The past three years have seen the rise of influencer marketing. Influencers have managed to build massive audience of millions of followers from all around the world that love and appreciate their work, vision, values and style.
More established influencers are settling into the power that comes with having such a large audience and are using it to raise awareness for the issues that concern everyone in their communities. To highlight this trend we at Fanrush.com have compiled a list of the top ten influencers who have used their influence to raise the most money for charities. Together they have raised over $8M for charities all over the world.
Ninja — $3.281.328
Tyler Blevins, most commonly known as Ninja is one of the world’s most popular streamers. He has an average of over 40K viewers/day on his twitch channel and more than 14M followers on Instagram. Ninja has used this influence for a number of great causes. In total, he has raised over $3.2 Million for several causes, including The Ellen DeGeneres Wildlife Fund, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Suicide Prevention. In one of those fundraisings campaigns that he started, he asked for donations for St. Jude’s Hospital in exchange of him getting his first tattoo — which was the word “ninja” in Japanese. With this campaign alone, Ninja raised over $300,000.
Pew de Pie — $2,570,828
Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, is the owner of the most subscribed to YouTube channel in the world, with more than 33 million subscribers and 7 billion views. In 2013, to celebrate 10 million subscribers he decided to run a campaign on behalf of Charity: Water. This campaign raised almost $450,000 but PewDie wasn’t done he later lead other fundraisings including $239,000 for CRY INDIA; $342,828 for Save The Childrenand $1.3M for Red.
Tyler Oakley — $1,086,928
Oakleys’s is a hugely influential LGBTQ activist with over 6 million followers on Instagram. His campaign to support The Trevor Project helped raise $525,679 in 2014. Fans were encouraged to donate to help the and win a dinner out with Tyler. The following year, Tyler repeated the fundraising and raised another groundbreaking amount: $532,224. In total, Oakley helped gather more than 1 MILLION dollars for the charity.
Judy Travis — $713,000
Roughly six years ago, family vloggers Benji and Judy Travis — whose ItsJudysLife YouTube channel counts 1.4 million subscribers — launched their Dancember initiative, a holiday fundraising effort that also comprises a dance-filled, 24-hour live stream. Dancember benefits Convoy Of Hope, which describes itself as a faith-based, humanitarian organization seeking to feed hungry children around the world. Over the years, Dancember has grown exponentially in scope and in quantity of funds raised. In 2015, for instance, the Travises raised roughly $221,000, in 2016 over $500,000 and the numbers kept on growing the following years. They have raised this much by auctioning off personalized video messages, merchandise, and even a trip for two to VidCon.
Connor Franta — $190,000
Connor has been a prominent Vloger since 2010, he has over 5.4 million subscribers on YouTube, Connor has shown the power of his influence on raising awareness and more than $190,000 for The Thirst Project, a non-profit organization whose aim is to bring safe drinking water to communities around the world. To support his fundraising Franta used a prizeo campaign for his birthday, rewarding the supporters with a coffee with him.
Jack and the Finn Harries — $177,496
Jack and Finn Harries, aka JacksGap, are travelers/filmmakers vloggers who have been all around the world documenting nature, different societies and their involvement in charity initiatives. They use their huge influence on their 4 million subscribers to raise awareness and encourage donations for populations affected by ebola, to support HIV care and prevention and to promote education to poverty stricken children. One of their most successful projects was the “The Rickshaw Run”, a series of shoots during a trip to India, the Harries twins have raised $177,496 for a teenage cancer trust with the help of a Prizeo campaign.
Mike Sherbakov — $52,800
Mike is established as an expert in the areas of social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and wellness. He inspires others to choose greatness as a leader in the community and passionately pursues humanitarian efforts around the globe. In 2015 Sherbakov founded The Greatness Foundation, with a mission to positively impact one billion lives. Committed to learning, He had raised more than $50,000 in several crowdfunding campaigns aimed to build houses for families in need.
Adam Rippon — $40,000
Being the first ever openly gay Olympic figure skater, Adam Rippon is a supporter of GLAAD, a LGBTQ+ Alliance Against Defamation. By coming out, Adam hoped he could make a difference among athletes and young people, giving them strength and courage to proudly assume their sexuality. He announced in 2018 that he had launched a fundraising campaign to support GLAAD’s culture-changing LGBTQ youth programs. To this day, his crowdfunding has raised more than $40,000 for the organization — and anyone can still donate here.
Adam also uses his social media accounts and his influence to support and proudly stand with GLAAD and all the LGBTQ+ community.
Zoe Sugg — $17,700 in one day (that’s all the info there is)
YouTube star and teen icon Zoe Sugg, also known as Zoella, has partnered with Mind, the British organization aiming to help people with mental health problems. As new Digital Ambassador, the popular makeup vlogger has supported the organization through her channel with the launch of the initiative #DontPanicButton, to raise vital awareness of anxiety and panic attacks in young people. As their Ambassador, Zoe started a fundraising campaign on her 28th birthday, asking her fans to donate for Mind and they did not only achieved the goal of $10,000 but surpassed by $7,700 more, all raised in one day. Sugg continues to advocate for the Mind project to this day.
These top influencers are leading the movement of social media influencers who are using their power and influence to better the world. As the universe of influencers grows each year it is getting harder and harder for influencers to find an audience and to differentiate themselves from other influencers. Even harder is to do this while staying authentic to themselves and the communities that support them. One of the ways that influencers are achieving this is proudly displaying their beliefs supporting organizations that truly align with their values and beliefs. We at fanrush.com are here to support those efforts with our platform and commend all the influencers out there who are using their influence to better the world.
