Charity streams and fundraisers in which viewers are induced to Subscribe to a channel, or send a lump-sum payment directly to a Broadcaster's PayPal, unnecessarily expose streamers to liability and viewers to fraud. This practice is for the most part largely unregulated on Twitch. If Twitch is not going to moderate this practice, then I implore them to create alternative, legitimate tools for Broadcasters who wish to raise money for charity.

My suggestion is to introduce a "Charity" button similar to the "Subscribe" button, with all money going directly to a designated registered charity. This could be a page hosted on Twitch similar to the Subscription page, or a direct link to an official DonorDrive page for the registered charity. Ideally, it would be possible for this process to hook into the Twitch API in some way, so that streaming tools could be written that track viewer contributions in the same way that they already do for Subscriptions.

There are many reasons why such a tool would be of benefit to Twitch, its community and charities. I feel that it would also quash potential fraud and further legitimize Twitch as a platform for charitable causes in gaming.

I posted this suggestion on the r/Twitch and you can read some of the existing feedback here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/4e12i4

I am not in the closed beta of the new charity feature so I am going by what I have seen in Twitter posts and streams so far.

From what I gathered when a charity stream is active, the subscription button is replaced by a donate type button for the charity. I do not mind this at all BUT I would love to see the donate button AND subscription button be both present on a channel.

I asked this because some people doing charities use subs as a goal for different gimmicks for the stream as well as donation goals and some use subscribing during a charity as a way to "tip" the streamer outside their normal "tip" method to help with the streams upkeep and just cost as a streamer.

I feel like being able to donate to a cause AND sub to the streamer to show support would be awesome!

Just my thought as a bystander.

As a creator who sees a lot of potential with the new built-in Twitch Charity fundraising feature, I think it would be worthwhile to consider additional donation methods. Many Twitch users already utilize Bits to support their favorite creators, and while Twitch takes a cut when purchasing Bits, 100% of Bits cheered in a creator's chat goes straight to the creator themselves.

What if there was a way for creators to route all revenue from Bits to support a specific charity during a built-in fundraiser? There's evidence of Bits serving as a fantastic resource for charities in the past on Twitch. In 2017 and 2018, when Twitch users cheered Bits while using the hashtag #charity in chat, Twitch donated $2 to Direct Relief for every time either 100 Bits (in 2018) or 1,000 Bits (in 2017) were cheered. Not only were streamers receiving the same support from Bits, but Twitch made massive donations to Direct Relief when all was said and done. If Twitch users already have Bits in their inventory, or if it is one of their most prominent ways of supporting their favorite creators, then who says that it's impossible to integrate Bits within Twitch Charity?

While I understand that community donations go through the PayPal Giving Fund and are granted to the charity that a creator is fundraising for, it would still be really cool and resourceful for Twitch users to have more methods when it comes to donating. Many third-party charity services have accepted multiple payment methods such as a Credit/Debit Card, PayPal, and even Amazon Pay, so I implore Twitch to consider the possibility of implementing Bits in the future within their built-in Twitch Charity fundraising feature!

This year my community has raised over $10k for The Center For Suicide Awareness. On the 1st of July I contacted Charity@twitch.tv to see if they could support us by giving a front page slot for our 'Twitch music festival'. I provided all the details necessary but didn't hear anything back until a month later. The front page slot was denied because we had a sponsor. Unfortunately the sponsor had already pulled out due to supply issues. We could have notified the Twitch Charity Support Team of this if they had contacted us more promptly.

My idea is to have a Twitch Charity Support Team that genuinely want to help creators and communities.