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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
How Airbnb Is Doing Something Very Different with Their Social Impact
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In a crisis, there are congregate shelters, there are hotel vouchers. Why not have access to the millions of Airbnb's around the world? And the technology allows you to move immediately and very quickly. So it's been really exciting to kind of dive in here and explore all of these new possibilities.
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This is Dr. Rob Harder with the Nonprofit Leadership podcast, Making youg World Better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All of these reasons combined led me to start this show. And it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who are successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy this show, and as together, we hear how they are making their world better. Welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast with Rob Harder. I'm Lena Larew, based currently in Mexico, and I'm a listener just like you who cares about the nonprofit world and the people leading it. If you're looking to learn and grow as a nonprofit leader, you're in the right place. Thanks for listening. Now here's Rob. Welcome back to the show, everybody. My name is Rob Harder. I'm your host for the show, and I'm so glad you're here. Today. We're talking about Airbnb. Now, before you jump to, oh, there's some great vacation spots, or maybe you're an owner of an Airbnb somewhere. This is a really unique conversation because Airbnb.org is who I'm going to be talking about today. And it's different than your typical for profit company, philanthropic arm or social impact arm. Many of you know, if you've been listening to my show for a while, we've had Google on the show, we've had Microsoft, Amazon, they all have their own social impact arm or foundation, right? But this is different. So Airbnb, what they did was they, they do have their own social impact arm and philanthropic foundation. I understand. But this, Airbnb.org is completely spun off from the corporation as its own entity, a separate 501C3. And they operate completely independent of the corporation. Now, the corporation comes around and pays for all their administration staff and gives them, on top of that, a very nice donation, very generous donation, but otherwise Airbnb.org operates completely independent. And so it's a different way to tackle this issue of how can a corporation that's done really well, and has a great brand name, really do good in the world. Well, the leader of Airbnb.org, christoph Gorder, is on the show, and he's going to talk all about how they're structured, how they're, again, they're different than these other corporations that have their own philanthropic arm. But the other thing that really stood out to me during this conversation was they have done some really unique things that separate themselves out. For example, now, obviously, they have this incredible access to the technology of Airbnb, the infrastructure, the networking. I think they said there's like 8 million different units that are connected to the Airbnb network. That's huge, Right? Most people do not have that kind of network or that kind of technology already built in. However, they've really maximized all of that and optimize things like how they use that network then to maximize disaster relief. Most of what they're doing right now in their sphere anyway is responding to disasters. And he'll tell you about some of the numbers and who they're responding to. But let me just give you one example, because I think most of you remember this in the news. You remember not too long ago, there was those huge Los Angeles wildfires and there was like 200,000 people displaced. Well, they got together and they responded really quickly, and they were able to provide housing for nearly 24,000 people. It was done really quickly and done really well, working with existing Airbnb owners. And so that's just one example of how they were able to respond quickly and collaborate with other local NGOs, their 211 network there in Los Angeles. So there's a lot of things that he shares, I think are very applicable to you and me, who maybe lead organizations that are not at that scale or have access to the technology or the infrastructure scale that Airbnb does, but still can be applied to your organization so you can respond quicker and more effect to whatever mission you have as part of your nonprofit organization. So, again, my guest today is Christoph Gorder. He is the leader of Airbnb.org, really interesting conversation. You're going to really enjoy it, and I'm really glad you've tuned in today. Thanks for being here. And now into my interview with Christophe. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome back to the show. We're so glad you're here. We've got a special guest. Christoph Gorder from Airbnb.org is here to talk all about this really unique organization, and I'm going to give you a little bit more background of why it's unique, because if you've been listening to my show for quite a while, we've had Amazon, we've had Google, we've had a lot of large corporations that you know their name, you know their brand, and they have what's called typically a foundation or social impact arm. Well, this is a little different, and Christophe's going to tell us a little bit more about that. But I always like to start Christoph to give my guests an opportunity to share just a bit about their story, a little bit of background. What drives you? What's your mission all about? How did you get involved with Airbnb.org great.
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Well, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on your podcast. There's a couple answers to this question. I've spent 25 years working in international development in NGOs, spent 15 years in disaster response around the world, kind of in the front lines of earthquakes and wars and hurricanes and floods, and working in mostly medical relief. I worked for an organization called americares, and then I moved into an organization called Charity water and spent 11 years building clean water projects in Sub Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. You know, really remote rural villages where people are drinking from dirty streams, and we go in and build a clean water projects from really transformative kind of work. So I spent my whole career doing that, and the way I got into that really was kind of the way I was raised. So I grew up in the Central African Republic and in Nigeria.
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B
Oh, wow. Okay.
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Which is an unusual place. My parents were Lutheran missionaries, and so I spent the first 18 years of my life in Africa in very rural parts and then in urban, you know, in urban parts. So kind of the way I grew up, equipped me and motivated me, made me, you know, just really interested in trying to make a difference to. In places that were very familiar to me. And so that's how I spend my career.
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B
That's so fascinating. And we have had Charity Water on the show, by the way. Their work is incredible. And so it's so glad to hear that you are part of that work because, yeah, they, I think it's one of. They're one of the better organizations when it comes to providing clean, fresh water for people.
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Oh, they're absolutely phenomenal.
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B
Yeah. Yeah.
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You know, we, I spent, I spent 11 years there and really helped, you know, scale the systems because, you know, to build, at this point, they've built 150,000 projects around the world and to keep water running for 10 years, incredibly complicated logistically. You have to work with partners, governments, and you got to have a lot of technology to keep track of all this stuff. And so I learned a ton there. And now in this new chapter, I'm using some of those lessons to try to bring that to emergency housing.
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B
Okay, well, Gideon, that's a great segue. Thanks for sharing a bit of your story. Yeah, so like I said at the outset, Airbnb.org is not your typical corporate philanthropy arm or foundation. So maybe give a little bit of background of how this, I think you called it a platypus. You know, something very unique. Talk about what is it, how is it structured, how did it kind of emerge out of the company and how. What kind of work are you all about? What's your mission all about?
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A
So Airbnb.org is really unique, and I don't actually know of any other example that's really like this. So it is an independent 501 C3 charity with an independent board, and it was founded about five years ago. The backstory on it was whenever he was still a pretty Young Company. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, and there were thousands, tens of thousands of people displaced in New York City. And one of the Airbnb hosts said, gee, I have a place, you know, I can open it up and host people, like if people need a place to stay. And that was kind of the origin, the spark of an idea. Very quickly, like, over a thousand hosts in New York City opened up their homes and housed victims of or survivors of Hurricane Sandy. And that idea sort of, like, kept emerging when there were big crises around the world. Over the course of the next 10, 15 years or so, in about 2020, the company, this really started getting some traction. And there was a feeling inside the company from the founders that they could really make this a lot bigger. And so they said, great, let's try it. So they created Airbnb.org and it's a really unique relationship because we are independent. And Airbnb still has their own corporate social responsibility arm, which does all of the things you would expect a company like that to do. They give community grants, they. They have sustainable supply chains, all of those good things. But with us, then they are our biggest donor. We also have a lot of other donors, and they give us access to all of the technology, the platform, the ability to communicate with all the hosts. And so it is really, really unique because I can't think of another example of like a foundation that has a company's name, but then has outside donors who would be giving to it. So google.org is great, but you're not giving a donation to it to help people. And in this case, we. We are doing that. And as a result, we can help, you know, thousands of more people.
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B
No. That's fascinating. Okay. And I love hearing a little bit of how it started, because I think it's true. People, when they think about disaster response, they think about government agencies, large relief organizations. But as I am learning about this, your team@airbnb.org is mobilizing thousands of everyday hosts around the world that really are providing the emergency housing. How did that idea kind of grow? I see. I hear how it started, but how has it grown and actually scaled where you can keep the same quality would have if you did work with these large relief organizations, how do you structure it? How then do you oversee it and make sure that that quality and all your values and the mission continues to move forward as you planned it?
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A
So I, you know, I think the process here, like, sort of the light bulb that went on was like, there are 8 million Airbnbs around the world.
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B
Wow, that's a lot. Like 8 million.
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A
Okay, like 8 million. And almost everywhere there's some sort of crisis, a flood, a hurricane, a tornado. There are going to be Airbnbs nearby. Why wouldn't we use those to help people in that, in those moments of need? And so the question is, how do we actually go about that? How do we find the families in need? How do we get them in? How do we pay hosts who can't just give us the place for free? All of these operational logistics have. Have gone into it. But, you know, I think the. The way I think about it is one of the things that, that we forget is Airbnb itself is a new technology. Twenty years ago, Airbnb didn't exist in the same way that smartphones didn't exist or Google Maps didn't exist. But because our lives are moving so fast, we're just used to having these things around. But when you think about the disaster response mechanisms, the Playbooks, the tools, you know, they. They are relying on historic assets, gymnasiums that can be turned into shelters, the National Guard can come out and pass out, you know, drinking water, etc. And so what we're trying to do here is to take, wow, this new technology and, and bring it to bear in the same way that Airbnb sort of revolutionized leisure travel. Like today with your family, if you're going on vacation, 20 years ago, you'd say, do we want to go to hotel or resort? Today, you have a third choice, hotel, resort, or should we take an Airbnb this time? In this case, what we're trying to say is this is in addition to the existing resources, Right. So in a crisis, there are congregate shelters, there are hotel vouchers. Why not have access to the millions of Airbnb's around the world? And the technology allows you to move immediately and very quickly. So it's been really exciting to kind of like, dive in here and explore all of these new possibilities.
- [12:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. And I like your. The philosophy of, yeah, you already have all these resources in the sense these homes that just utilize them, and they're all over the world. Okay, so let's get to another thing, though. You've scaled pretty quickly, and I've had a lot of people on the show talk about scaling your nonprofit, and it's not as easy as it may sound. So talk about that. How have you scaled wisely? You've responded to dozens of crisis all over, you know, multiple countries in a single year. What leadership decisions, what systems have you put into place to really allow you to scale more quickly, maybe, than others? So you do it so effectively, maybe. Talk about that scaling process.
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A
The scaling is really complicated. In our case, we've been successful so far, you know, and we're still young. We're figuring it out. So two years ago, in 2023, Airbnb.org was able to respond to eight disasters around the world. Two years later, we responded to 78.
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B
Oh, my. Wow. From 8 to 78.
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10.
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B
That's huge.
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8 to 78. Huge. And here we are in March of 2026, and in the first two and a half months, we've already responded to 23 disasters.
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B
Wow. And you're in March.
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A
So we are on track to double what we did last year. So we've cracked the code a little bit. And, you know, I think. I think there's a couple elements. We obviously have access to technology which allows us to scale. And so building an organization on technology stack like Airbnb, which involves huge investment over the course of the last 20 years of all of their systems, of, you know, the mobile app, which works with the payment systems, with the trust and safety systems, with the identity verification, all of that is sort of shaken bake for us, and we can. We can go. So we're leveraging a technology which allows us to work at scale. I think from a programmatic Point of view, though, the lesson that I've learned over the past 25 years of working in nonprofits has been really to focus. And I think a lot of nonprofits, when you start seeing the world through a lens of what are the needs out there and what can I do to help? The needs can be overwhelming. You go into a community and there are needs in every sector. Education, gender, equity, like technology, infrastructure, like, like whatever you are interested in, there's a charitable outlet for you. And so what happens is, I think, you know, a lot of organizations spread themselves very thin and instead of really mastering something really, really good and just going for that, and that is, that requires some really hard choices. And so it's this trade off between standardization and the flexibility that you need to continue to have so you meet the local, the actual needs where they are, you know, because it's not like, like we aren't robots. So you've got to have this right blend, and if you get that right blend, then you, you can scale, but you do have to make hard trade offs sometimes.
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B
Well, and I want to dive a little bit into that because obviously you do have that incredible infrastructure from Airbnb. Do you utilize AI, for example, in any of your scaling systems?
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Yeah, I mean, I think AI is just like, it's become a daily part of everything that we do. So I use AI personally all day, every day. I wrote a program plan the other day for us to work with big cities. And I wrote in a half hour, I had a concept in my head and in a half hour with ChatGPT, I was able to do something that would probably taken me five years ago. It would have taken us a month. Right? Like we would have sat down with a program staff, like, hey, I've got this concept. Let's go build a three legged stool of Airbnb.org, the mayor's office or city government and the local community foundation to help us fund all of it. And let's get together as a partnership and let's build this as a package and we can take it to cities around the world and just say, like when you have people who are displaced by a house fire or by gas leak or by flood, like, we are all ready to go. We've got a little bit of funding. We've got your city emergency services and you've got us and the technology and the platform. So we can, we can package this up and take it to hundreds of cities. I literally would have spent a month on it, building it. And I did it in A half hour in one morning, going back and forth. And I, what I had at the end of that was an executive summary, a summary for city government, a summary for funders, and a, an operating plan. And it's, it's not, I mean, it's not ready to go, but it's like 90% of the way there. And so, you know, like, programmatically, I think that's, I use it every day. You know, we do build a lot of technology ourselves on top of the Airbnb stack. And coding has just become transformed. Right. Like, engineers are much less likely to be actually writing code line by line than using AI to build the code and use the prompt. So it is really speeding things up for us.
- [16:54]
B
Well, it's so interesting that you confirm what we've talked about again with different guests on the show when it comes to AI. One of the real benefits of AI, when you think about the good benefits AI brings to all organizations, but certainly nonprofit organizations is scaling quickly and being able to do exactly the things you're talking about, being able to do things in just much less time within the idea is the things where you have high face to face, high relational interaction. You have more time for that because the things that maybe were taking a month now you cut down to 30 minutes, you said, or a half a day even. Like, you've got a lot more time now to interact with donors, volunteers, your team, your staff. So fascinating that you've already seen that. Really help you be more efficient.
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Yeah. And I mean, I think it's just, I think it's just going to accelerate. I think two years from now we're going to be like, it's going to. So that's, you know, that's amazing because we, you know, all of us are resource constrained. It doesn't matter how big or small your nonprofit is. My previous job, we had a. Turdy water is a $100 million organization. And we felt like we, you know, we, we could, we could have spent a billion dollars, I bet.
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Oh, yeah.
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I have work in billion dollar nonprofits and they're like, we could do, you know, we could do $10 billion.
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Exactly.
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I think regardless of where you are, you're always looking for efficiencies and AI. It's not the silver bullet, but certainly it has huge potential.
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Well, okay, so you kind of were touching on this. You really are at an interesting intersection between technology, community, philanthropy with the work there@airbnb.org and of course you've got this incredible infrastructure that Airbnb has set up. You've also got this great networking connection through that. Most of my listeners will not have the same setup that you have at Airbnb, but you've really maximized those networks. You've really used that as a model, if you will. What would you say to nonprofit leaders that are listening and really want to have some, obviously some scale, maybe not the same scale that you're going through, but also, how have you gone about wisely and intentionally building those networks and being smart with the structure? You do have to then maximize and optimize your mission, I think.
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A
You know What, I spent 10 years working at Charity Water before I came here, which is just amazing organization, a great example for people of how to use technology, right? So Charity Water was a startup. We started from scratch. And I think, you know what, what we learned there was a programmatically focusing. And so in our case, we made the hard choice to say we are going to work only on rural water supply. People would say to us, like, you know, what about urban water supply? Like, 50% of the world's population lives in urban environments. All future population growth in the world will happen in urban environments. There will not be growth in rural environments. So how can you ignore that? We said, well, we're just, we're going to be particularly good at this. So that was a big choice programmatically. And then we got really good at it. Technologically, you know, we didn't have the advantage of being, having access to, you know, a massive company like Airbnb, like Airbnb.org has today, but we leveraged off the shelf technology. So we, for example, Water was the first or a nonprofit to get to a million followers on Twitter. And we were really fast out of the gate to like, just use Twitter when it was brand new. We were the first nonprofit to map all of our projects on Google Maps and share that transparently with donors. I mean, today we all use Google Maps multiple times a day, so it just seems. But this was happening in 2006, which is the same year that Google Maps launched. So I think like being, you know, nobody was. Nobody's thinking about using Google Maps in that way. And it helped us build, you know, just donor trust and transparency and a brand around, like using technology and in creative ways. So I think, you know, you don't necessarily. And all this stuff is just off the shelf. So I think what the hard commodity defined is actually the creativity and not the technology. You know what I mean? Because technology is out there and it's built to scale. And so if you can figure out how to adapt it. How do you adapt you? And I don't need to build AI like ChatGPT handles that, but how much do we incorporate that into our business on a day to day basis is going to change it. And so I think, certainly we have enormous, unique advantages@airbnb.org by having access to 5 million hosts and 8 million listings and this huge tech stack. But I think for everybody else, there's, there's enormous space out there to use technology.
- [21:06]
B
Yeah, no good to know. Well, related to that, you are known@airbnb.org for speed, the ability to respond quickly. Often I've read that you can mobilize emergency housing within hours of a disaster, which is pretty impressive. Now, from an operational standpoint, what needs to be in place in order to really make sure that rapid response is possible and effective?
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A
Well, you know, when a disaster happens, every hour counts, every minute counts, and you think about, you know, the sooner you can start to address people's basic needs and shelter is really the first one. Right. And so we've been able to move very, very quickly. The way we work is we all, we're always working through local nonprofits or sometimes, you know, through local government agencies to identify the families in need. And that way, you know, we're already working with an organization that's embedded in the community, that speaks the language, that has the trust of the community. I mean, we work globally, right? So we're responding in Malaysia and Greece and Spain and Brazil. And so our ability is really supercharged by our relationships with our local nonprofit partners. And so by having them ready to go and ready to respond, we can move very, very quickly. When we don't have a partner, that's when we're really scrambling. So obviously, you can't be, you know, none of us have a crystal ball. And so we often find ourselves like, oh, wow, there's a flood in North Carolina. And we haven't worked in North Carolina for the first time. So who do we work with? So there we're really tapping into big networks of nonprofits. So like Catholic Charities, for example, is one that covers the entire country. There's 168 different chapters. And so we've worked at the national level to now leverage that network. So we can move very quickly. Once we have a partner set up in that area, the first response tends to, you know, tends to be a little bit challenging because there's a lot of learning that happens, you know, in a very compressed amount of time. But then we're set up. And then the second time that it happens, we've got a partner in North Carolina, and they can respond. That's how they can respond in hours. And so the idea is we're building this network, this global network of nonprofits, sort of disaster by disaster and proactively as much as we can, which I think in the space of the next couple of years, we'll have just such good coverage. We can just continue to work. And then even small disasters take very little incremental operational cost to get to get up and going. Right. They can call us and say, you know, there's been an apartment building with six. Six units, six families displaced. You know, can we house some of them? Absolutely. And the systems are in there. The way for us to move credits around is in there, and we can move very quickly. Yeah.
- [23:40]
B
An example I want to share with my listeners is one that's fairly recent. Your response to Los Angeles wildfires was one of the largest that you've done so far. At Airbnb.org you house nearly 24,000 people. And so for my listeners, to just give a scale and a sense of how you went about doing that, I'm curious, what would you say are some of the biggest lessons that you learned from that effort? Because I think a lot of people saw the fires, they heard about it, but I don't think most people understood, like, how were all those people housed? How did they get in contact with the right person and get placed in the right place, in the right house or, you know, a temporary home? So for all of us who are trying to get better at what we do with our nonprofit organization, give us some lessons, things that you learned, whether either by mistake or that you actually did right, that can maybe help other nonprofits think differently when it comes to disaster housing, number one, but also just how nonprofits respond well to disasters.
- [24:33]
A
The wildfires in LA were just absolutely devastating, and 200,000 people evacuated very, very quickly. 200,000 people. And the thing about that is, for those of us old enough to remember Hurricane Katrina, you did not have a Superdome situation there. If you remember Hurricane Katrina, there were thousands and thousands of people stuck in the Superdome there in that stadium. And it was. They couldn't get. They. They couldn't get them helped for a couple days. It was. It was a horrific situation that was just 15 years ago. And here you had 200,000 people evacuate. And you would imagine in that situation, you would have had tens of thousands or definitely thousands of people stuck in shelters. Right. Who didn't have any place else to go. And at its peak, according to FEMA, there were only 700 people in the shelter system in LA. 700 out of 200,000. And many of those were unhoused people who came in off the street because the shelters were open.
- [25:25]
B
Got it.
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A
That's because we were able and. And we were in a position. We had the resources to be able to mobilize very quickly and house everybody that. That. That needed housing. So the stays were free. The average stay was about 12 days, but some of them were shorter, and a lot of them were longer because with the wildfire, you know, within a week or so, it's mostly under control, and most people can go back to their homes. Obviously, some people, you know, many people lost their homes, so they had longer stays. We had a partnership with an organization called 211-LA- which is a call center, free call center. Like, you dial 911 for emergencies, you dial 211 for social services. So you could dial that, you know, anywhere in the country, and you get a call center, and they say, you know, what do you need? And they have a database of all social services from governments and nonprofits in your area, and they help you navigate that. So we plugged into that. So we had this huge call center. The. The. The demand was overwhelming. And then they were doing a quick intake. They'd give us their name and email address, and then we'd look them up in the Airbnb system to see if they had an Airbnb account. And we would then just drop in Airbnb credits into that account. If they didn't have an account, we would email them and say, here's how to set up account. As soon as you set up an account, we'll drop the credits in. So if you had a family of four, based on the average nightly price in Los Angeles, and at the beginning, we were giving about a week's worth of stay. We would put, like, you know, about $1400, $1300 of credit into your Airbnb account, and then you book whatever Airbnb you want, which all of a sudden gives you. You've lost complete control of your life. You fled your home, your neighborhood is in flames, and now you have a little bit of control, and you can pick where you want to go. And so what we see is people. People evacuate with their pets. Obviously, you can't stay in, you know, a shelter. You can't. It's hard to find a hotel. Their hotels filled up right away. So what happened was people want to stay close to their communities. There's Airbnbs in all of those communities and Altadena, Pasadena. And so when we looked at the data science afterwards and we looked at where people stayed, the people from the Palisades fire stayed further west, and the people who evacuated from the fire stayed further east, like near their communities, near their kids schools, near their jobs and all this stuff. So it was really incredible. And they got to choose, like, we didn't choose for them. And so, you know, with those credits, then if you picked a really expensive place, then you might get less than seven nights. If you picked a really cheap place, you might get 14 nights or 20, you know, so giving you the flexibility and the agency to be able to do that is kind of the holy grail in disaster response, right? It's like, how do you, you know, I think about, the other example I think about here is like World Central Kitchen, right? Like, the old way of giving, of feeding people was the soup kitchen, right? You all line up and there's a big pot of soup and you get it. What chef has done is amazing. Like, he's taking existing infrastructure restaurants, and he's like, you people deserve, like, good restaurant food. Let's cook you guys some good food. And let's help the restaurants who are suffering because there is nobody's eating in their restaurants. Let's get the chefs to get good food. And that's the same core idea here is the Airbnbs are there, the hosts are ready to help out. Let's use that. Let's get you into a much better situation and give you some choice. So it is satisfying to be able to meet a new a need in a new way.
- [28:48]
B
We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Well, look no further than DonorBox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations and simplifies giving for your supporters. With Donorbox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations, and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org. curious about just the practicality of it. So it sounds like people I love, by the way, the empowerment side, I thought that was really a powerful way that you've been able to do that. So when it comes to the host side. So if you're an Airbnb owner and you're listening, it Sounds like you just paid the owner basically, to allow them to use their space. So they had the, whatever, seven days, 14 days paid for by Airbnb.org is that correct?
- [29:52]
A
So, absolutely. And that's the way we're able to move really quickly because hosts are very generous, and many hosts give us discounts, and we ask hosts to give us discounts. So when we make the booking, the request of the host says, hey, this is. This is not a vacation stay. This is an airbnb.org stay that somebody coming in crisis. Airbnb, as a company, you know, waves or removes any platform fees that they have. So we have a discount off the top. Then we're asking the host to discount. Many of the hosts are very generous, and so the hosts are real partners, I think, you know, we find hosts post, participate in our program in. In. In three ways. They give discounts to. To our stays. Many hosts also sign up to give a portion of their proceeds to us as a donation. So when they get their monthly payout, you can go into your payments function and you can give 1% or 2% or whatever you want that comes to Airbnb.org as a donation. We use 100% of that to house people and pay other hosts. So you may not be in a position where are disaster victims around you, but using your contributions, I can. I can. I can pay another host for it. And then the third thing, for hosts who can't necessarily participate financially, what we find is they go above and beyond for our guests. They're, like, driving around town to get, like, baby clothes for, you know, evacuees. They're giving them gift cards to local restaurants. They're bringing flowers by, they're cooking for them. So, you know, the ethos of Airbnb of, like, you know, you are in my home. This is not. This is different than a hotel. I think what we're tapping into is just an existing human desire to help your neighbors in times of need. And what we've been able to do is to scale that by using technology and this amazing platform. So the idea is not new. It's just we're able to scale it in a way that wasn't possible before.
- [31:37]
B
There's so much in there. I loved the idea they're kind of tapping into. I do think there's a lot of people that want to be generous, that have. As long as they know it's going for a good cause and a worthy cause. Right? And then you make it easy for them to do this, and then they're Even prompted to do more generous things like go shopping for them or get food or whatever it takes. I love that. I think that I've seen that where generosity breeds more generosity or. Or graciousness and hospitality, you know, breeds more hospitality, particularly in disasters.
- [32:07]
A
All of us want help, right?
- [32:08]
B
You.
- [32:08]
A
You see this stuff on the news, and you're like, my heart breaks for these people, you know, wherever it is in the world. And if those people were next to you, all of us would. We'd take the shirt off our back and give it to them, you know, like. Like. And so creating that bridge between you and the person that you've seen who needs help is something that we're trying to do. The advantage we have is because so. So the way we work is Airbnb is our biggest donor. So they cover all of our operating expenses, plus they give us very generous donation every year to be able to use to house people. Then we go out and raise money on top of that. So any donation that we get on top of that, 100% of that flows straight through to a family. So 0% of it, like, is because the platform already exists. Like, it's already there. And so as generous as airbnb is, there's always an. One more family that could be helped if we get one more person in to help us. And it costs US about $110 on average, globally, to house one family for a night, give them a safe place to stay. So it's really concrete. It's very, very direct.
- [33:07]
B
I love that Airbnb takes care of all the staff and all of the infrastructure, if you will, of the organization itself. That's. So you can turn around and say, hey, when you give person on the street or foundation, it goes straight to people that we're helping. I think that's a great. I know Charity Water does that as well, and I think that's a unique way to do fundraising.
- [33:26]
A
I think, you know, working with many generous donors over, you know, over my career, I. I think the primary question is people just want to understand where their money's going. Like, what is the impact that I'm having? Right? And overhead is a necessary part of any organization. You know, you've got to run it, you've got to. You've got to administer it. But it's confusing, right? It's hard to explain. And so I think the great, you know, the great asset that we had at Charity Waters, we had some. Some amazing donors that were ready to fund all of the administration so that we could just keep the narrative, really simple, 100% go straight through to give somebody clean water. And here in this case, Airbnb is doing the same thing. And so, you know, that way we can just make it really simple for people.
- [34:06]
B
I love that. Simplicity is fantastic. Okay. One of the things you also talked about was collaboration, and that's so important, I think, for nonprofits. I think it's across the board. We should be more collaborative as a whole, whether it be companies or nonprofits, government and even. But you've definitely have done that really well. And it's. I think it's part of why you're successful. As you already mentioned a couple things. You work with governments, other NGOs, local organizations like the Two on One Network. What have you learned about building those partnerships? Is there anything else you'd like to teach or not teach, but just kind of pass on to my listeners of here's the things you've learned and here's why. Doing that kind of more collaborative approach has really not just helped you out, but actually exponentially help the people that you're trying to help in the first place.
- [34:46]
A
There's a couple ways to answer that question. I mean, I think there are so many other people out there who are so good at what they're doing way better than me. And I read a book recently, it's like a management book. It's called who not how? And it's a great book. I mean, that's the whole idea. You can read it pretty quickly. But essentially, many of us tackle problems of like, how am I going to do this? How am I going to house 25 to 4,000 people? I got to sit down and come up with a plan. Then I'm going to have to run really hard and I'm going to have to make a lot of phone calls. And this invites you to think about things differently. Say, who can help me with this? And you can think about that in, you know, in your, your management style. You can think about it in your home life. Think about the things that you have difficulty with. There are other people who love doing it, who are really good at it. And so I think if you look at the world like that and you take an abundance mindset of like, I don't have to. Just like, I don't have to do it all myself. There are other people who let's share and collaborate. It really opens up all, you know, all these possibilities. I mean, in our case, we are a partnership based organization. We help people through partners. I tell my team we exist to empower all of these amazing nonprofits that are out there on the ground. So through them, we are going to help other people and help other people fast. But, but really they're the ones on the front lines doing the heavy lifting. So never forget, like, this is not, we are not the hero. We are the servant of all of these other nonprofits out there. And I think that mindset of like, how do I be in greater, greater service to you as a partner has really fueled us ultimately. You know, I think people shortchange themselves when they don't think about who out there can help them and who can they collaborate with. So it's, it's the way we've scaled too. Technology has helped, but there's no way we could have scaled like this without tapping into hundreds of organizations that have already been there and are so expert, you know, that I, I, I don't know anything about working in Brazil, but we're respecting, we're working really effectively in Brazil because we've got all these great partners out there.
- [36:44]
B
No, I always have a, believed in collaboration has a power that goes beyond just you and one organization, but it really has this exponential effect. You certainly are doing that really well. And so I love that you're kind of doubling down on that because I think it's so important and I don't know why every nonprofit just really should strive to collaborate as much as possible, even when there are barriers and it's difficult. Okay, so another thing, as I think about you and you've scaled this organization quickly, you're growing and sounds like you're going to maybe double than what you did last year in terms of how much you're able to respond? Where do you see Airbnb.org in five years? And maybe along those lines, is there some things that you would like to see on the broader scale when it comes to the nonprofit sector as a whole, when it comes to responding to disasters, what would you say about both of those things?
- [37:29]
A
So in the first one, I think, you know, what we're trying to do is to, to do what Airbnb did for the leisure travel sector of just creating a whole new category. We're trying to bring that to the social sector. And so we've started with disasters and that is working really well. And what we learned over the course of the last year is that there's also many other needs outside of disasters for temporary emergency housing. And so in, at the end of last year, we launched a program to help low income families who have to travel for medical treatment and need to stay. So you have to go get medical treatment at a specialized cancer hospital someplace. Housing is a huge logistical, financial, emotional stressor in a time that's very difficult. And you know, we were again thinking about these 8 million listings, 8 million Airbnbs around the world. We don't have to just wait for the hurricane or the tornado. They can help every day. And so we, we now have 45 partners across nine countries helping, you know, kids getting open heart surgery and people getting cancer treatment and transplants. And it's just like, it's just taking off. It's amazing. And we will now move into additional causes. So, you know, the other one we get asked for about a lot is domestic violence where there is a huge need for emergency temporary housing. Obviously it's really complicated from a, from it has a lot more complications from a safety point of view for hosts and guests. That, and so we're evaluating that to figure it out. But you start to think about like all of those kinds of needs out there for, for temporary housing. I think there's even a world beyond crisis housing. You think about your kids, sports team who's got to travel to a tournament and there's a family that it's really difficult for them to pay for the hotel on the other side. You know, like, is there a way for us to get together and help that low income kids going to visit colleges for the first time. You know, like, you could make this really, really big. And so I think it'll be based a little bit on how we, we, you know, how successful we are in fundraising and, and, and creating, you know, inviting a community of donors to come and help us scale this thing. So I think that's the first mountain we're going to try to climb is to be sort of the go to for temporary emergency housing for, for the social sector. Big world. And I think there's a lot to do for it. I think there's a mountain that's even bigger than that, which is like, once we've gotten that down, we can start to provide other forms of value to the people that we are helping. We can give them a voucher for Uber, we can give them an instacart credit, we can give them a voucher for dog food, we can give them assets for emotional support. So you start to think about the digital wallet that we could create for them. Because I've talked to a lot of companies who want to help out in disasters but can't logistically do it. Like what do we do? We send a pallet of dog food to the pet shelter in la. Who knows how that's going to work out? It's really complicated. But if you were able to give. So we have, you know, verified identities because they're, they have Airbnb accounts and so you have to verify your identity on there. They've been vetted for need by a local nonprofit. We physically know where they are and we've got this, these rails to be able to provide forms of digital value to them, which currently we're providing digital value in the forms of Airbnb credits. But I can see a world where we become, you know, really a one stop shop for. You know, imagine the Gap. You know, they want to, they want to help donate some clothes. Like why not give you a hundred dollar coupon? You can go to the Gap and figure out the coat that works best for you and you don't have to worry about any wastage or things like getting diverted or anything like that. And so I think there is this world down the road where we can use these rails to help in a much, much broader way. Obviously, we've got a long ways to go, so maybe in five years, maybe not in five years. So, you know, that's the vision I have for this is technology is an amazing thing and being able to use it for the good of humanity is just, I mean, it gets me excited in the morning to get up and, and try to tackle all those challenges. Yeah.
- [41:34]
B
What I love that positive outlook. We've talked a lot on the show about AI and technology in general, and there is a lot of fear around both of those things. And I think what you just said was so important though. There's so much good that can be brought out of them too. And so I think if we emphasize and really put our energy into what we can do, that's using AI, using technology to then ultimately help people accomplish your mission, you know, achieve what you've set out to do with your nonprofit organization. There's so much you can do. So for those who are listening, they, I have a feeling they may be really interested in finding out a little bit more about what you do. Where do you send them, first of all, to learn more about Airbnb.org but also if you want to reach out to people and they want to get to know you personally, what's the best way for them to connect with you?
- [42:14]
A
The two best ways are technology. Jump on our website airbnb.org and you can learn all about airbnb.org and if you'd like to join us in this. We'd, we'd love to have you as part of our community. If you want to reach out to me, just find me on LinkedIn and ping me. I'm usually pretty responsive. I'm not on LinkedIn every day. But you know, I, I do communicate with a lot of people there and I, I think we're, we can't do this alone. We need people who can help us in all sorts of different ways, who can, who are working in the nonprofit sector, who can partner with us and help us identify families in need, people who have resources and want to donate to help a family in need. People have technology and ideas that can fit into our model. We are really trying to build a big coalition and partner set of partnerships here. So, yeah, we'd love to, we'd love to talk to people.
- [43:00]
B
Well, again, it's been such a helpful conversation and really insightful with all the things you're doing with collaboration and how you're using technology for good and just even the response to the LA fires, I mean, those are things people again, have heard about the story, but they didn't know about the kind of behind the scenes of what you've done to provide those critical moments of getting people into safe housing. So again, great conversation. Thanks for taking time to be on the show and just thanks for all you're doing. I think it's really important. And then I just say to my listeners, check it out. There'll be a lot of different information in the show notes. Check out airbnb.org and certainly reach out to Christoph if you want. But there is a lot out there that you probably had no idea about. You probably use Airbnb to find a good vacation spot, but now you know there's more to the story and you can check it out again all just by clicking on the link in the show notes. Well, as always, thanks for tuning in and and we'll see you next week. Hey friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Podcasts and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to like subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit leadership podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofit leadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening and until next time, keep making your world better. This podcast is sponsored by Donorbox Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.