September 24, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Kevin Wu, a 19-year-old college student, is arguably more popular than Michael Jackson: His KevJumba channel on YouTube, featuring dozens of humorous homemade videos by Mr. Wu, has more than 660,000 subscribers who’ve signed up to receive notification whenever he posts new material.
(Michael Jackson’s YouTube channel, produced by Sony, has only 423,000 subscribers.)
Now Mr. Wu is using YouTube to channel some of his online fame to raise money for charity.
Here’s how: Mr. Wu’s online channel is so popular that he became a YouTube user partner, agreeing to let advertisers selected by YouTube place messages alongside his videos. In return, he receives half of the monthly fees each advertiser pays YouTube; the fees vary according to how many times each video is viewed. To benefit charity, Mr. Wu has created a second user partner channel on YouTube and is donating all the ad fees he earns to charities.
The JumbaFund channel, as it’s called, has attracted more than 285,000 subscribers, who are asked to nominate charities in comments posted in response to his videos each month. Mr. Wu then donates the ad fees he earns over that period to the charity with the most nominations.
In August, for example, Mr. Wu gave his earnings of $1,626.46 to Invisible Children, the charity that received the most nominations from 30,000 commenters. In May, it was St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, which got $1,708.51 after receiving the most mentions from 43,000 commenters.
