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

More generally, Humble’s causes are focused around health and well-being, crisis and disaster relief, equity and opportunity, quality education, and climate change and sustainability. The organisation supported 4,500 charities across the year in total.

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

As shown in the infographic below, the money it raised last year had a far-reaching impact.

(Note: Humble Bundle shares GamesIndustry.biz‘s owner, IGN Entertainment Inc.).

In games specifically, which is an area of social impact that hasn’t historically received as much dedicated attention from large-scale corporate charity initiatives, Humble works with charities focused on diversity, opportunity, equity, mental health support and resilience and accessibility.

“As a company whose business resolved around entertainment products and software tools, it is important to us, as well as our audience and partners, to find more ways to ensure that we’re contributing to the industries we’re a part of and the people who make up those industries,” says Kamini Tiwari, VP of Social Impact at Humble Bundle. “From day one everyone at Humble has wanted to find ways to give back through our work and it’s all the more rewarding when we can see the impact hitting even closer to home.”

When it comes to diversity, equity and opportunity, Humble observes that only 24% of game developers in the US are women, despite women making up almost 50% of the gaming market.

To level the playing field in terms of bringing different perspectives to games, Humble supports a number of relevant organisations, such as Girls Make Games Scholarship Fund, XPerience Studios and The ESA Foundation.

The Girls Make Games Scholarship Fund offers workshops and camps specifically for girls, helping them prepare for future careers in games.

From its 2024 funds, Humble is supporting GMGSF on a comprehensive college scholarship, 20 scholarships for its three-week summer camp, 800 workshop scholarships for students around the world and 10 GDC scholarships. It’ll also enable access to free game dev tutorials and college resources, reaching 15,000 students.

XPerience Studios, meanwhile, is an organisation with the goal of lifting up minority developers using acceleration grant programs and mentorship.

In 2024, funds raised by Humble’s community helped XPerience Studios to launch the XP Fund, which provides funding resources and guidance to underrepresented indie devs – helping their games, and the stories behind them, secure visibility they otherwise wouldn’t get. Humble selected XPerience as a charity partner in 2024 partly as a means of evolving its own work through the Black Game Developer Fund.

The XP Fund is currently taking applications, and will provide grants to four developers or studios to help take their projects to the next stage of development. XPerience will also send 25 game developers to games conferences.

Through the ESA Foundation, Humble’s support funded four scholarships for undergraduates from underrepresented groups. Humble’s funding is also providing career development webinars, high-spec laptops, paid attendance and other forms of support to those selected.

According to Humble, all of this amounts to creating equitable opportunities for communities that have historically lacked them, helping them build the skills and secure the funds needed for bringing their ideas to life.

“From day one everyone at Humble has wanted to find ways to give back through our work and it’s all the more rewarding when we can see the impact hitting even closer to home.”

Kamini Tiwari, Humble

“Our community lets us know how they want us to show up, because these are causes that are as important to them as they are to us,” says Tiwari. “It’s really a credit to them that we’ve been able to do the work we’ve done over the past fourteen years.”

When it comes to mental health in gaming, Humble partnered with three key organisations in 2024: Safe In Our World, Take This and Crisis Text Line.

Humble’s collaboration with Safe In Our World has also focused on games industry-specific issues, including mental health challenges created by the rampant volume of studio closures and layoffs in recent years. Humble’s funds were used by Safe In Our World to provide free training and coaching programs for over 100 industry workers in 2024.

Humble is also supporting the creation of the organisation’s Global Mental Health Accreditation scheme, launching in spring 2025. The goal is to create an industry standard for mental health in the workplace.

Nonprofit Take This’s work is all about reducing stigma around mental health in gaming, and it’s well-known in the US for its AFK rooms at PAX events. In 2024, the organisation’s future was looking uncertain – but Humble’s funding has helped it remain operational. As a result, Take This will continue to host AFK quiet rooms at PAX East, PAX West, PAX Unplugged and MomoCon in 2025.

Humble also worked with Crisis Text Line in 2024, launching a resource hub and co-branded text line to offer immediate, confidential 24/7 support to those who needed it in gaming. Humble’s funds supported over 4,400 conversations with those who used the service.

“One of things that’s been important to us is trying to ensure that the ways we partner with charities is meaningful,” says Tiwari. “In many cases, we’re simply donating funds, and we know how important that is not just for us but for many other organisations out there who are in on social impact. But we also like to find ways to break through the noise a little and support our charity partners’ awareness-building efforts, such as the dedicated line we worked on with Crisis Text Line, as well as target our support toward specific programs within our partners’ broader operations.”

With Child’s Play, Humble helped provide games for therapeutic purposes in hospitals in the US and the UK, as well as supporting a groundbreaking interventional cardiac MRI suite at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Tennessee.

And with Special Effect, the accessibility specialist charity, Humble’s funding helped it expand with two additional staff hires, as well as delivering 100 bespoke assistive controllers and 100 new eye-tracking setups built for players with disabilities. The funding also helped with the launch of four accessible Eye Gaze Games mobile apps.

Widening the lens

Outside of gaming, Humble has extended its support of charities to other areas it works in, namely literature and software. Tiwari says its audience, as well as its publishing and development partners, are passionate about charities related to these areas, in addition to the broader societal and environmental causes that Humble supports.

According to Tiwari, “Literacy- and tech-related charities are vital, as they directly support the advancement of our society, and they’re deeply connected to our identity as a company. There is an ongoing need for funding and support in these areas, which is why we’re committed to broadening our focus and making a meaningful impact where it matters most.”

In the book industry, Humble’s funding supports organisations like the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the National Coalition Against Censorship, EveryLibrary Institute and It Gets Better, as well as literacy programs like Room to Read and First Book.

Humble’s impact in software mirrors many of its goals in the games industry: supporting charities that promote engineering-related education for low-income communities, women and minorities, with the goal of creating the next generation of knowledge workers and leaders.

Humble partnered with Girls Who Code to offer 5,750 girls free access to after-school clubs, where they could learn about universal programming concepts, and thereby encouraging them to consider pursuing careers in STEM-related fields.

It also backs the Hidden Genius Project, which trains and mentors Black male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship and leadership skills, which tallies with Humble’s overall goal to advance educational access, equity and opportunity. Humble is providing funds for 230 Macbooks for students in its 15-month Intensive Immersion mentorship program.

As mentioned, Humble’s funding extended to many other real-world causes in 2024, too, with $1.2 million raised for disaster response, recovery and resilience building charities. $2.3 million was raised for disease, prevention, research and cures, while 4,577,744 meals were provided in 2024 too.

It’s a reminder that Humble’s goals remain distinct among retailers – customers buying games, books, or software have made a measurable difference to communities affected by natural disasters and societal upheaval.

“We’re immensely grateful to our community and our partners for coming together to make what we hope is a real and lasting difference in the world,” Tiwari says.

Find more details of how the funding was allocated in the full Humble 2024 Social Impact Report here.