NEW YORK (AP) — MrBeast plans to turn the success of his Amazon Prime Video reality competition series into millions of dollars for charity.
YouTube’s biggest creator is offering an exclusive weekend on the set of Beast Games Season 2 to the first 40 donors who make $100,000 gifts to his registered nonprofit. The earliest contributors and up to two guests each will spend June 27-29 touring MrBeast’s North Carolina studio, hearing from the production team in a private Q&A and visiting Beast Philanthropy’s food pantry.
The invitation comes as Jimmy Donaldson’s reported $5 billion media empire surpasses 400 million subscribers on YouTube, where he had already set the record for the biggest following. But the call raises a question: Who among his following of young people and their parents can make a six-figure donation?
“I have some big charity projects I want to fund so I think it’s a win/win,” MrBeast said in a post on X.
Rallying his fervent fan base to make their own contributions marks a new fundraising strategy for Donaldson. He has long stated that his YouTube pages’ featured charitable work is funded with his Beast Philanthropy channel’s revenue.
Beast Philanthropy aims to “alleviate suffering wherever and whenever we are able,” teaching new generations to care more and “making kindness viral” along the way.
The content has drawn a mix of praise from fans for working with local nonprofits to support previously unfunded community-based projects and pushback from critics who accused Donaldson of exploiting vulnerable people for clickbait “inspiration porn.” Campaigns have involved treating rheumatic heart disease in Nigeria and protecting endangered animals in Kenya. Other examples include building wells in countries across Africa and covering the cost of cataract surgery for 1,000 people.
The call also signals Donaldson’s continued philanthropic presence after comments suggesting he would get “less hate” if he stepped away from philanthropy altogether. Responding to allegations that he uses philanthropy as a shield, Donaldson said he thinks “it paints a negative spotlight on me.”
“People hate me more because I do good,” Donaldson said in a conversation uploaded last November on the YouTube channel oompaville. “Maybe that’s too crazy of a statement. I’m not trying to sound like a victim here or anything.”
“The truth is, I just find videos where I help people more fun than videos where I don’t,” he added.
The fundraising strategy resembles high-end charity galas or political campaign golf tournaments where attendees are “paying for status by making some donation,” according to Deborah Small, a psychology and marketing professor at Yale University.
Purely generous donors don’t need any additional enticement, she noted, and beneficiaries don’t typically care about the motivations behind contributions as long as their causes get funded.
“It seems like, in this case, MrBeast is betting on the fact that maybe some other segment of potential donors, maybe people who wouldn’t donate otherwise, will buy in for this exclusive opportunity,” Small said.
The announcement comes shortly after Amazon Prime Video renewed Beast Games for two more seasons. The reality competition series pitted 1,000 contestants against each other for a $5 million grand prize that doubled in the Feb. 13 finale. Forbes reported that the show broke the streaming service’s record by totaling 50 million views in the 25 days after its premiere.
MrBeast’s latest fan event follows reports that an April weekend experience hosted by a Las Vegas resort, billed as “immersive” and “unforgettable,” had fallen short of attendees’ expectations. MrBeast responded on X that it “definitely isn't the experience we hoped they'd deliver” and offered a free tour of his North Carolina headquarters to “everybody affected."
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
James Pollard, The Associated Press
