The names Ryan Trahan and Jimmy Donaldson might not mean anything to you. To a whole generation of people, these two are bordering on the status reserved for legends.
Both are ubiquitous YouTubers; a cadre of individuals that make their livings showing their lives on YouTube. Trahan, age 23, hails from Austin and boasts 10 million YouTube subscribers. Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, lives in rural North Carolina and has nearly 100 million subscribers. Both are known for videos that are well produced, yet devoid of any seriousness. Not to sound offensive, the videos are timewasters, they are kitsch.
But, what the videos may lack in artistic appeal, they certainly make up for in a sizable following. When 10 million people watch your every move on a video screen, it can be “The Truman Show” come to life. It’s nothing to watch, but everything to see.
In June, Trahan had an idea. He wanted to document his journey starting in Los Angeles to travel across the country to North Carolina to deliver his hero, Mr. Beast, one penny. Trahan gave himself thirty days to complete the ordeal and while telling his story via YouTube, he would raise funds for Feeding America. He had an ambitious goal of raising $100,000 throughout the month.
The kicker is that Trahan started his trip with nothing but the clothes on his back, a backpack and two pennies; one to spend and one to give to Mr. Beast. Throughout his journey, Trahan would do odd jobs (such as telling jokes on the Las Vegas strip or drawing caricatures in Nashville) to earn enough money to eat or get a plane ticket to the next destination. To sweeten the deal, if anyone donated $50,000 to his efforts, Trahan would take all the money he accumulated and be “Reset” to restart his adventure to one penny.
Trahan, who had an unhealthy addiction to McDonald’s iced coffees and McChicken sandwiches ended up raising over $1.4 million for Feeding America. Oh, and you can see below if he ended up delivering his penny to Mr. Beast. (Spoiler Alert! He did!)
For a whole month, my children were wrapped up in this series, which later included me and my wife. It was quite interesting to see how someone would hustle their way across the country with very few of the creature comforts we come to take for granted.
What does this mean for fundraising?
I doubt when we think of the term “philanthropist”, the names of Trahan and Donaldson are the first out of our mouths. But, they certainly qualify. They are either giving funds directly or at least encouraging others to give. And through his efforts, Trahan singlehandedly raised over $1 million.
Through it all, I was wondering if I was seeing something that could be replicated or is this a “once in a lifetime” type thing. First things first, it’s probably important to recognize that Trahan, had quite a YouTube following before he started. The platform of him being somewhat silly had already been established. Perhaps something like this can’t easily be duplicated.
But, maybe the social media platform is where to reach people. Trahan did raise over $1.4 million dollars. In fact, since the challenge has ended, his Feeding American page has shown that at least an additional 1,000 people have donated to his cause! This kind of reach is simply jaw dropping. If anything, we have learned that at least YouTube is where people are.
According to research, the average YouTube video is 11 minutes; twice as short as a typical thirty-minute television show. Our collective attention spans seem short. We want quick entertainment, and from the evidence, we don’t even want seriousness.
Where does fundraising go from here? I am not sure.
But what I do know, is that when you see a 23 year old raise over a million dollars in one month on a YouTube channel doing something novel, this might be the beginning of an interesting trend.
I have had my say, what is yours? Let me know by leaving a comment below!
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Stay Well,
Bill
Youtubers get so much flack but there are a lot of them who do fundraisers. Some of my favorites are gamers and they have a fundraiser several times a year for great causes. I love it!