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In 2015, Tyler’s friend, Jake, was diagnosed with cancer and had to drop out of college. Tyler’s fraternity held a Be The Match® donor registration drive in honor of Jake, and that was where Tyler joined the Be The Match Registry®.
Five years later, he got a call he never expected to receive. He was a matching donor for a patient in need. Although he thought it was spam at first, he quickly called back and happily said yes.
“I’ve always been of the mindset that I’m here to serve others. I wanted to give this patient a new opportunity at life,” Tyler said.
After donating, Tyler was able to reconnect with Jake and celebrate. Unfortunately, a few months later, just a few
weeks before he would have graduated, Jake passed away.
Video games and giving back
After college, Tyler moved to a new state with his wife, started a new job, and quickly started to struggle with loneliness. So, he decided to livestream as his alter-ego, “CrzyMan”, play his favorite game, TrackMania, and talk to others that stopped by his stream. Being his authentic self and pouring love into others, he quickly developed a community of friends that have radical, unconditional love and acceptance for one another.
Tyler wanted to keep using his powers for good and decided his stream would be one that served others and focused on raising money for a wide variety of charities. Today, he runs events and tournaments where anyone can donate to the charity pool, and each participant competes for their charity of choice. If they win, their charity gets whatever was raised in the charity pool.
Recently, he combined his favorite charity, Be The Match, with his love of cycling, gaming, and giving back. He live-streamed a “bike-a-thon” fundraiser with our Stream the Match. The more people donated, the more he rode.
The livestreaming experience
Tyler incorporated some fun incentives at different milestones to encourage donations. Some of them included drinking a Taco Bell Fire Sauce packet, sprinting on his bike, getting off his bike to lift weights, and agreeing to wear a maid dress in a future
stream—nothing was off the table.
And his viewers responded well to these creative ideas. After biking 62 miles over seven hours, Tyler surpassed his goal and raised an outstanding $533!
“I was surprised at how quickly I was able to crush my milestones. And I was also happy with how easy it was to integrate the fundraising page into the stream,” Tyler says about his livestream fundraiser.
Impact of his efforts
Be The Match has been extremely influential in Tyler’s life and he’s honored to be able to continue Jake’s legacy.
“It’s ridiculously important to help people join the registry and to raise money to facilitate donors giving stem cells and patients affording a transplant,” Tyler said. He hopes that the money he and his friends raised is enough to save someone’s life.
Through raising funds for charity, sharing his story, and showing up as his best self in both the online and outside world, Tyler hopes that people know just how loved, important, and valued they are.
