My sister (Gen Z, early 20s) recently told me she's been thinking more about giving, and that she'd started paying attention to how people in her circle actually donate. What she described was familiar to me: online fundraising through live streaming. What I didn't expect was the scale. How much these creators were raising. How much their followers were contributing. They're gathering in online communities around creators they trust, and giving together in real time.

It's real. And an entire generation of donors is out there giving generously. They just haven't found a front door to your organization that feels like it was built for them.

So what does this have to do with your nonprofit? These creators aren't just raising money. They're building the kind of donor engagement most organizations dream about: real-time transparency, repeat giving, and communities that show up year after year. I'll walk you through what's happening in the charity streaming world, why the data says your next generation of donors is already there, and the practical things you can do to start meeting them where they are.

What's actually happening under the lid

In 2025, creator-led fundraising campaigns on Tiltify (the main platform streamers use for charity events) raised over $100 million. That's a 46% jump from the year before. A few examples of what this looks like:

Ludwig's charity stream for The Trevor Project. Ludwig, one of the biggest creators on YouTube and Twitch, ran a charity stream in memory of a longtime viewer who had recently passed away. The entire event was built around community participation: donors could pay to have their messages read aloud on stream, and he set a public milestone (at $100,000, he'd dye his hair blonde). The stream raised over $107,000, and every dollar was tracked live, on screen.

Ironmouse and the Immune Deficiency Foundation. Ironmouse is a VTuber (a streamer who uses an animated avatar) who personally lives with common variable immune deficiency (CVID). She'd been raising money for the Immune Deficiency Foundation since 2022, including a 2023 subathon that raised over $515,000 through her management company, VShojo. But in July 2025, she revealed that VShojo had withheld those funds and owed over $500,000 to the foundation. She left the company and went independent. Her personal fundraising goal was $10,000. Her community helped her raise over $1 million in two days. By the end of 2025, she had raised over $1.3 million for IDF that year alone.

Lilsimsie and St. Jude. Kayla Sims, known online as Lilsimsie, is a Sims content creator whose father was diagnosed with cancer when she was 14. She turned to The Sims as a way to cope, and eventually turned her platform into a fundraising engine for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. She's raised over $3 million for St. Jude through annual month-long charity streams on Tiltify. Her audience doesn't give because they're asked once a year. They give because they've watched her show up, season after season, with the receipts to prove it.

These aren't outliers. MrBeast, Mark Rober, and over 10,000 creators across 144 countries raised $41.7 million in 31 days for clean water through WaterAid.

This isn't a trend. It's a fundraising ecosystem, and it's growing fast.

The data backs it up

A 2025 report from Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found that Gen Z and Millennial donors focus their giving on issues rather than specific organizations. They learn about causes on social media. They give online. And growing numbers of them are giving through charity streaming events hosted by creators they trust.

Tiltify's 2025 Giving Season Report found that 61% of Gen Z say a creator's involvement makes them more likely to donate. Two-thirds of Gen Z have increased their giving since the pandemic. And nearly one-third have already donated through a creator-led fundraiser.

Here's the tension: overall charitable giving in the U.S. hit a record $592.5 billion in 2024 (the 2025 report is expected in June 2026), but the total number of individual donors keeps declining. Giving is concentrating among fewer, wealthier, older donors. Creator-led fundraising is doing the opposite. It's broadening the base. It's bringing in younger donors who are actively looking for ways to give. They're just not finding your donate page through a Google search or a piece of direct mail.

They're finding giving through people they already trust, in spaces they already spend time.

What charity streams get right

I'm not suggesting you start a Twitch channel. But these streams are doing a few things so well that the principles are worth borrowing.

Radical transparency, in real time. Every charity stream has a live donation tracker on screen. Donors watch the number climb. They see exactly how close the community is to the next milestone. No waiting six months for an annual report to find out if their gift mattered. Now, think about your own donor experience. After someone gives, how long before they see any evidence of impact? If the answer is "our next newsletter," that's not a failure. It's a gap. And you can close it without overhauling everything. Even a simple post-campaign email with three data points (people served, programs delivered, one specific outcome) does a lot of the same work that live tracker does.

Giving as participation, not transaction. In a charity stream, donors aren't passive. Their donations trigger sound effects. Their messages get read aloud. They vote on what happens next. They're in the room, shaping the experience. Most nonprofit giving doesn't feel like that. You give. You get a receipt. Maybe a thank-you email. Then silence until the next ask. I'm not saying every gift needs a sound effect. But small things can shift the feeling: inviting donors to vote on a program name, sharing a behind-the-scenes photo before it goes public, asking for their input on something real.

Personal connection to the cause. Lilsimsie's father battled cancer. Ironmouse lives with the condition her foundation supports. Ludwig hosted his stream in memory of a viewer his community had lost. These aren't spokespeople reading from a script. They're people with skin in the game, and their audiences know it. Your organization has people like this too. Program staff. Board members who joined because the mission is personal. The question is whether your communications make it easy for those voices to come through, not just at the gala, but in the Tuesday afternoon email.

Community accountability. When VShojo broke trust by withholding funds, the community didn't walk away. They organized. Ironmouse went independent. Other creators joined in. The money was re-raised, publicly and transparently. Trust isn't just a nice-to-have. For this generation, it's the fundraising engine. How you handle money, and how visibly you handle it, matters more than a polished brand.

What you can do with this

You don't need to overhaul your strategy. Pick the one that feels most doable and start there.

  • Check where your younger donors are coming from. If you're tagging source in your CRM (and if you read my first article, you know how I feel about this), look at whether you're seeing traffic from social media, creator campaigns, or peer-to-peer fundraisers. If you are, those donors deserve a different welcome experience than someone who came in through your year-end appeal.
  • Make your impact visible faster. Send a mid-campaign update with a progress bar. Share a "here's where we are" post on social while a campaign is still running. Close the gap between "I gave" and "I can see it mattered."
  • Create one way for people to participate beyond writing a check. A volunteer day. A Q&A with your program team. A behind-the-scenes tour. Something that makes a donor feel like a community member, not just a funding source.
  • Don't sleep on peer-to-peer. According to the Association of Fundraising Professionals, 56% of Gen Z donors say they're willing to fundraise on behalf of organizations they support. If you have a peer-to-peer program, make sure it's easy to use and genuinely supported. If you don't have one yet, it might be worth exploring.

The bigger picture

The problem isn't that younger people aren't generous. They are. According to the Giving USA "Giving by Generation" report (surveyed November 2024), Gen Z donors gave an average of $867 a year, up from $785 the year before. Two-thirds have increased their giving since the pandemic. They show up.

The challenge is that most nonprofits haven't built the door they'd walk through. And that makes total sense. If your donor experience was designed for a generation that responds to direct mail and formal events, it's not going to naturally connect with someone whose instinct is to donate through a Twitch stream while their favorite creator plays Mario Kart for charity.

The good news: the fixes are operational, not dramatic. Tag your sources. Adjust your welcome sequences. Make impact visible sooner. Create more ways for people to feel like they belong. A solid CRM and a thoughtful ops setup can support all of it.

And some nonprofits are already doing this well. The Immune Deficiency Foundation didn't just receive the millions that Ironmouse raised. They built an entire page showcasing how creators transformed their platforms into forces for change, then created a DIY fundraising toolkit so anyone can host their own livestream fundraiser through Tiltify. They met their community where they already were.

In my last article, I wrote about what the Winter Olympics can teach nonprofits about playing the long game. This is the other side of that coin: the grassroots energy that brings new people in. And the same principle applies to both. Whether you're nurturing a major donor relationship over a four-year cycle or welcoming a 22-year-old who just gave $25 through a charity stream, the question is the same:

What system do you have in place to make sure that person feels seen, valued, and connected to something real?

Build that, and the rest follows.