How Humble Bundle allocated $12.4 million of its funding in 2024 – including a substantial focus on games industry charities

Humble Bundle – which operates a digital storefront and gaming membership service – has unveiled its newest social affect report, revealing it raised $12.4 million for varied causes in 2024.

Extra typically, Humble’s causes are centered round well being and well-being, disaster and catastrophe reduction, fairness and alternative, high quality schooling, and local weather change and sustainability. The organisation supported 4,500 charities throughout the yr in whole.

Humble says it is raised over $266 million since its first bundle launched in 2010.

As proven in the infographic under, the cash it raised final yr had a far-reaching affect.

(Be aware: Humble Bundle shares GamesIndustry.biz‘s proprietor, IGN Leisure Inc.).

In games particularly, which is an space of social affect that hasn’t traditionally obtained as a lot devoted consideration from large-scale company charity initiatives, Humble works with charities centered on variety, alternative, fairness, psychological well being help and resilience and accessibility.

“As a firm whose enterprise resolved round leisure merchandise and software program instruments, you will need to us, in addition to our viewers and companions, to search out extra methods to make sure that we’re contributing to the industries we’re a half of and the individuals who make up these industries,” says Kamini Tiwari, VP of Social Impression at Humble Bundle. “From day one everybody at Humble has wished to search out methods to offer again by our work and it is all of the extra rewarding after we can see the affect hitting even nearer to house.”

On the subject of variety, fairness and alternative, Humble observes that solely 24% of recreation builders in the US are girls, regardless of girls making up virtually 50% of the gaming market.

To stage the enjoying area in phrases of bringing totally different views to games, Humble helps a quantity of related organisations, corresponding to Ladies Make Games Scholarship Fund, XPerience Studios and The ESA Basis.

The Ladies Make Games Scholarship Fund presents workshops and camps particularly for ladies, serving to them put together for future careers in games.

From its 2024 funds, Humble is supporting GMGSF on a complete school scholarship, 20 scholarships for its three-week summer time camp, 800 workshop scholarships for college students world wide and 10 GDC scholarships. It’s going to additionally allow entry to free recreation dev tutorials and school assets, reaching 15,000 college students.

XPerience Studios, in the meantime, is an organisation with the objective of lifting up minority builders utilizing acceleration grant packages and mentorship.

In 2024, funds raised by Humble’s neighborhood helped XPerience Studios to launch the XP Fund, which offers funding assets and steering to underrepresented indie devs – serving to their games, and the tales behind them, safe visibility they in any other case would not get. Humble chosen XPerience as a charity accomplice in 2024 partly as a means of evolving its personal work by the Black Recreation Developer Fund.

The XP Fund is currently taking applications, and can present grants to 4 builders or studios to assist take their initiatives to the subsequent stage of improvement. XPerience may also ship 25 recreation builders to games conferences.

By the ESA Basis, Humble’s help funded 4 scholarships for undergraduates from underrepresented teams. Humble’s funding can be offering profession improvement webinars, high-spec laptops, paid attendance and different types of help to these chosen.

In accordance with Humble, all of this quantities to creating equitable alternatives for communities which have traditionally lacked them, serving to them construct the abilities and safe the funds wanted for bringing their concepts to life.

“From day one everybody at Humble has wished to search out methods to offer again by our work and it is all of the extra rewarding after we can see the affect hitting even nearer to house.”

Kamini Tiwari, Humble

“Our neighborhood lets us know the way they need us to indicate up, as a result of these are causes which are as essential to them as they’re to us,” says Tiwari. “It is actually a credit score to them that we have been capable of do the work we have achieved over the previous fourteen years.”

On the subject of psychological well being in gaming, Humble partnered with three key organisations in 2024: Secure In Our World, Take This and Disaster Textual content Line.

Humble’s collaboration with Secure In Our World has additionally centered on games industry-specific points, including psychological well being challenges created by the rampant quantity of studio closures and layoffs in latest years. Humble’s funds had been utilized by Secure In Our World to offer free coaching and training packages for over 100 industry staff in 2024.

Humble can be supporting the creation of the organisation’s International Psychological Well being Accreditation scheme, launching in spring 2025. The objective is to create an industry customary for psychological well being in the office.

Nonprofit Take This’s work is all about lowering stigma round psychological well being in gaming, and it is well-known in the US for its AFK rooms at PAX occasions. In 2024, the organisation’s future was wanting unsure – however Humble’s funding has helped it stay operational. As a consequence, Take It will proceed to host AFK quiet rooms at PAX East, PAX West, PAX Unplugged and MomoCon in 2025.

Humble additionally labored with Disaster Textual content Line in 2024, launching a useful resource hub and co-branded textual content line to supply rapid, confidential 24/7 help to those that wanted it in gaming. Humble’s funds supported over 4,400 conversations with those that used the service.

“One of issues that’s been essential to us is attempting to make sure that the methods we accomplice with charities is significant,” says Tiwari. “In lots of circumstances, we’re merely donating funds, and we all know how essential that’s not only for us however for a lot of different organisations on the market who’re in on social affect. However we additionally like to search out methods to interrupt by the noise a little and help our charity companions’ awareness-building efforts, such because the devoted line we labored on with Disaster Textual content Line, in addition to goal our help towards particular packages inside our companions’ broader operations.”

With Kid’s Play, Humble helped present games for therapeutic functions in hospitals in the US and the UK, in addition to supporting a groundbreaking interventional cardiac MRI suite at Le Bonheur Youngsters’s Hospital in Tennessee.

And with Particular Impact, the accessibility specialist charity, Humble’s funding helped it broaden with two extra employees hires, in addition to delivering 100 bespoke assistive controllers and 100 new eye-tracking setups constructed for gamers with disabilities. The funding additionally helped with the launch of 4 accessible Eye Gaze Games mobile apps.

Widening the lens

Outdoors of gaming, Humble has prolonged its help of charities to different areas it really works in, particularly literature and software program. Tiwari says its viewers, in addition to its publishing and improvement companions, are enthusiastic about charities associated to those areas, in addition to the broader societal and environmental causes that Humble helps.

In accordance with Tiwari, “Literacy- and tech-related charities are very important, as they instantly help the development of our society, and so they’re deeply related to our identification as a firm. There’s an ongoing want for funding and help in these areas, which is why we’re dedicated to broadening our focus and making a significant affect the place it issues most.”

Within the e book industry, Humble’s funding helps organisations just like the Comedian Guide Authorized Protection Fund, the Nationwide Coalition In opposition to Censorship, EveryLibrary Institute and It Will get Higher, in addition to literacy packages like Room to Learn and First Guide.

Humble’s affect in software program mirrors many of its targets in the games industry: supporting charities that promote engineering-related schooling for low-income communities, girls and minorities, with the objective of creating the subsequent era of information staff and leaders.

Humble partnered with Ladies Who Code to supply 5,750 ladies free entry to after-school golf equipment, the place they might study common programming ideas, and thereby encouraging them to think about pursuing careers in STEM-related fields.

It additionally backs the Hidden Genius Venture, which trains and mentors Black male youth in know-how creation, entrepreneurship and management expertise, which tallies with Humble’s total objective to advance instructional entry, fairness and alternative. Humble is offering funds for 230 Macbooks for college students in its 15-month Intensive Immersion mentorship program.

As talked about, Humble’s funding prolonged to many different real-world causes in 2024, too, with $1.2 million raised for catastrophe response, restoration and resilience constructing charities. $2.3 million was raised for illness, prevention, analysis and cures, whereas 4,577,744 meals had been offered in 2024 too.

It is a reminder that Humble’s targets stay distinct amongst retailers – prospects shopping for games, books, or software program have made a measurable distinction to communities affected by pure disasters and societal upheaval.

“We’re immensely grateful to our neighborhood and our companions for coming collectively to make what we hope is a actual and lasting distinction in the world,” Tiwari says.

Discover extra particulars of how the funding was allocated in the complete Humble 2024 Social Impression Report here.