A new classroom can give a child a place to learn, but it can’t do much about an empty stomach.
For the past several years, Beast Philanthropy has been helping build and improve schools in West Africa. When the effort started, the team ran into a problem no amount of construction could fix: Many children had little to eat during the school day. A classroom meant nothing if the kids sitting in it were hungry.
The problem brought our organizations together. Over the next five years, Beast Philanthropy and the Rockefeller Foundation will help provide roughly 4,000 children in Ghana and Kenya with lunch five days a week, in a program run by local partners and using food from nearby farmers. We’ll also film the work.
That last point may be a surprise. Why bring cameras?
We both came to this work because we’ve seen what video can do: It uniquely moves people to act. For Jimmy, it happened gradually. As he built a following as MrBeast through high-stakes challenges and surprise gifts to strangers, he started hearing from viewers who said his videos pushed them to do something kind themselves. For Raj, it happened in a day, when Nelson Mandela visited Detroit, his hometown, in 1990. Watching on TV in the family living room, he was riveted by Mandela’s call for love and justice.
One of us became the most-followed creator on YouTube, with more than 500 million subscribers, using the camera to show acts of philanthropy at scale. The other ran the U.S. Agency for International Development and now leads a philanthropy that has given away more than $30 billion over the past 113 years.
Despite our different paths, we have arrived at the same place: in a time of deepfakes, disinformation and doubt, those who want to do good in the world — and to inspire others to do the same — have to do as much showing as telling. Today, those leading the way in charity need both good acts and a bigger audience to make kindness go viral.
It’s no secret that the world is becoming a less charitable place. A recent global poll from the Rockefeller Foundation found that seven in 10 people believe the world got worse over the past year. In the first two decades of this century, the share of American households that give to charity fell from 66 percent to less than half. Entire countries have become stingier too: Overseas development aid from wealthy nations fell 23 percent last year, the steepest one-year drop on record.
Part of the reason for this dwindling interest is that few people see good work in action. They see or hear an appeal, they write a check or click on “Donate” on their phone, and the receipt marks the end of the transaction.
Video can help charity keep up with a changing world.
In 2022, in the process of launching the chocolate brand Feastables, Jimmy and his team learned that more than 1.5 million children are illegally working on cocoa farms in Ghana and elsewhere in the region. The Beast team set out to get those children into classrooms, while helping farmers earn a living wage. And just as important in the video era, Jimmy also set out to tell those people’s story through inspiring videos.
That’s when Beast Philanthropy began working with the Rockefeller Foundation, which has made a big bet on helping 100 million children get nutritious, sustainable school meals by 2030. Meals keep kids in school and serve as a safety net during famines.
It’s early days, but the change is visible on the ground in Ghana. Children are in new classrooms with clean water and a daily meal, women are running new income-generating enterprises, and locally hired field agents visit households to track children’s well-being and step in with support where it’s needed. More children are in school, and CARE and our local partners’ early data suggests food is one reason why.
People are engaging with the videos too. The February MrBeast video “I Built 10 Schools Around the World” has been watched more than 82 million times and liked 2.4 million times. Those numbers demonstrate the unique power video has to capture people’s attention and inspire them to care. Watching children line up for seconds of a hearty, nutrient-rich stew cooked in a solar-powered kitchen is the kind of storytelling that truly moves viewers.
And that same video can help viewers hold charities accountable too. This is a five-year effort, not a one-meal or one-video one. In a way a drier impact assessment never can, video makes plain what’s working and what’s not. Over the next five years, the videos will complement a monitoring system run in partnership with the local cooperative that collects the data, and with the International Cocoa Initiative.
Of course, filming comes with responsibilities of its own. A child should never feel that receiving help depends on appearing in a video. Our team sticks to a very firm rule: Cameras capture what’s already happening, and any child can step out of a shot at any time, no explanation needed. Showing the hard realities that make charity necessary requires care, and we’re taking it.
Right now, institutional charities and philanthropies speak to a very small slice of YouTube’s growing audience. That’s understandable. Good charity doesn’t always make good content. In a perfect world, fund-raising would be easy. But in the real world, we have to work to get people to care. Hope can sell, if we do it with the right tools and talent. And we’re trying to show one way we can.
Video is what got both of us into this way of life. We think it can do the same for many others. This project is a good start: Fewer kids will go to bed hungry, and viewers around the world will have the opportunity to see the results and join the movement to get school meals to the millions of children still trying to study on an empty stomach. That is how kindness goes viral.
Jimmy Donaldson is the founder of Beast Industries and Beast Philanthropy. Rajiv Shah is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation and the author of “Big Bets.”
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