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YouTube may soon let you donate directly to fundraisers

YouTube may soon let you donate directly to fundraisers

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is giving creators more ways to fundraise with a bunch of new tools it announced today. Still in beta, the group of tools is called YouTube Giving, and it includes options for fundraisers, community fundraisers, campaign matching, and Super Chat for Good.

The fundraisers feature lets fans donate to campaigns started by creators through a donate button. While the features are only open to a few creators so far, a fundraiser you can currently donate to is the Hope for Paws Fundraiser, which raises funds for animal rescue and recovery. YouTube says it’s covering transaction fees during the beta period, but it doesn’t specify if there will be fees once the feature fully goes live.

Super Chat — for good

Another beta feature lets multiple creators host the same fundraiser and have the cause displayed on their videos at the same time.

Creators will also be able to match the amounts received in a feature called campaign matching. Finally, YouTube is rolling out a variation of Super Chat called Super Chat for Good, which basically sends all user donations during a live stream to a nonprofit picked by the creator.

Some YouTubers are already involved in charity efforts through GoFundMe and other sites, so this looks like an effort from YouTube to add more functionality onto its platform and keep creators from migrating onto different services.