Charities approach appeal videos as though they are “PowerPoint presentations”, which is why “none of them get any views”, the executive director of the YouTube channel Beast Philanthropy has said in a podcast published today.
Speaking in the latest episode of Third Sector’s documentary podcast series The End of Charity, Darren Margolias discusses the philanthropic videos of MrBeast, the world’s biggest YouTuber, which Margolias says aim to inspire a generation of young people to tackle the world’s problems.
MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, began experimenting with the YouTube algorithm as a teenager with a focus on creating prank and challenge videos; since then he has built a subscriber base of 242 million people and an estimated net worth of $500m (£395m) today.
He launched a not-for-profit organisation called Beast Philanthropy in 2020, which is supported by YouTube videos that focus on cause areas ranging from refurbishing orphanages in South Africa to funding corrective surgery for 1,000 blind people.
Margolias said that creating content that engages and evokes emotion in its audience is a fundamental pillar of the channel’s approach.
“Too many charities think that when they make a YouTube video, that it’s going to be the equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation and video. They’re going to talk about the facts, and that’s why none of them get any views,” he said.
“The primary thing that we always look for is are we going to be able to help a marginalised and vulnerable community of people in a way that makes a meaningful difference to that community and a persistent difference in that community.
“Then we’re going to ask, can we do it in a way that it’s going to be a relatable video that people are going to want to engage with?
“Because the most important thing that we’ll do with the channel is that we’re using it to influence tens of millions of kids in a positive way. If we do videos about something that the audience is going to find tremendously boring then nobody is going to watch it, and we are going to lose that engagement.”
But the anti-racism consultant Martha Awojobi described the channel’s videos as “deeply problematic” and containing a number of white saviour tropes.
She said that MrBeast’s operation forms part of “a wider conversation around philanthrocapitalism – how good deeds and philanthropy can be done in the pursuit of profit”.
“This is not an operation that is rooted in justice. It’s not an operation that thinks about how the historical legacy of colonialism, of extraction, of exploitation created the conditions where there’s an orphanage like this,” said Awojobi.
“It’s really thinking about ‘How do we make money? How do we do good deeds?’
“If we really cared about doing good deeds, when people then said: ‘Actually, your deeds are not that good,’ we would engage with that, rather than thinking about how do we clear our name as quickly as possible so we can carry on doing the things that make us money.”
For the full interview, listen to The End of Charity: Can MrBeast save humanity? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your podcast platform of choice.