Hey everyone, just got back from TwitchCon Day 1 and here's what I thought:
Getting to the Las Vegas Convention Center was pretty easy, as the monorail (which didn't exist when I was growing up in California) stops right at the LVCC. From there, I rode the Vegas Loop to get to the Twitchcon badge pickup and entrance. The Loop driver takes you and up to 3 other passengers in a Tesla, where we go into a tunnel and out into the other side, which gives you an idea of the size of the sprawling LVCC.
The line itself was long, which was anticipated, but it moved relatively quick compared to New York Comic-Con.
Once I collected my badge and Affiliate gift, I made my way to the food court for a quick snack then checked out the show floor.
There's a LOT to do here, so I decided to break down my activities by day. Today, I wanted to make my rounds in the Charity Zone, in particular DonorDrive's Charity World, where many friends from different nonprofits were gathered.
I'm always impressed by Donordrive's space. They highlight some amazing causes and present them in a way that makes them attractive to audience engagement. How do I know? I joined each of the organizations' Discords and I saw just how many people were signing in. Some would interact within those Discords too. It's up to each organization to see how they can retain those new signups, but it's great to see them welcome so many new people. Each booth is set up with helpful resources to get to know the program better, but I really enjoyed speaking with each person who told me more about their program, what their highlight moments were, and what their biggest challenges in the fundraising/gaming space was.
They weren't the only ones though. Many other orgs set up booths independently. In fact, I'm impressed by the number of organizations here. I took the time to visit as many as I could and will likely come back on day 2 to visit more.
However, I can say my favorite booth was the one from the American Heart Association.
Their booth invites people to come and try their hands at an element of CPR training: chest compressions. The goal is to average 120 compressions/minute and they gamified the experience by making it into a race against fellow participants. The deceptively difficult exercise highlights the level of training needed and encouraged people to sign up for CPR classes in a fun way. It was educational, engaging, and had a direct relevance to their mission. Whoever thought of this did a great job!
To learn more about the AHA's streaming fundraising program, visit them here: Liive,
Overall, I think that the organizations present were all at different levels of progress in terms of developing their fundraising program within the gaming space. Some, like Extra Life and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have been doing this for so long that they've been the standard bearers for streamer recruitment, engagement and overall fundraising excellence in this space. That said, one area that seems to not yet been fully tapped is esports. Several of the organizations I spoke to were intrigued when I brought up the question about how or if they planned on incorporating esports into their programs. One thing I acknowledged was that in my working with esports teams, there's a mutual lack of knowledge between esports and nonprofit organizations. Esports organizations need a better idea of what the needs of a nonprofit are, while the latter need to find better ways to communicate how their needs can be addressed by esports organizations.
I was happy to mention that as co-chair of the Esports Trade Association's Fundraising Committee, we'd love to get to know their programs better and extend invites to our bi-weekly game nights. It's the first step in what I hope will help bring esports and nonprofit organizations together. After all, that's what Make Gaming About Fundraising is all about!
Check out the next blog post for thoughts on Day 2!
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