The Rise of Independent Creator-Led Political Fundraising
Last Monday, popular streamer and online content creator Hasan Piker raised more than $56,000 in a single live stream for Oliver Larkin, a former Bernie Sanders campaign staffer challenging moderate Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz in Florida’s upcoming primary election. Shortly after the stream concluded, Larkin confirmed on X that the haul was the largest single-day fundraising total his campaign had ever recorded.
Over the past several years, digital creators have become a core component of modern political campaign messaging strategy. Piker’s recent stream for Larkin, however, is the latest clear sign that online creator influence is now also being leveraged to drive direct political fundraising.
Piker is far from alone in this work. Trisha Paytas, a YouTube creator with more than 5 million subscribers who is best known for viral provocative stunts (not formal political activism), donated more than $10,000 in February to Creators Against ICE, a campaign organized by the creator collective Creators for Peace. The effort is just one of dozens of fundraisers run by creator coalitions that are repurposing massive social media followings into powerful independent political fundraising machines.
Unlike traditional fundraising structures such as super PACs, which pool contributions from publicly disclosed donors, these creator collectives pool audience reach instead. They leverage existing social networks and off-the-shelf tools like Shopify and Tiltify to convert casual followers into donors. Creators for Peace is one of the most prominent of these new groups, with creator coalitions now mobilizing around causes ranging from Gaza humanitarian relief to immigration aid, building a model that could reshape grassroots fundraising ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“There are a lot of creators that I think recognize the power of having a platform,” says Hassan Khadair, one of Creators for Peace’s lead organizers. “There's more of a call to action culturally with creators than I think there's ever been before.”
Creators for Peace was founded in 2024, when creator Nikki Carreon gathered a small group of fellow creators in an Instagram group DM to organize fundraising for Gaza relief. That original small chat quickly expanded into a 120+ member Discord server, bringing together influencers with millions of combined followers across Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube. High-profile creators including Kurtis Conner, Hasan Piker, and the Try Guys—who collectively count more than 15 million followers across their main platforms—have joined the effort. Members share educational graphics with their audiences and host coordinated live fundraising streams; by the end of the group’s first Gaza relief campaign, they had raised more than $1.6 million total.
“We largely start from zero on each new campaign. I will individually reach out to several creators, we'll get something out, and then once we allow that to catch fire on its own, a bunch of creators will reach out to us,” Khadair says. For Creators for Peace’s immigration fundraiser, he added, “we really wanted to try and move out of the leftist bubble just a little bit, because a lot of our audiences tend to align with us on these issues already.”
By partnering with more traditionally apolitical creators like Paytas, the Creators Against ICE campaign has raised nearly $140,000 for the National Immigration Law Center, according to the group’s public Tiltify fundraising page.
For years, creators have faced widespread criticism for staying silent on major political issues. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, audience pressure boiled over: followers began demanding that even creators focused on non-political niches like fashion and food take public stances on political issues. In these online spaces, silence on high-stakes issues is widely viewed as complicity.
Groups of progressive Democratic creators, like the political outlet UnderTheDeskNews, have also launched independent fundraising efforts, including funding for community alert systems to notify neighborhoods of ICE agent presence and support for local community watches. In February, around 80 creators participated in an anti-ICE merchandise fundraiser tied to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, selling T-shirts, hats, and stickers featuring the singer’s popular Sapo Concho mascot. The campaign raised more than $100,000 for immigration legal defense funds.
“For a traditional fundraiser, even at the local level, you’re buying a seat for $250 a night. And that’s something not everybody has access to,” says Jenny Kay, a spokesperson for the fundraiser. “But a sweatshirt, bracelet, or hat for $5, $10, $50 feels very accessible to the masses and more authentic to people. Not everybody wants to go sit at a dinner and listen to somebody speak on stage in a canned response. People want to be on the streets reaching more people and wearing their politics.”
Throughout the 2024 election cycle, political campaigns primarily partnered with creators to post content on the campaign’s behalf, amplifying messaging and expanding online reach. Heading into the 2026 midterms, creators are building their own independent infrastructure to support the campaigns and issues they care about on their own terms, pushing back against traditional top-down political party models.
While large-scale fundraising for candidates by creator groups has not yet happened at scale, efforts like Creators for Peace and Piker’s stream with Larkin show that some form of independent creator-led political action committee may not be too far off.
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