Popular YouTuber and streamer Sean “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin is tackling homelessness for the holidays.
If you’re not part of any online gaming or streaming communities then you may not have heard about Thankmas, a charity drive created by popular YouTuber and streamer Sean “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin, but its successful launch and subsequent YoY growth are giving us a glimpse of how social fundraising is evolving. Thankmas is an annual holiday stream hosted by McLoughlin, described as ‘the one day of the year in which all people, regardless of family, race, gender, culture, or religion come together to be thankful for their community and adopted families to raise money for a good cause’. In an interview with us, he states that «towards the end of the year, everyone gets into a giving mood as its the time of gifts and helping each other out. All you have to do is steer that ship in a way.» Back in 2020 Thankmas partnered with the UK charity Red Nose Day, raising over $4.6 million (smashing the goal of $1.5 million) to help alleviate child poverty and food insecurity. In fact, last year marked the first time that Thankmas became a group effort, with McLoughlin, who had until that point hosted Thankmas as a solo, annual fundraiser, reaching out to other content creators across platforms like Twitch and YouTube to help the cause. As a result, other huge names like Valkyrae and CrankGameplays have also contributed to the fundraising efforts, turning Thankmas from a one-man operation into a community charity drive not too dissimilar to charities like the aforementioned Red Nose Day, though instead of tuning into your TV, you’re sitting down to watch and sometimes participate in your favorite content creators streams. We spoke to McLoughlin shortly before his own stream about Thankmas and its explosive evolution. When we mentioned the success of last year’s efforts, McLoughlin said «You said that I almost raised $5 million last year, but I did such a small fraction of that, and even then it was my community that helped raise that amount of money. Having so many creators and so many different people raising money…its going to become massive eventually.» This is far from niche, as proved by this year’s efforts which have raised almost $7.
