Humble Freedom Bundle raises $6.73m for nonprofits in a week
Howard Lake | 28 February 2017 | News
Pay-what-you-want digital content platform Humble Bundle has raised $6.73m for US refugee and human rights nonprofits in the wake of President Trump’s travel ban on refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
The site’s Humble Freedom Bundle ran for a week earlier this month, offering games, music and books at a substantial discount, with all of the income being donated to charity.
The content was worth over $600, but could be bought for any sum above $30. Initially it offered 47 titles, but more digital developers and authors wanted their content to join the Humble Freedom Bundle, so a further 16 were added.
The site explained:
“100% of your payments will go to one or more of those three timely and important causes, to support the inspiring work they do in defense of justice, human rights, and civil rights. From ev’ry mountainside, let freedom ring!”
ACLU Nationwide, International Rescue Committee, and Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are the beneficiary nonprofits.
Humble Bundle pledged to match $300,000 in donations, bringing the total raised from $6.43m to $6.73m. It raised $3.04m of this in the first 24 hours.
Usually Humble Bundle’s promotions invite customers to choose how much they want to pay and how to divide that between content creators, charity and Humble Bundle. Since 2010, Humble Bundle, which received support from business accelerator Y Combinator like ACLU, has raised more than $60 million for charities.
It is just one in a stream of fundraising campaigns and donations (like the ACLU Amazon Dash button) set up to benefit nonprofits that are working in the areas that the Trump presidency is focusing on limiting or changing, including women’s reproductive rights, refugees, religious tolerance, LGBTQ rights, and democracy.
Some have called this outpouring of fundraising ‘rage fundraising‘ or ‘rage giving’, an intentional and positive response to the policies and actions of the Trump administration.
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The Humble Freedom Bundle ended at $6.43M raised for @ACLU, @MSF & @theIRC not including our $300k match. Thanks all for making this happen!
— Humble Bundle (@humble) February 20, 2017
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.