"That scarred me" - xQc reveals staggering amount of money Softgiving paid him to livestream with Wiz Khalifa

Twitch streamer Felix “xQc” took to his stream to react to a charity scandal involving Brandfluence (previously known as Softgiving). The news was first circulated courtesy of the detailed and incriminating report written by Jacob Wolf (@JacobWolf). According to the write-up, Matt Pfaltzgraf (CEO of Softgiving) has been dishonest with the distribution of funds that were supposed to be headed to charity.

Softgiving has also collaborated with several influencers and streamers to raise money for charities. However, the report suggested that 42% of the funds collected went to their own pockets.

Felix said that he was offered a whopping $90K for a fundraising stream with Wiz Khalifa and AustinShows. However, their stream barely collected $61K of their $270K target. He said:

"I stopped responding to any sponsored charity. I just stopped responding to them. That scarred me."

---

What are the allegations made against Softgiving?

A new charity fraud incident appears to have come to light after Jacob Wolf posted a rather elaborate report incriminating Softgiving and their alleged financial misconduct.

According to the report, Softgiving, between 2020 and 2021, raised a total of $6.2 million in donations (as per public tax records). However, nearly $2.6 million, which is about 42% of the entire pool, was reportedly pocketed by the company to cover its expenses.

Another interesting fact that has risen is that donors who were donating their money to Softgiving weren’t actually donating to them (directly, at least). Givinga Foundation, a Massachusetts-based tech company, was the one receiving the money, which then split the funds between the charities and Softgiving (essentially playing an unusual role of a middleman).

Givinga allegedly acted as a middleman (Image via Jacob Wolf)

The report also highlighted an incident involving the company’s collaboration with Hasan “HasanAbi,” a Twitch streamer and political commentator. Hasan had joined hands with Softgiving to raise funds for the victims affected by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria (February 2023).

That said, Joshua Belkin, a former Tiltify software engineer, leaked Softgiving’s commission-based contract stating that the company would receive 50 percent of donations after reimbursement of expenses. This naturally caused considerable uproar online, particularly among the donors who felt that their donations were being pocketed by the organization.

Softgiving came under fire during HasanAbi’s stream (Image via Jacob Wolf)

---

This, of course, isn’t the only charity-related controversy plaguing the online world. Another organization, the Open Hand Foundation (run by YouTuber The Completionist), has also faced similar allegations of not dispersing the funds to the charities that they had pledged to donate.