Itch charity bundles aren’t everything but they can have an impact
Nonprofits talk about the benefits of funds with no strings attached.
"It's a hard time to be a nonprofit”, said Kelli Dunlap, clinical psychologist and executive director of Take This, an organization that works within the overlap of mental health and the gaming world. Nonprofits have been reeling from the aftershocks of the January memo freezing all US federal funding, especially around “DEI, woke gender ideology, and the Green New Deal”. The memo was rescinded after judicial intervention, but various reports show that the Trump administration has blatantly continued the spending freeze in various ways. The turmoil caused by these actions isn’t just felt by those who received grants. “With the repeal of the federal grants, there's a lot more pressure on family foundations and smaller [sources] that traditionally nonprofits have worked a lot with,” said Dunlap.
As NPR reported in April, grant-giving foundations are receiving more applications with every federal cut by the Trump administration. This potentially means less funds available, even for the organisations that don’t rely on government support. “I've heard it described as the most difficult fundraising year in at least a decade,” said Dunlap. “And that's why something like Solo But Not Alone is just so incredibly important.”
For the last two years, Take This has been the recipient of funds collected from the sale of the Solo But Not Alone game bundles, organized by game designer Leon Richardson on itch.io. Ever since the first iteration in 2021, Richardson and the designers who contribute games have raised an average of $33,000 every year. Across those five years, this number hasn’t varied too much. These annual bundles are one of the many examples of how charity fundraising through itch.io isn’t just a passing trend. But the big question is whether they accomplish anything.
