Technology Unleashes New Age of Philanthropy Between Gamers and Charities

We welcome the opportunity to share the innovation of our partners and the good they do by highlighting recent accomplishments. Below are two of our success stories: Softgiving and Golden Hearts Gaming. The world of philanthropy is evolving on a daily basis. Thanks to revolutionary technology that makes giving simple and straightforward, charitable donations have now become an active part of the consumer experience. And who have become the stars of this new show? New online platforms, who are empowering the consumer to easily connect with and give back to nearly any charity or cause around the world through social media and digital channels. By “gaming for good,” these innovative companies are building charitable giving directly into their consumer offerings. Take the event streaming service Softgiving, for example, which allows users to develop online events and use the platform to easily donate money to the charities or causes that matter most to them.

In March 2020, a Pokémon streamer named “aDrive” ran a charity stream over Softgiving’s platform and raised $10,000 for a cause. Softgiving worked with him and applied some best practices to improve his online reach and engagement. The result? aDrive raised $94,000 in June. Then, in late October, Softgiving refined aDrive’s system even further and it netted a whopping $294,000. Founded in 2016 with a motto of “we believe in being innovative and taking risks, so the charity doesn’t have to,” Softgiving offers two programs: a free online fundraising platform that seamlessly integrates into any livestream, and an online fundraising service that creates and manages high-impact online events for charities and brands. When Softgiving began, charity streaming was left to the streamer, charity or influencer to figure out the variables on their own. Now Softgiving, with our work on the backend of verifying the charities and managing the donations, is able to provide invaluable direction and support to all parties involved in the fundraising. “We’ve run thousands of charity streams each year, and we study, compare and really understand what makes for a successful charity stream, whether it’s done by a gamer or an influencer of any size,” says Matt Pfaltzgraf, founder and CEO of Softgiving. “We take that knowledge and apply it into their stream so they can raise more money and be more effective.” Softgiving is just one example of the advance and application of effective philanthropic technology powered by us. With transparency a top priority, philantech continues to transform the way businesses and their customers are giving back. “With Givinga, we want to continue to expand our relationship since we believe they’re going to be a critical element in expanding the tools that our charities, streamers and donors have available to them,” Pfaltzgraf says. “We want to increase the amount of transparency, and having a partner like Givinga that can do a lot of the heavy lifting on the backend for some of these products and services allows us to focus on and grow the user experience of the charity stream.” Like Pfaltzgraf, Steve Kane, co-founder of Golden Hearts Gaming, has a strong background in gaming, having co-founded Gamesville in Boston in 1995. Kane, looking for that next challenge and mission, built the Golden Hearts Gaming platform as a gaming experience for the audience around charitable giving. Started in late summer 2020, Golden Hearts Gaming creates and operates digital promotional games that offer real cash prizes with players keeping all of their winnings. There is no purchase or donation required to participate or win; however for players who choose to pay to participate, that payment goes to the charitable organization of their choosing. And while Golden Hearts Gaming hasn’t been around quite as long as Softgiving, they also recognize the tremendous charity potential in tapping into the human element of giving back through small-scale online donations.   “We aspire to connect millions of small donors with millions of worthy charitable organizations,” Kane said. “We call our players ‘everyday heroes’ since we see them as the everyday heroes of philanthropy.” By partnering with us, Golden Hearts Gaming is now easily able to process the small-scale donations to the charity of the user’s choice, so long as they are a recognized 501(c)(3) organization. Traditionally, small-scale donors are often left out of marketing considerations by larger companies due to the cost of reaching a small-scale donor, but through Golden Hearts Gaming, they are not only being reached, they are also being rewarded. Golden Hearts Gaming has created a simple, user-friendly platform that rewards its players through monetary prizes and enables them to easily give to a charity of their choosing. Kane believes that a donor who offers a significant portion of their paycheck to a qualifying charity should enjoy some sort of real benefit. Golden Hearts Gaming provides that benefit through gaming. The success stories of Softgiving and Golden Hearts Gaming go beyond the platforms – they are found within the platform users, who are choosing to use their time and donations, no matter the size, to make a big difference for charities around the world.