Fandoms Come Together To Help Combat Australia’s Wildfires

January 7, 2020 Angel Wilson
Australia Wildfires
Image: MyFireWatch

Australia’s wildfires have been raging for months, and the scale of the damage is almost beyond comprehension. But fandom is doing what fandom does best and coming together to raise funds for various relief groups.

At this time, Australia’s wildfires have claimed 25 human lives, more than half a billion animal lives, destroyed millions of acres of land, and caused billions of dollars in damage. Sixty-nine of the 136 fires in New South Wales are uncontained, meaning this catastrophe is far from over so many of these statistics will definitely go up.

Fans from various fandoms have come together to raise funds for various groups in an attempt to provide relief and mitigate the effects of the disaster. We will update this list as we become aware of more efforts, but this is what we’ve found so far.

Please cruise the list and if you see something that interests you, click on the links and chip in!

Australia’s Wildfires: Fandom Relief Efforts

Disclaimer: We have not been able to verify each individual charity’s merits. We recommend using Charity Navigator to vet whichever organization you plan on going with, or performing a good old fashioned Google search. 

There are a lot of ways to help relief efforts in the wake of Australia’s wildfires, so choose what works best for you.

Some of these fundraising efforts also require purchasing items through third parties or donating directly into a private PayPal account. We can’t vouch that the third parties will pass on the funds as promised, and will try to provide direct donation links where available.

If you aren’t comfortable with a particular third party or PayPal account, please select a different option from this list.

Actor Chris Hemsworth

Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, most notable for playing Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has turned to Twitter to rally his fans around wildfire relief efforts. He’s already donated a million dollars for relief efforts related to Australia’s wildfires, and has encouraged his fans to donate whatever they can. 

Most of his selected charities benefit firefighters directly, but it’s a pretty wide range and diverse group of organizations.

The link in his tweet leads to numerous charities including the Australian Red Cross, St Vincent de Paul Society, Celeste Barber Fund for NSW Rural Fire Services & Brigade, World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Warriors, NSW Rural Fire Service*, QLD Fire and Rescue*, SA County Fire Services*, Vic County Fire Authority*, Tasmania Fire Services*, Western Australia Fire & Emergency Services*, Community Enterprise Foundation*, and a GoFundMe linking to various individual fundraisers. 

*The charities with an asterisk next to them are for Australian donations only.

Promare Fandom

Promare fandom has two efforts going on right now. As we’re a fandom centered around firefighter characters, it makes sense we’d show up to raise funds for this. It’s thematic, if nothing else. 

First up, the Promare 2020 Calendars project is giving away digital copies of the calendar to those who donate $10 or more towards relief efforts. Please make sure your donations are time-stamped to receive this particular donation reward. Check out their twitter account for more details.

Twitter user DenkiMouse has created this delightful piece of art along with links to various organizations helping with relief efforts. If you can’t find anything in this article you’d want to buy, you can cruise this quoted thread and donate directly. A couple notable ones not otherwise linked to in this article include the FoodBank Victoria, Animals Australia, and Port Macquarie Koala Hospital. 

Actress Shoshannah Stern

Actress Shoshannah Stern, known for her roles on This Close and Supernatural, has created a charm to raise funds for WIRES, which helps Australian wildlife in distress. 

As more than half a billion animals have perished due to the fires (some estimates stating that we’re over 800,000,000 now), this is an excellent and pointed charity effort. 

You can learn more about this charity here and donate directly if you aren’t into this particular item.

Wynonna Earp Fandom

A member of the Wynonna Earp fandom is auctioning off some signed Chris Evenhuis art on eBay.  Right now they are still deciding which charity will get the funds, but there are several links in the comments to the thread if you want to direct donations directly to whichever one you desire. 

The Twitter user has promised to update Earpers with the final donation information so keep an eye out for updates.

Comic Artist Adam Ellis

For the month of January, all proceeds from comic creator Adam Ellis’s store and his Patreon will be donated to charity. He’ll be spread the donations across several charities with a focus on animal rescues. 

He’s open to suggestions about where these funds should go, so send him a tweet if you have one in mind! He’ll be donating in chunks throughout the month, so he’ll probably cover several with his various donations.

BTS Fandom

Fans of KPOP group BTS have already raised over $18,000 AUSD towards relief efforts, and they are still going strong. 

Their main donation effort, which is using a PayPal account through the Australian BTS fan Twitter account, is splitting funds between fire fighter related charities and the Red Cross.  The BTS fandom also has a GoFundMe set up to adopt Koalas from NSW Koala Hospital. This one has a $1000 goal. As of this writing they’ve raised $658 towards that goal.


 

Artist BossLogic

Popular artist Boss Logic is selling special prints to raise funds for the Red Cross to help firefighters and their families. The prints can be purchased here. 

#AuthorsForFireys

Various authors are offering services in an effort to raise funds for Australia’s wildfires through the #AuthorsForFireys tag. 

Here are a few of them. But please cruise the hashtag for a full list of all the amazing authors stepping up for this effort! There’s a lot of them and I selected a few of the interesting ones or ones that felt relevant to our readers. 

All donations should be made to CFA (County Fire Authority). Details about what these donations support can be found on their website.


 

Stranger Things Fandom

Update: Thanks to the tip from a reader, we have a couple of Stranger Things fan initiatives to add to the list!

Actor Dacre Montgomery (Billy Hargrove) has set up a GoFundMe, which will benefit the Red Cross. 

The Harringrove fandom (Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington shippers) have also set up a fanfiction auction called #Harringrove For Australia.  More information can be found here. 

Miscellaneous Fan Crafts for Australia’s Wildfire Relief

There are a few fan efforts to raise funds for Australia’s wildfires that aren’t fandom specific, so we’d like to drop some of those links here!

Have Another Link For Australia’s Wildefire Relief Efforts? Share them!

I know we’ve missed a lot because, unfortunately, I can’t have an eye on every fandom everywhere.

So if you’ve got a fandom-centric effort aimed at raising funds for relief efforts for Australia’s wildfires, please drop a comment below with relevant links! 

We’re happy to add it to the list no matter how small.  Every little bit helps.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.


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