Humble Bundle milestones: $50M to charity, $100M to devs

Humble Bundle has raised more than $50 million for charity since launching its first sale in May 2010 – the Humble Indie Bundle, as it was called back then. That bundle introduced the idea of "pay what you want" pricing and offered customers power over the allocation of their payments, plus the chance to do something good for charity. Specifically for that first promotion, it was the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play Charity.

"When my co-founder Jeff [Rosen] first contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play for our first promotion, no one knew who we were," Humble co-founder John Graham tells Joystiq. "After pitching the confusing idea, in probably too much detail, he was cut off: 'So let me get this straight, you are basically asking if you can give us money? Sure!'"

Humble Bundle now supports a roster of more than 50 charitable organizations and has expanded with weekly bundles, ebook bundles, mobile bundles and the Humble Store, which by itself raised $1 million for charity by June 2014. That very first Humble Bundle raised roughly $400,000 for charity – $200,000 each for EFF and Child's Play – at the time an "incomprehensible" amount to John Graham.

"It produced a lot of pressure to keep going," he says. "Our potential to raise another $400,000 for charity felt like a moral obligation. Raising more than two orders of magnitude beyond that goal was not something we ever considered."