As fires rage across the Australian countryside, you might be thinking "what can I do to help?" This is exactly what a group of streamers were thinking last week, as the Australian fires continued to make headlines around the world. Two streamers in particular, Loserfruit and Fasffy, wanted to do something for their home nation. So they decided to do a 24-hour Twitch stream for charity. While their initial goal was around $15K AUD, they ended up raising roughly 20 times that amount.

Australian Fire Relief Charities

Loserfruit first announced the charity stream on Twitter:

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As fires rage across the Australian countryside, you might be thinking "what can I do to help?" This is exactly what a group of streamers were thinking last week, as the Australian fires continued to make headlines around the world. Two streamers in particular, Loserfruit and Fasffy, wanted to do something for their home nation. So they decided to do a 24-hour Twitch stream for charity. While their initial goal was around $15K AUD, they ended up raising roughly 20 times that amount.

Australian Fire Relief Charities

Loserfruit first announced the charity stream on Twitter: She decided to support three different charities: Red Cross Disaster Relief Australia, WIRES, and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service. Per her social media descriptions, the Australian Red Cross was chosen because "donating provides emergency assistance, recovery, and shelter for communities affected. Over 1300+ homes have been destroyed in the bushfires." She chose WIRES because "donating helps rehabilitate injured animals and home stranded animals that have been affected by the bushfire. It’s been estimated that over half a billion animals have been killed in the NSW bushfires since September." Lastly, she chose the NSW Rural Fire Service because "The majority of firefighters in Australia are volunteers. Donations to help provide more firefighting resources to combat the bushfires."

Exceeding Their Initial Goal

Loserfruit began the stream on Sunday at 11am Sydney time (or Saturday at 4pm, depending on your time zone) on her Twitch channel. Loserfruit and fellow streamer Crayator kicked off the stream casually, assuming they were settling in for a quiet day of streaming some games and reading out donations from their community. They were very surprised to see some larger donations fly in right away, including a $500 donation from YouTuber Lazarbeam (who donated under the alias YeetManYeet.)  The stream hit the ground running and never lost momentum. They hit $1,000 in four minutes, reaching their initial goal of $15,000 in 52 minutes. Over the next six hours, the stream raised $80,000. Their biggest donation during this time was from fellow Twitch streamer Dakotaz, who dropped in $14,000 and then another $7,000. Dakotaz tweeted out his support for Australia and his fond memories of WoW raids with Aussie players.

Ending at $300,000 AUD

When they hit $100,000 Loserfruit and co. realized that they needed some stretch goals. So they decided to add 12 more hours to the stream if they hit $200,000. They were able to hit that goal and extended to a 36-hour stream. Each streamer took breaks for sleeping and reading donations. They took turns playing Fortnite and Sims 4. Multiple guest streamers and YouTubers came over to help read donations including Muselk, Lazarbeam, Tannar, LivBevan, Brodie, Mully, GraceWatkins, Marcus, MrWoofless, BazzaGazza, and more. Loserfruit and co. kept the stream going by taking donations for dares, for on-stream kisses, for game challenges, for shoeys (drinking beer from a shoe), for cosplaying, for decorating people while they were asleep, all kinds of fun shout-outs to supporters, and much more. The more fun moments on stream were tempered with serious moments where they watched videos of the fire damage, read statistics about the effects of the fire, including the devastation the fires have had on human life, homes, plant life, animals, and more. [caption id="attachment_228143" align="alignnone" width="720"] This was the moment the donations hit $200,000. Loserfruit is clearly very moved by the response from her community and the world.[/caption] I personally tuned in for multiple hours of the stream. I laughed when donators would ask everyone on screen to yell "Yeet," I cried when they hit big and little goals, I threw in donations of my own, sometimes in my name, sometimes in funny names. Overall it was an incredible 36 hours. It was humbling to watch the world come together to support Australia. It was beautiful to watch so many one and two-dollar donations come in from people saying, "This is all I have, I wish I could donate more." While the big donations made a huge impact, it was the accumulation of all the small donations that helped bring in the final total to $318,511 AUD (which is a little over $220K USD.) You can watch highlights of the charity stream on Loserfruit's YouTube channel. Loserfruit also shared this graphic on Twitter highlighting all of the top donations. The art piece was created by Fasffy:

#FightTheFires Campaign

I reached out to Grace Watkins, the co-founder of Click Management (the Australian company that manages Loserfruit and a few of the streamers/YouTubers mentioned above) for comment. Grace said that she is really proud. "The stream over the weekend really highlights the power of influencers and their ability to mobilize their audiences to make a real impact," she said. "To see them use this power, and come together for good on a global scale, highlights youth leadership at its best." The success of Loserfruit's charity stream has encouraged Click Management to launch the #FightTheFires campaign, which kicks off on January 14, 2020. They will attempt to raise $1 Million AUD for the Australian Red Cross, WIRES, and the NSW Rural Fire Service. You can read more about their #FightTheFires campaign or you can donate directly their cause at FighttheFires.com. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=celebrities-who-have-donated-to-the-australian-bushfires&captions=true"] IGN is also raising funds for Red Cross Australia. So far dozens of celebrities have also donated to Australian charities, including Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pink, and Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth.

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Lauren Gallaway is a Social Media Coordinator for IGN. Find her tweeting @LaurenGallaway and Twitch streaming @GlimpseEntertainment. #Yeet.