Riot Games’ Social Impact Report details efforts to make charities more resilient

Riot Games released its social impact report today to detail the efforts it made in 2021 to help charities become more resilient amid the pandemic.

According to the report, in 2021 Riot held its largest in-game fundraiser in the League of Legends universe to date, Sentinels of Light, where players raised $5.8 million for the Social Impact Fund, and 30
nonprofits nominated by players from 18 different countries were selected to receive a $10,000 grant each.

Riot’s Valorant game also hosted its first in-game fundraiser, raising $5.5 million through player purchases of the Give Back bundle.

“With Valorant, we had the opportunity for a whole new community of players to participate,” Jeffrey Burrell, head of social impact at Riot Games, told GamesBeat.

Last year, the company had a great year with the launch of the mobile game Wild Rift, the broadcast of the award-winning Netflix TV show Arcane, and the largest in-game fundraising campaign to date. But the company takes time every year to also celebrate its social impact efforts, which began in 2019 with the creation of a social impact fund.

Burrell said the company has exposed all of its 180 million players to efforts to give back and make a lasting impact in their own communities with the click of a button.

Riot attracted attention for his charitable efforts. In 2021, Engage for Good awarded Riot its second Golden Halo Award for last year’s Dawnbringer Karma in-game fundraiser, and last month, Riot was named on the 2022 Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas List for the 2021 Sentinels of Light in-game fundraiser. .

With the Sentinels Initiative, for the first time, Riot invited players to directly submit nonprofits that really resonated with them — either volunteering or giving back to those who helped them.

“We had 19,000 submissions from multiple countries, and we were able to support small regional nonprofits that the company would never have found out if it was only focused in the US,” Burrell said.

Riot focused on the charities that stood out and examined them for their financial and legal compliance.

build resilience

If 2020 was a year of unprecedented challenges and global crises, 2021 was all about building
resilience amid the ongoing pandemic.

Businesses, governments, nonprofits and community groups worked together to help those most affected by the global pandemic, economic downturn, food insecurity, racial injustice and more.

The ambition was to be the world’s most player-oriented game company outside of its products. The goal was to help all 180 million players make a real and lasting difference in their communities.

Burrell likes the effort of letting gamers choose which charities to donate to. While he sees the value of the company’s employees choosing how to make an impact, through inside-out efforts, Burrell also said the company believes in outside-in efforts, where the community tells Riot what it cares about. .

Part of the social impact effort is understanding what the players care about. Riot accomplishes this through player voting campaigns, where players can vote for regional nonprofits that matter to them.

“We base that a lot on, you know, the research and conversations we have with players around the world,” said Burrell.

The company starts with the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, then refines it to find out what players in places like the US care about compared to Brazil or Turkey.

great efforts

The company has raised more than $2 million in the past for a COVID-19 relief effort and has raised $5.4 million this year to address victims of the war in Ukraine.

Riot focuses on areas of education, covering topics such as STEAM and social and emotional learning. It also focuses on opportunities, meaning initiatives around mental health and living healthy and productive lives, and citizenship, or urging people to be their best selves, Burrell said. Riot also focuses on sustainability, another new part of its social impact efforts.

“A lot of the work is focused on the areas where we think we can add excessive value,” Burrell said. “It doesn’t mean that other things aren’t important or necessary. But if we give $1 to each cause, it won’t have too much of an impact.”

The company partnered with the White House to do its part in spreading awareness about COVID-19 vaccines during the ongoing pandemic. That effort reached 1.5 million unique viewers through public announcements during esports broadcasts.

Riot donated $500,000 to stop the spread of Covid-19 in the US and helped set up more than 30 vaccination sites in areas lacking access.

All of the company’s efforts have contributed to the social impact effort, in part through the company’s global service month taking place over the summer, Burrell said.

“Every year we have each of our offices do an activation in their local community to come back in one way or another. So we’ve had a great turnout from all of our rioters,” Burrell said.

Sustainability and data privacy

Riot has added a new category of security and privacy to its social impact report. It noted that education launched around two-factor authentication, leading to 1.3 million players adopting better data security practices.

“We’ve shared a lot in the past about data privacy and our principles and our guidelines and safeguards,” said Burrell. “This is just another way of us reporting on it annually and continuing that conversation with players and anyone who might be interested.”

In addition to data privacy, Riot is also focusing on sustainability this year.

“It’s not just the impact we have by giving money back, for example, but also how we appear within our own operations,” Burrell said. “How do we appear within our communities and to our players and to rioters? And so I’d like to see this evolve into a more traditional ESG report over time. I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”

The company went from one big game to five games, and that had consequences for CO2 emissions. Now the company is trying to understand what the real impact is. Riot continues to report on its diversity and inclusion efforts in a separate report.

theory of change

Burrell looks at an idea called a “theory of change.” If a nonprofit has a theory of change about what it can uniquely do to improve a situation in the world or community, then its purpose is clear.

“I really like those organizations that have a theory of change that’s based on evidence and research, and use it in new and innovative ways,” Burrell said.

One group focused on tech companies pooling their money to double the number of women of color graduating with computer science degrees in the US. That’s one way to help marginalized communities, because the theory is that if you help that community grow and expand, you create career paths that have a greater impact on other communities.

“That’s a great way to leverage all of our funding collectively, more than anyone or a company could do on its own, but it also provides a community” with something that really makes an impact, he said.