YouTubers raise $3 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

By Haley Paraday
BU News Service

A group of YouTube content creators raised $3 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital on Giving Tuesday. This year’s streaming fundraising event, which ran for a little over 10 hours, featured various YouTubers and topped last year’s fundraiser, which brought in $1.3 million.

The stream was hosted by Matthew Patrick and his wife Stephanie Patrick, who runs the YouTube channels Game Theory, Film Theory, Food Theory and the live streaming channel GT Live. The channels have 25 million subscribers and draw 100 million monthly views collectively. There were over 30 guests during the stream, all of whom were popular YouTubers such as Markiplier, MrBeast and Dream.

Donations opened on Nov. 24, a week before the live stream. Before the beginning of this year’s stream, a total of $62,000 had already been donated; $12,000 was raised in the hour before the stream began.

The charity live stream was sponsored by several companies, including State Farm, YouTube, Ocean Spray and Green Giant. Organizers said that proper COVID-19 precautions were taken to ensure the safety of those on set.

The stream, hosted in California, began with a tour of the set. The behind-the-scenes look showed off the $1 million donation incentive – a non-Newtonian obstacle course designed by Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer who has created viral videos of glitter bomb traps for people stealing deliveries from his porch.

Throughout the event, the guests played various games, such as Pictionary, an Among Us game featuring popular education YouTubers and gamers, and an audience interactive version of Five Nights At Freddy’s.

Anyone who donated at least $10 to the campaign received an entry for a raffle to win one of several prizes at the end of the stream. The top 100 donors will receive a gold foil t-shirt and the top donor will receive a special shout out in an upcoming video on The Game Theorists channel.

Within the first 16 minutes of the stream, $200,000 had already been donated. The goal of $1 million was met shortly after 1 p.m. PST, and by the time the stream had ended, a total of more than $3 million had been donated. The fundraiser will remain active for another 28 days.