Erik “Gronkh” Range is one of the absolute pioneers of German YouTube and is also successful as a streamer on Twitch. He often uses his reach for charitable purposes. On Sunday, he showed a documentary during the stream and his viewers flocked in droves to a donation platform.
Who is the streamer? Gronkh has been active on YouTube since 2010 and at one point had the most subscribed channel in Germany. He started with the block game Minecraft and now has over 4.9 million subscribers.
On Twitch, Gronkh has 1.5 million followers and is among the most-watched German streamers. In his streams, he plays various games, but he primarily spends time in the “Just Chatting” category, entertaining his viewers – or reacting to videos.
Such a video led to a spontaneous donation campaign.
For many, Gronkh and Minecraft are probably inseparable.
Gronkh helps a donation campaign during the stream
What kind of stream was it? Late on Sunday, November 6th, Gronkh watched a documentary about the iconic Penny Market on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn with his viewers. The documentary also addressed the poverty of some people in St. Pauli.
How did the donation campaign come about? After nearly 5 hours on air, Gronkh read a message that steered the stream in a completely different direction. While the chat was energetically discussing laundry detergent, Gronkh was made aware of the Gesundheitsmobil Hamburg.
This consists of a volunteer team and offers free and anonymous treatment for people without health insurance in front of the Kiez-Penny every second Sunday. You can find more about it on the website of the organization.
Gronkh was visibly moved by the efforts of the volunteers and thanked them for their work. Quickly, the question arose in his chat whether the Gesundheitsmobil could be supported with donations. Indeed, there was a donation appeal on the donation platform betterplace for the project.
Up to that point, the Gesundheitsmobil had hardly received any donations and was far from its goal of €10,500.
Gronkh’s viewers crash the donation platform
How did the spontaneous action go? About 5 minutes after Gronkh read the original message regarding the Gesundheitsmobil, he received a surprising note in the chat: The donation platform betterplace was down.
What happened? Apparently, so many of Gronkh’s viewers followed the link to the donation page for the Gesundheitsmobil that the website could not handle the sudden rush – at 11:00 on a Sunday evening, mind you.
Then the first donations started to come in. Gronkh could hardly keep up with reading the interim totals as the donated amount grew rapidly.
When the situation had calmed down enough for Gronkh to load the page and make his own donation, the donation goal had already been reached – 15 minutes after Gronkh read the first message.
Currently, over €18,000 have already been donated, and the donation goal has been raised to €20,400 so that people can continue to donate (Stand: 08.11.2022, 11:35).
Gronkh himself shared the before-and-after status of the donation page on Twitter and thanked his community for this great action: “A beautiful moment and ray of hope” amidst the headlines and strange times, said Gronkh (via Twitter).
The streamer plans to participate in two more donation campaigns this year: Loot for the World and the now 8th edition of the charity marathon Friendly Fire organized by Gronkh and the gaming group PietSmiet.
Hopefully, betterplace is well-prepared for the upcoming rush.
You can watch the whole stream on Gronkh’s website. The spontaneous donation action starts at 4:54:00.
Gronkh is not the only content creator who uses his reach for charitable purposes. In September, the YouTuber Connor “CDawgVA” impressed with a donation campaign that had him sweating profusely: He cycled for a week, all for a good cause.
