Netflix announces $100 million emergency fund to help the creative community

Netflix becomes the latest company to announce steps to help people struggling because of the ongoing health crisis. In a press release today, the company announced a $100 million emergency fund to help the creative community who has taken a hit due to the coronavirus outbreak.

he Covid-19 crisis is devastating for many industries, including the creative community. Almost all television and film production has now ceased globally – leaving hundreds of thousands of crew and cast without jobs. These include electricians, carpenters, drivers, hair and makeup artists and more, many of whom are paid hourly wages and work on a project-to-project basis.

This community has supported Netflix through the good times, and we want to help them through these hard times, especially while governments are still figuring out what economic support they will provide. So we’ve created a $100 million fund to help with hardship in the creative community.

Most of the fund will go towards support for the hardest hit workers on our own productions around the world. We’re in the process of working out exactly what this means, production by production. This is in addition to the two weeks pay we’ve already committed to the crew and cast on productions we were forced to suspend last week.

– Netflix

The company also noted that it will be giving $15 million of the fund “to third parties and non-profits providing emergency relief to out-of-work crew and cast in the countries where we have a large production base.” Furthermore, Netflix announced $1 million each for the following:

•  SAG-AFTRA Foundation Covid-19 Disaster Fund
• Motion Picture and Television Fund
• Actors Fund Emergency Assistance
• $1 million between the AFC and Fondation des Artistes

Netflix is just one of the companies working on helping out the community during the current crisis. Earlier today, WhatsApp introduced a chatbot in partnership with WHO to help users get reliable information and Google updated Maps to remind users to their doctors if they are coming down with symptoms of the coronavirus.