The Tablethon team’s tips on sailing through your livestream
One of our top streamers is the fundraising group Tablethon. Over the past two years, they’ve raised over £4,000 for Sense! We spoke to founder Zack about how they made their epic 48-hour stream event such a massive success last year.
I reached out to Sense with the idea of hosting a 24-hour stream for a tabletop roleplaying marathon. We wanted to do it in the winter months, where everyone would be indoors and up for joining in. I don’t think it took me and my friends long to get a community together.
We’d seen the Desert Bus for Hope campaign, where a group agreed to play Desert Bus for another hour after donation milestones were hit. They raised a lot of money and it just looked like amazing fun!
None of us had ever done an event like this, so we talked it all through with the community fundraising team at Sense. They loved the idea and gave us such a confidence boost. Together we started planning the stream.
It was a massive success! The team and I were blown away by the response we got. People were popping up with messages, sending over donations – the whole stream was so full and way more fun than I was expecting.
So, it was an easy decision to do it all again the next year. This time, we were even bigger and better. Tablethon hosted a 48-hour stream of us playing some incredible games. We raised well over £4,000 for Sense!
What the secret to our streaming success? There are a few tips and tricks worth taking note of.
Tablethon’s top five tips for success:
- Plan a schedule
Don’t wing it. Make sure you have a good idea of what you’re doing and how long for. Displaying the schedule somewhere on the stream page lets your audience see it and tune in to see the events they want.
- Plan early and often
Tablethon planning starts upwards of five months before the actual event. But that’s partly because we only get together every couple of weeks so have to plan little by little. The slow build up works really well and keeps us feeling relatively relaxed.
- Make your stream look nice
If any random people tune into your stream, you’ll want the overlay to grab their attention. Use it to communicate what you’re doing and why. I’d definitely suggest testing out your options beforehand.
- Set reasonable goals
Streaming for over 12 hours is really taxing, and many people don’t watch that late at night! A shorter stream that’s packed with content will work better than a longer stream that lacks energy.
- Have a backup admin
During Tablethon, there’s at least one person always on an ‘admin shift’, where all they do is watch the stream and react to anything that happens. It’s really reassuring to the people on-camera that someone’s watching their backs, and it reduces delays too!
