Summary:

  • Beast Philanthropy, the charity founded by the world’s most popular YouTuber MrBeast, gave $200,000 to Ugandans living in extreme poverty through GiveDirectly and posted a video about the process→
  • Featured recipients said they appreciated the experience and gave us feedback for future videos.
  • An estimated 20+ million people will watch the video, improving their awareness & understanding of direct cash, raising more for people in poverty→

Beast Philanthropy donated $200,000 to Ugandans living in extreme poverty through GiveDirectly

Beast Philanthropy is a nonprofit YouTube channel that funds and films charitable acts, putting the ad revenue from their popular videos towards their next projects. They feature MrBeast aka Jimmy Donaldson, the most watched person on Earth with over 600 million followers across his social media platforms.

In April, GiveDirectly’s Uganda team hosted Beast Philanthropy to document our direct cash transfer program for the video below. They donated $200,000 directly to families in Karamoja, Uganda, and together, we were able to deliver life-changing cash to over 300 households struggling to meet their basic needs.1 They also launched a fundraiser so viewers can give to a neighboring village.

For this video, Beast Philanthropy and GiveDirectly worked together to uphold our #1 value, putting recipients first→

Here’s how we prepared for the project.

GiveDirectly confirmed recipients and communities want to be featured, as always:  

  • For all media projects, we first consult with village leadership to confirm their interest and consent for participating. For this video, we also met with local and national government officials to confirm if they were supportive of such a large spotlight. 
  • Journalists and content creators always follow this guidance when visiting GiveDirectly programs. Profiled recipients first give informed consent before sharing their story. You can read our consent forms here→

Beast Philanthropy centered the local culture:

  • They regularly solicited input from our local staff about whether approaches and portrayals would be received well by the community and had us give notes on the video edit. 
  • They focused on English-speakers so recipients could share more of their story in their own voice. 
  • They worked to capture the cultural specificity of the community, forgoing stock music for natural sounds→
Audio collection work from Beast Philanthropy’s director

The featured recipients appreciated the experience and gave actionable feedback

GiveDirectly’s safeguarding team interviewed featured recipients after filming and again when the video was released. You can read their feedback here – some highlights:

100% of respondents were satisfied with the video

  • “I feel good seeing myself dancing after receiving the money. It makes me appreciate the moment my life changed and reminds me of when I was able to send my son to school.”
  • “I enjoyed the part of my village mate Tian operating her grinding mill. It shows that a woman can also do what a man can do.”

Their motivations for participating varied

  • “I did accept to participate because of the challenges and poverty that my community members are facing. I needed to represent their views.”
  • “I needed to tell how happy I felt and also to show the rest of the community members that when given something small or large you can always use it in a way that can help raise your standard of living.”

Two gave us actionable feedback for how we can improve next time.

  • “I was relaxed and very happy, though my husband got anxious about the number of GiveDirectly staff who visited us.”
  • “I felt good about it, though I feel I should also be shown the photos and videos to watch.”

Working with the most watched person on Earth will help us reach more people in need

Beast Philanthropy videos are typically seen by 20-40 million people and dubbed into over a dozen languages to improve accessibility. We expect this will help us reach more families in need. Here’s why:

Partnering with content creators means large, new audiences learn about direct cash

You may support direct cash giving, but most people still do not. GiveDirectly recently ran a survey of potential donors, and found only 13% of respondents had heard of us. Direct cash was their least favored way to help people in extreme poverty. 

Clearly more people need to learn about the impact of our work. While we’re good at our main job of delivering cash to the most vulnerable families in the world, we’re not as good at reaching large audiences from our own channels and platforms –– few nonprofits are. Press and content creators are very good at it: 

Note: Twitter/X followers are for @MrBeast where Beast Philanthropy videos are reshared

Beast Philanthropy’s video dispels common concerns about direct cash 

In that same survey, most respondents said giving $1,000 to families in extreme poverty was not a good idea. Their most common concerns were that recipients…

  1. may spend the money unwisely
  2. need something else (training, education, resources)
  3. won’t be able to make lasting improvements 

We approached Beast Philanthropy because they excel at engaging audiences while showcasing the finer points of a charity. Their GiveDirectly video tackled the most common concerns about cash, highlights the dignity of giving choice, and documents the broader economic benefits – all in just 12 minutes.

Some of their viewers will start giving directly, helping reach more people living in extreme poverty with life-changing cash transfers.

Tell us which content creators you think we should work with next

As a GiveDirectly supporter, your thoughts on this video and suggestions for other creators or media we should consider hosting would be useful. Please share either in the form below:

Footnotes

  1. Together, we delivered ~$1,000 to over 300 households, so ~$300k in cash transfers total. Beast Philanthropy gave $200k and GiveDirectly covered the rest, including operational costs.