might be able to help you in that area? Whether it's just reaching that audience or someone, some people, some organizations or brands who have already done activations in the gaming space because their knowledge is going to be helpful as well. If you don't have the relationships, if you don't have that knowledge, there are plenty of agencies you can look to as well. I won't cite any specific ones here because they'll be very specific to Australia, but there are plenty of talent agencies, brand agencies who have activated in the space before that do have that expertise and can help you get started. I wouldn't say they would are the best option in terms of ongoing suppose maintaining that presence in the gaming space. The only reason I say that is because I know the costs that these agencies ask for, and I suppose it's been the key recipe to our success was building an internal team that didn't come from the charity space, that came from the gaming space. So myself as the head, our manager and our executive, no experience really working in nonprofit. All of it was on the gaming side and we have learnt fundraising from the rest of the team here, but really leveraged our gaming expertise to connect authentically with that audience and then just provided them with the right tools to do so. I have a couple of charities come to me every now and then and ask, is hiring someone specifically from that gaming industry, that background the key to success? I would say it's one of the keys to our success, but it's not a turnkey solution for every brand. I'm not saying hire someone from the gaming space and let them run wild and you'll see the dollars roll in. There's a lot of thinking and obviously strategy involved. It's a lot of hard work as well to build these, but I suppose it is an option as well if you're looking to really invest permanently also. Exactly. I think it requires some long term strategic thinking and a real investment, but also really evaluating if this is something you think that your organization can take on. Because it's like you said, it's not just sort of slapping a logo on a live stream and calling it a day and hoping the dollars roll in. It's really a partnership and it's really like an investment in another person's community. But the question I always get is how can we reach younger donors? Our donors are getting older, how can we reach new donors? How can we connect with new audiences? And this seems to me to be that perfect meld of getting that almost street credibility from a gamer, someone that has that credibility reaching their new audience, getting this revenue stream, and then also raising awareness around the mission and the cause. So you gave a couple of other examples in your know, it's not just gaming. You mentioned man Cave Australia. Can you talk about what they. Yeah, so what I mentioned in the presentation, it's not just streaming and community fundraising. That is the only way to engage the gaming audience. There are a variety of ways. I just mentioned Pax Australia. So our biggest gaming festival here in Australia that runs for three days in October. So we're there on the show floor with a booth in the same way that you might be at any other event. We have partners on the show floor fundraising for us in different ways. And we raised more than$90,000 there, which was amazing. We're now looking at charity drives with some of our ambassador talent. How can we take up a studio space for a day, implement some match donations from some of our corporate partners, and really drive one day of fundraising using our ambassadors, getting our researchers involved, maybe highlighting some of our biggest fundraisers from the year, and really celebrating game on cancer on one specific day. So that's a project for next year as well. And then outside of that, yeah, there are a variety of ways to engage the gaming audience, not just for fundraising and not just via streaming. The example that I mentioned in my presentation, Julia, was the man cave. So they are a mental health organization, and they have a Twitch channel as well. But when you go there, it's just two of their team members sitting down, having a conversation. Their audience joins the Twitch chat, and they've just created a safe space to have a conversation around their day, around how they're feeling. And that's one way for them to deliver their mission. That's not typically tied to live streaming and fundraising per se. In the same way that we've been talking about up until this point, there are other ways to engage the gaming, I suppose, community industry as well. There have been amazing examples of how charities and nonprofits have worked with gaming developers and publishers to implement their own brand into the game, specifically sold via microtransactions. So cosmetic items with your charities or your organizations. Oh, I saw this in Roblox we were talking about. There was a raising money, I think it was for Ukraine relief. Buy a certain skin or avatar and money would go to a certain charity. I definitely saw that. Yeah. So one of the early examples I always cite was the breast cancer research foundation over in the States, who partnered with Activision Blizzard at the time. They have a popular shooting game, multiplayer shooter called Overwatch. And back in 2016, they implemented a pink cosmetic item for one of their most popular characters. They sold it for two weeks. I don't recall the price on that. It was probably around 15,$20 if I had to hazard a guess. And in two weeks, they raised more than $12 million. So that's insane and very, very impressive, but goes to show you, that didn't involve any live streamers or content creators. That was a partnership that BCRF formed with Activision at the time and had this amazing impact. Right. Similarly, we saw Epic Games, the publisher and developer of Fortnite, at the start of the Ukraine russian conflict. They decided, for the next two weeks, we're going to donate all of our microtransactions from Fortnite to a variety of different causes. One of them was definitely Red Cross over in the Ukraine. Microsoft rocked up at the same time and said, we're going to take our cut of Fortnite microtransactions, pardon me, which is 30%, and also contribute that, and in two weeks, $144,000,000. So that gives you an idea of how much money epic is making from Fortnite. As well in a two week period. Yeah. So kind of just more examples of how you can engage the gaming audience, not just via live streaming. I think there are some key elements here for people that are listening that might think, oh, well, we're never going to partner with Fortnite. The key might be we need to be reaching younger audiences where they already are. Instead of creating a Facebook page and hoping that we will attract them there, which is what we do, we create a LinkedIn page and we say, why don't we have 18 to 24 year olds connecting with us on LinkedIn? We need to be more proactive as a sector in reaching out to these audiences and be where they are and interact with them in the ways that they want to interact. Like, look how seamless it is to just purchase something inside a video game and have it be donated to charity. It's seamless. You don't have to click on a link, go to a website, go to a donate button, put in a credit card, all of that. It's just about knocking down obstacles to giving and making giving fun. And that's what I think it's all about. A lot of these live streams or gaming streams that I've seen. It's just about fun. It's like I said, it's like, okay, if I reach this goal, I'm going to do a shoey or, I don't know, eat a raw egg, like you said, or something silly, or I'm going to make. I saw someone make a prank phone call. I mean, just really silly things. But it's getting everyone invested. It's getting a community excited and interested and inspired around a cause. And it's also raising money for a very important mission. So I do think nonprofits need to get out of their own way when they think about traditional fundraising practices. Yeah, I think as well. And I'm looking right now at the Australia Plays report, which is a report pulled together by a local university in collaboration with our trade association here locally. They released this earlier this year. So I just want to make sure I get my stats straight. The exact stats aren't important, but again, it just speaks to why. To your point, Julie, it's important to engage gamers where they are. And this is something I was learning towards the tail end of my time with Ubisoft in that at least back then, this was 2019 stats I think I was citing. But at least in Australia, nine out of ten, I think men under the age of 25 at the time were using ad blockers online. So these are people who, like I said, digital natives who try to avoid marketing at all costs. And so what we were looking at then is like, well, here's how you can reach them via an esports broadcast that they are definitely engaged in. And if you rock up in a way that adds value, then they will embrace your message and your brand as well, because I've seen it happen. But again, just to go back to this report and some things to cite as well, 90 minutes is the average, is the average time per day that Australians spend playing games. I don't know that there's anything else other than sleeping that I do for more than 90 minutes a day. But when I think about just at least anecdotally on my commute to work, I'm either on my phone playing games. I'm listening to podcasts or music. I come home and I'm connecting with my friends, not by calling them, but by jumping online, by playing multiplayer games for at least an hour, sometimes more. And then when I'm going about, my, know, cooking a meal, YouTube's on in the background, and I'm watching gaming. I'm watching or listening to another gaming podcast as well. So again, this is anecdotal, but I suppose it speaks to the broader picture in that. Yeah, like you mentioned, Julie before, the know kids these days, they aren't turning on the television. They're not listening to. My kids do not know who actors wouldn't. They wouldn't be able to name an actor. It's all influencers, it's all creators on YouTube. Yeah, exactly. And when they think about the big names that would draw them outside of the home, is when a creator would do a real life event, say, come meet me at Pax or this major gaming expo or whatever. So, yeah, again, I think that's been key to us as well at cure cancer, is that this is an opportunity for us to build the next generation of our supporters. My role now is thinking long term. Okay, how do we keep them engaged into. Absolutely. How are you thinking about that, keeping them engaged? It's a great question. I'm still trying to figure it out. Julia. What I think is great is that where the stats are pointing to now is that the demographics, the age groups that grew up with gaming, me specifically, I'm 33 years old. I have no plans to disengage from gaming at all. I don't see myself hitting 45 and thinking, you know what? That was fun. I'm going to pick up a brand new hobby and never play games again. That's just not going to happen. I've got mates all over the country that I want to continually connect with and what is the most fun way to connect with them? Online gaming. And I don't think that's going to change. And now I see our generation as well. Well, the millennial generation for me, they're now playing games with their kids. So there's a multi generational hobby that families are enjoying together. Again, plenty of stats in this report really illustrate that it was only cemented during COVID as well, during lockdown, when our families turned to forms of entertainment to bond gaming. Both tabletop and video were the best ways to do that because you can only binge watch movies and tv shows for so long. Why not problem solve together? Work together in a cooperative manner or competitive manner via video games. Yeah, I know that. Specifically locally. In that first year of COVID Nintendo switches, they sold out. You couldn't buy them anywhere locally. No, no, it was crazy. And at Ubisoft, our monthly active users during COVID exploded, gaming was one of the industries that really benefited, at least on the sales side. Obviously, there was a heavy impact on the developer side as well, with studios who couldn't work together in their studios anymore. So, yeah, again, that just speaks to the fact that I don't yet currently have the answer on how we're going to continue to engage them as they enter those middle stages of their life ten years from now. But I think gaming will still remain an important part of their life. So I still see them. Maybe they're not watching as many live streams as they once used to, but they're still going to be engaged in gaming in some form. I really believe that. I also think that any kind of philanthropy and giving uplifts all kind of philanthropy and creating that culture where you're giving money, no matter who asks you, that can only benefit the entire sector, because it's normalizing giving. It's making giving be something that we do all the time that we don't think twice about. We give and we just give back. I just think know it's the same thing. When Facebook fundraising took off and nonprofits got really upset how they couldn't get the donor data, and I said, well, isn't it great that people are just making giving on Facebook normal? I think that's really cool, because then when we go and ask them, they might be more likely to give because they think that it's fun or it's like a cool thing people do. So any way that we can make it normal and something create a culture around giving and philanthropy. I think we should celebrate. Even if we don't turn this donor into a long term donor that gives us $10,000, even if we just get that$110 donation at that one time, hopefully you can sustain them longer term. But just creating a culture where younger people enjoy giving and philanthropy and giving back and learning about causes, that's so important to me. Yeah, definitely. And I think as well, at least on the gaming side, compared to our traditional supporters, our average donation has gone down because of gaming, but our overall fundraising revenue has gone up. So someone might look at that and say, oh, the average donation is going down. That must have a huge impact. I was like, well, yeah, it's going the opposite direction. It's actually going upwards. We've just come off our best financial year in our history for FY 20. What are we in, 23, 24 now? 20 last year. And now, at least if my team stays on target, then gaming will be 20% of cure cancer's revenue this financial year. So to go from zero to 20, even though our average donation is going down because of gaming, or mostly driven by gaming, obviously it's having a positive impact on the overall business. And I think that's so interesting, because in the United States, we're coming off of a incredibly damaging report. The giving USA report, a lot of the reports on giving, saying the average number of donors is down and the number of gifts are down. So in the United States, we're relying too much on these major donors, these $10,000 donors, $50,000 donors, where we need to be diversifying our revenues. So I actually think we need to be, like you said, looking at the total number of revenue. And even if you have, we all want a million, $10 donors. I don't think we would turn that away just because they're giving $10, $15, we wouldn't turn that away. I think that is so interesting, and I think it's actually bucking the trend of giving, which I just. Oh, wow. I could talk about for hours and days. But congratulations on just a huge, monumental success. And also for being so generous and willing to share your experience. I know a lot of nonprofits, they think, oh, we're all competitors, and we can't share our best practices, and we have to hold it close to our chest. But I just want to thank you, Shane, for coming on and kind of giving us the inside scoop on how you did it. No, my pleasure, Julia. Thanks so much for having me. And, yeah, no, I'm in total agreement that it's best to work together. Right. I'm happily taking calls and copies with other charities here locally who want to enter the gaming space, and I'm an open book. I'll tell them how we did it, because if they do it, I want their community to have a positive experience as well. Because if they don't, then that only hurts us and other nonprofits in the future. Right? So if we can create this amazing ecosystem of. Wow. No matter which cause or charity you choose to support in the gaming audience and you're going to have a positive experience, then rising tides lifts all boats. Right? So, yeah, that's really important to me as well. So happy to come on and share our story. I'm sure there'll be ways for anyone listening to contact me. Or you can just search for me on LinkedIn as well afterwards if you'd like to connect. I'm always happy to share more. And yeah, we can definitely share the presentation I gave at TG Rays as well. Love it. I will put all of those links in the show notes. Thank you. Hopefully you get to go back to sleep. You did say you were waking up normally. In a little while I might go to the gym. I think I'm awake now. This conversation has given me energy. Wonderful. Yay. All right, well, hopefully you'll come over here, you'll come to the US, do a presentation. I would love to. In person. I would love that. Awesome. Well, yeah, thanks again, Julia. I really appreciate the opportunity to tell everyone about game on cancer. Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to, and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven. Keep changing the world, you nonprofit unicorn.