NICKMERCS Is Always Finding Ways To Give Back To His Community

Nicholas Kolcheff, more commonly known as NICKMERCS, is known for his streams of first-person shooter games like Apex Legends, and he brings along a personality that is impossible to not enjoy. Kolcheff radiates a positive energy on streams that makes everyone feel like they’re a part of his community, the MFAM.

Kolcheff recently hosted a turkey drive in the parking lot of the Detroit Lions’ football stadium, and that same energy could be seen in every interaction.

Kolcheff was very careful in how he chose to approach the event. He wanted this to be about giving out turkeys, first and foremost. As a result, he chose to not advertise it too much on social media.

“It was a big success,” he tells Uproxx. “We didn’t want to put it on our socials and make it so much about, like, an MFAM or a fan thing. We kind of just wanted to invest back into the community and give some food away to those that need it. It would be kind of weird if there were some people that really needed a turkey that day and they were in line behind ten 18-year-old kids trying to get a picture and their G FUEL can signed. So we didn’t do that.”

For Kolcheff, the turkey drive was about making the day better for anyone that chose to participate. He’s always tried to put others before himself during the holidays, a value that he says his family instilled in him from an early age.

“It’s a direct representation of how my father and my debt-owing grandma brought us all up,” he says. “It was about teamwork. It was about, you know, not only taking care of yourself, but taking care of each other. Even as a little kid, my dad used to make us — I hated it at first — he would make us go to food banks and food drives, soup kitchens when we were kids, especially during the holidays. And if you do that enough, man, it leaves an impact on you at a very young age, you learn all about perspective and being able to appreciate the things that you do have. And then you also learn how great of a feeling it is to really help somebody and pick them up and put them in a good spot.”

Kolcheff brings that same spirit of giving to his community. Despite the success of the drive itself, he noticed how difficult it is to have it at a singular location in Detroit — if a person doesn’t have a car or a consistent way to get from point A to point B, it’s almost impossible to participate. It’s also not always fun to do something outdoors in Michigan this late in the year.

While he saw the event as a success, he wanted to do more and potentially get his community involved.

“I think what we want to do is we want to make it more than just a Detroit thing,” he says. “Like, Detroit’s important to me because it’s my hometown and I want to do that. But I also want to encourage the very, very large community that we do have to do it in their communities. I think there’s some really cool, fun ways we can do that. I know people love cash, everybody loves cash, so I can incentivize our community with cash to do it on their own as well, and we can do it where we do a basket challenge, where everybody gets a basket. I’ve seen it done before. You get a basket, you go to the grocery store, you put everything that you think somebody might need to make a Thanksgiving Day special in that basket.”

Kolcheff has always made it a point to give back to the hundreds of thousands of viewers who watch his streams. Recently, he gave out $300,000 worth of gifts to members of his community for the holidays — tickets to the Super Bowl, an NFL jersey, and even some customized gifts for longtime viewers, like a light backdrop for someone trying to get into streaming.

We can always expect Kolcheff to bring the infectious energy that leaves everyone smiling to whatever he does, and that’s a huge part of why his giveaways are successful.