YouTube announces YouTube Giving, a suite of new tools for creators and their fans to raise money for charities in the US and Canada, currently in beta
YouTube today announced a suite of new features designed to offer creators and their fans new ways to contribute to charitable causes.
Context & Ripple Effects
YouTube Giving is the second act of a fundraising push that began when YouTube let creators overlay Donation Cards on videos back in 2016 — today's announcement turns that single card format into a full suite of charity-raising tools for creators and fans, rolling out first in the US and Canada in beta.
It also slots into a broader 2018 effort to give creators non-advertising ways to engage their audiences, following YouTube's $5M commitment to the Creators for Change program earlier this year and community programs like Heroes.
First-order effects
- US and Canadian creators gain native fundraising tools they previously had to approximate with one-off Donation Cards, and the charities they champion get direct access to creator audiences during the beta.
Second-order effects
- Charitable giving becomes another transaction type layered onto the creator-fan relationship, joining the monetization stack YouTube would soon expand with Super Stickers and paid Channel Memberships — each addition raises switching costs for creators considering rival platforms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platforms rather than nonprofits become the default infrastructure for online charitable fundraising, with YouTube positioned as the intermediary that routes, processes, and takes a role in philanthropic dollars flowing from fandoms.
The trend: YouTube is steadily converting its creator-fan relationship from an advertising business into a multi-purpose transaction platform spanning commerce, memberships, and now charitable giving.