Humble Bundle – which operates a digital storefront and gaming membership service – has unveiled its newest social impression report, revealing it raised $12.4 million for numerous causes in 2024.
Extra typically, Humble’s causes are targeted round well being and well-being, disaster and catastrophe aid, fairness and alternative, high quality schooling, and local weather change and sustainability. The organisation supported 4,500 charities throughout the yr in whole.
Humble says it is raised over $266 million since its first bundle launched in 2010.
As proven within the infographic under, the cash it raised final yr had a far-reaching impression.
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(Be aware: Humble Bundle shares GamesIndustry.biz‘s proprietor, IGN Leisure Inc.).
In video games particularly, which is an space of social impression that hasn’t traditionally obtained as a lot devoted consideration from large-scale company charity initiatives, Humble works with charities targeted on range, alternative, fairness, psychological well being help and resilience and accessibility.
“As an organization whose enterprise resolved round leisure merchandise and software program instruments, it is very important us, in addition to our viewers and companions, to seek out extra methods to make sure that we’re contributing to the industries we’re part of and the individuals who make up these industries,” says Kamini Tiwari, VP of Social Influence at Humble Bundle. “From day one everybody at Humble has needed to seek out methods to present again by means of our work and it is all of the extra rewarding after we can see the impression hitting even nearer to residence.”
In the case of range, fairness and alternative, Humble observes that solely 24% of recreation builders within the US are girls, regardless of girls making up virtually 50% of the gaming market.
To stage the enjoying area by way of bringing completely different views to video games, Humble helps plenty of related organisations, corresponding to Ladies Make Video games Scholarship Fund, XPerience Studios and The ESA Basis.
The Ladies Make Video games Scholarship Fund presents workshops and camps particularly for women, serving to them put together for future careers in video games.
From its 2024 funds, Humble is supporting GMGSF on a complete school scholarship, 20 scholarships for its three-week summer time camp, 800 workshop scholarships for college students all over the world and 10 GDC scholarships. It’s going to additionally allow entry to free recreation dev tutorials and school assets, reaching 15,000 college students.
XPerience Studios, in the meantime, is an organisation with the objective of lifting up minority builders utilizing acceleration grant applications and mentorship.
In 2024, funds raised by Humble’s neighborhood helped XPerience Studios to launch the XP Fund, which supplies funding assets and steering to underrepresented indie devs – serving to their video games, and the tales behind them, safe visibility they in any other case would not get. Humble chosen XPerience as a charity accomplice in 2024 partly as a way of evolving its personal work by means of the Black Recreation Developer Fund.
The XP Fund is presently taking functions, and can present grants to 4 builders or studios to assist take their tasks to the following stage of improvement. XPerience will even ship 25 recreation builders to video games conferences.
By way of the ESA Basis, Humble’s help funded 4 scholarships for undergraduates from underrepresented teams. Humble’s funding can also be offering profession improvement webinars, high-spec laptops, paid attendance and different types of help to these chosen.
Based on Humble, all of this quantities to creating equitable alternatives for communities which have traditionally lacked them, serving to them construct the abilities and safe the funds wanted for bringing their concepts to life.
“From day one everybody at Humble has needed to seek out methods to present again by means of our work and it is all of the extra rewarding after we can see the impression hitting even nearer to residence.”
Kamini Tiwari, Humble
“Our neighborhood lets us understand how they need us to indicate up, as a result of these are causes which might be as essential to them as they’re to us,” says Tiwari. “It is actually a credit score to them that we have been capable of do the work we have executed over the previous fourteen years.”
In the case of psychological well being in gaming, Humble partnered with three key organisations in 2024: Secure In Our World, Take This and Disaster Textual content Line.
Humble’s collaboration with Secure In Our World has additionally targeted on video games industry-specific points, together with psychological well being challenges created by the rampant quantity of studio closures and layoffs in recent times. Humble’s funds had been utilized by Secure In Our World to offer free coaching and training applications for over 100 {industry} employees in 2024.
Humble can also be supporting the creation of the organisation’s International Psychological Well being Accreditation scheme, launching in spring 2025. The objective is to create an {industry} normal for psychological well being within the office.
Nonprofit Take This’s work is all about decreasing stigma round psychological well being in gaming, and it is well-known within the US for its AFK rooms at PAX occasions. In 2024, the organisation’s future was wanting unsure – however Humble’s funding has helped it stay operational. Because of this, Take This can proceed to host AFK quiet rooms at PAX East, PAX West, PAX Unplugged and MomoCon in 2025.
Humble additionally labored with Disaster Textual content Line in 2024, launching a useful resource hub and co-branded textual content line to supply rapid, confidential 24/7 help to those that wanted it in gaming. Humble’s funds supported over 4,400 conversations with those that used the service.
“Certainly one of issues that’s been essential to us is making an attempt to make sure that the methods we accomplice with charities is significant,” says Tiwari. “In lots of circumstances, we’re merely donating funds, and we all know how essential that’s not only for us however for a lot of different organisations on the market who’re in on social impression. However we additionally like to seek out methods to interrupt by means of the noise slightly and help our charity companions’ awareness-building efforts, such because the devoted line we labored on with Disaster Textual content Line, in addition to goal our help towards particular applications inside our companions’ broader operations.”
With Kid’s Play, Humble helped present video games for therapeutic functions in hospitals within the US and the UK, in addition to supporting a groundbreaking interventional cardiac MRI suite at Le Bonheur Kids’s Hospital in Tennessee.
And with Particular Impact, the accessibility specialist charity, Humble’s funding helped it increase with two extra employees hires, in addition to delivering 100 bespoke assistive controllers and 100 new eye-tracking setups constructed for gamers with disabilities. The funding additionally helped with the launch of 4 accessible Eye Gaze Video games cellular apps.
Widening the lens
Outdoors of gaming, Humble has prolonged its help of charities to different areas it really works in, particularly literature and software program. Tiwari says its viewers, in addition to its publishing and improvement companions, are keen about charities associated to those areas, along with the broader societal and environmental causes that Humble helps.
Based on Tiwari, “Literacy- and tech-related charities are very important, as they immediately help the development of our society, and so they’re deeply related to our identification as an organization. There’s an ongoing want for funding and help in these areas, which is why we’re dedicated to broadening our focus and making a significant impression the place it issues most.”
Within the e-book {industry}, Humble’s funding helps organisations just like the Comedian E book Authorized Protection Fund, the Nationwide Coalition Towards Censorship, EveryLibrary Institute and It Will get Higher, in addition to literacy applications like Room to Learn and First E book.
Humble’s impression in software program mirrors lots of its objectives within the video games {industry}: supporting charities that promote engineering-related schooling for low-income communities, girls and minorities, with the objective of making the following technology of data employees and leaders.
Humble partnered with Ladies Who Code to supply 5,750 women free entry to after-school golf equipment, the place they may study common programming ideas, and thereby encouraging them to think about pursuing careers in STEM-related fields.
It additionally backs the Hidden Genius Mission, which trains and mentors Black male youth in know-how creation, entrepreneurship and management expertise, which tallies with Humble’s general objective to advance academic entry, fairness and alternative. Humble is offering funds for 230 Macbooks for college students in its 15-month Intensive Immersion mentorship program.
As talked about, Humble’s funding prolonged to many different real-world causes in 2024, too, with $1.2 million raised for catastrophe response, restoration and resilience constructing charities. $2.3 million was raised for illness, prevention, analysis and cures, whereas 4,577,744 meals had been offered in 2024 too.
It is a reminder that Humble’s objectives stay distinct amongst retailers – clients shopping for video games, books, or software program have made a measurable distinction to communities affected by pure disasters and societal upheaval.
“We’re immensely grateful to our neighborhood and our companions for coming collectively to make what we hope is an actual and lasting distinction on the planet,” Tiwari says.
Discover extra particulars of how the funding was allotted within the full Humble 2024 Social Influence Report right here.
