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Humble Bundle adds "choose your own charity" feature

"Philanthropy is a big part of who we are as a company"

Humble Bundle is launching a new "choose-your-own-charity" feature to let gamers select the causes their funds go to.

More than 35,000 charities are eligible under the new scheme and should help Humble Bundle raise money for an even more diverse range of causes. Humble Bundle has raised a total of over $63 million for charities in the past five years.

For more on the new feature we spoke to Humble Bundle co-founder John Graham.

Eurogamer Why was it important for Humble Bundle to allow gamers to choose the charities they support?
John Graham

This Humble Store feature beautifully expands on Humble Bundle's transparent, user-controlled approach to digital distribution.

There are a wealth of amazing charities out there. We don't ever like saying no to great causes but in curating things ourselves, we find ourselves mainly picking larger nonprofits that have awesome established global brands that we think will resonate with our community as a whole.

With this new feature, if parts of our community want to give aid to homeless shelters in San Francisco and others wish to provide fresh drinking water to Ethiopia, they can choose as they please.

Eurogamer Will this be a permanent feature going forward?
John Graham

I think our community will like this feature a lot and if this proves to be the case you can expect this feature to be around for a while.

Eurogamer How was the list of over 35,000 available charities created?
John Graham

Paypal Giving Fund has made this possible. It is an infrastructure originally built for eBay and I'm told we are the first 3rd party partner that's ever gotten access.

Eurogamer Do you plan to add more charities to that list? - Will gamers be able to suggest charities, perhaps local ones?
John Graham

Paypal Giving Fund is continuously adding new charities to their ecosystem all the time - and U.S. and UK registered public charities can apply to enroll with PayPal Giving Fund at any time. We'll also definitely be listening to our community and be hoping to add any missing charities that get frequently requested including local charities.

Eurogamer How important is the charity aspect of Humble Bundle, to the company and to the consumers?
John Graham

It's very important. Humble Bundle is the only digital distributor I know of that has put philanthropy into the DNA of its major products and services.

Jeffrey Rosen (Humble Bundle's CEO) and I had our minds blown when after the first Humble Indie Bundle we were able to write checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to indie devs and charity. We didn't know if the model would ever be repeatable but after helping people to that degree, we knew we had to try. It is now a great pleasure to us that thanks to everyone's support, Humble Bundle has now dwarfed what we raised in that first bundle by two orders of magnitude with lifetime charitable contributions reaching over $63 million dollars to date.

Philanthropy is a big part of who we are as a company.

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Rachel Weber

Senior Editor

Rachel Weber has been with GamesIndustry since 2011 and specialises in news-writing and investigative journalism. She has more than five years of consumer experience, having previously worked for Future Publishing in the UK.

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