Repositioning the Revenue Department for the Content Creator Wave, Part 1

Societal change drives nonprofit departments to try to evolve rapidly to keep up. Sometimes, different departments operating independently end up unexpectedly in the same place. A prime example is the convergence of livestream gaming and traditional peer-to-peer events. This "horseshoe dynamic" requires a restructuring of the revenue department. Not doing so means losing constituents and income.

Five short years ago, livestreaming and gaming were recognized by the nonprofit sector as an important platform for mass media fundraising. Elise Favis at The Washington Post wrote, “Livestreams are the new telethons, and they’re raising millions for charities.”

However, the livestream fundraising situation has evolved rapidly. By focusing on livestreaming and gaming, many of us have missed another significant social trend: the rise of content creators. If you’re unfamiliar with the space, this was easy to miss. As a result, content creation, or user-generated content, currently lacks a place in most nonprofit revenue and marketing strategies. The first wave of successful fundraising through user-generated content emerged in gaming, thanks to Michael Wasserman and the company he founded, Tiltify. They tapped into online communities, where live-gaming influencers with large followings quickly raised substantial funds.

Some useful lingo:

• Streamers broadcast content live in real-time.
• Content includes anything shareable online, such as livestreams, gaming, cooking videos, podcasts, even home workout recordings.
• Content creators may stream live but usually pre-create content for better quality and distribute it across multiple channels (e.g., YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, X, Instagram).
• Historically, “influencers” are content creators with a significant following. Here, we transition to using the term to include those with fewer but highly engaged followers.

‘Influencer’ Has a New Definition

In the past few years, Wasserman realized a few things had changed:

• The online fundraising community was moving away from livestream (distributing in real-time) and toward “producing” content. Most content is now prerecorded, edited, then distributed. 

• The online fundraising community was creating content way outside the bounds of gaming platforms.

• High-capacity influencers were few and far between, but lower-level influencers (hobbyists, really) were emerging in large numbers. 

So, how big a deal is this content creation thing? Depending on how you count them, there are now 40 million to 162 million content creators with 1,000 or more followers in the US. That’s 13% to 50% of the country with 1,000 or more followers. Even going with the low estimate, one in 10 people with 1,000 followers equals lots of influence. That is influence we’re not doing anything much to leverage.

Instead, we focus on small, isolated departments (the “livestream team”) trying to recruit top-tier influencers through one-on-one outreach. This approach has failed because it lacks scalability. This approach leads to job cuts across organizations; we are off track.

We will lose the thread if we ignore the natural resources that influencers represent. 

Per Wasserman, “We are stuck in one-on-one influencer solicitation. We do not seek influencers at scale. We seem unable to envision a future at scale. Some charities, such as Gamers Outreach, can get away with it and are good at it, but gaming is exactly what they do, and their strategy works for them. But others are barking up the wrong tree. Charities try to reach out to high-level influencers like Ryan Reynolds. But these celebs don’t fundraise the way we hope they will. Nonprofit livestream/gaming employees may spend a whole year getting 10 people to raise $10,000 each, effectively only covering their own salary. We must go out to content creators at scale.”

Kevin McMahon, Senior Director, Community Fundraising & Cause Marketing at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, concurs: “We are not offering content creators the opportunity very well. We always look towards, ‘How large is their reach?’ But what’s more important is the level of engagement of that small content creator community.”

Curious about how content creators can enhance your peer-to-peer efforts? Don’t miss part two coming next week!

The preceding blog was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.