In episode 61 of The Charity Charge Show, Stephen speaks with Chad Hickey, Founder & CEO of Givsly, whose mission is to inspire and develop new ways professionals can give back by connecting for business.
Headquartered in New York City, Givsly is a for-purpose company built around the belief that as the world around us evolves, so should our options to create social impact. While business professionals juggle many day-to-day tasks, creating social impact should not be perceived as an additional burden. Instead, Givsly develops new ways of creating impact by thinking differently about how your current everyday tasks and resources can give back. Givsly introduces a portfolio of ways for professionals to give back while doing business. Partners can utilize meeting time to raise money for nonprofits through the Givsly platform or get out in the community with clients through planned Givsly experiences. Whichever path you choose, Givsly strives to make social impact simple but impactful.
Prior to launching Givsly, Chad spent 17 years of his career in the advertising industry-leading revenue-driven sales teams with a focus on mobile, location data, and measurement. Most recently, Chad led sales at Placed, the leader in offline attribution and a company acquired by Snap, Inc. in 2017. Before joining Placed, Chad spent over five years leading global revenue at GroundTruth (formerly xAd). During his time at GroundTruth, Chad launched the national sales team and grew revenues to over $100 million annually across North America, Europe, and Asia. Other previous employers include IAC and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s digital division, ajc.com.
Here is a snippet from Chad on the podcast:
“When you think about where we fit into trying to redirect dollars to nonprofits when it comes to b2b business connections, and a lot of cases, 100% of b2b connections that are driving some sort of revenue for our company, nothing really goes to charity. If you look at the traditional companies that are out there, for our company, everything we touch, every product we produce put out there to create some sort of efficient way for people to make a business connection, has a charity element to it. What I like to say is we’re like the Bombas socks of b2b business connections, people go to Bombas, because they need a pair of socks, and they feel good because there’s one that’s also donated. It’s the same thing with Givsly, you make a connection, we make a donation. Everything that we do has that model, it ranges as far as the percentage that goes to the nonprofit, depending on what product line you’re working with us. But if you go to the platform, in an automated technological way of connecting with someone, it can be up to 100% of the transaction goes to the nonprofit, because people add our platform fees to that transaction amount. It’s not being reduced from the donation. As a company, we want to eventually be at 70% of the revenue that flows through any sort of pipes of our products that actually go back out into nonprofits so that they just collect a check at the end of the month, based on people’s charitable giving.
For people to sign up to the platform and have a profile, it’s completely free. That goes for an individual, company, or nonprofit. Everything about our products, nonprofits, never pay anything. I don’t believe that nonprofits should have to pay for anything. I feel like they do it enough. I feel like there’s a lot of scrutiny under where their dollars go in general. What Givsly wants is to be able to provide funding to them through technology that fundraisers for them, they don’t have to do any heavy lifting. When you talk about the people who are interacting on the platform to drive those donations, there is typically a business influencer that has a profile that probably gets 50 to 100 email meeting requests from outside partners on any given day who are saying, “Hey, I want to talk to you about whatever service that person is trying to offer.” This allows them to go and volunteer one meeting a week, one meeting a month, one meeting a quarter, whatever they choose, and just take their normal business behavior. They can book that meeting through Givsly, and then know that during that 15 to 30 minutes, they’re supporting a nonprofit that they care about. Now, the person who makes the donation is the person that is pursuing the time of that business influencer. For the business influencer, their contribution is just their meeting time, from the person who’s wanting to meet, let’s say, I was wanting to meet with you, and I wasn’t able to get in touch with you in the traditional ways through email or phone. I could go see your profile and say “You know what? For $100 donation to the American Cancer Society, I can book Stephens’ time.” then I would go book your time, and you would have the opportunity to accept or decline that request. So it’s not a free for all, we see about 70% of the meetings get accepted but there is still that quality control of the person who is volunteering their time to accept or decline.”
Interested in listening to the full episode and hearing more from other nonprofits? Check out more episodes here Charity Charge Show
