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- [00:03]
A
We really dive deep into what drives giving. Why somebody gives or why somebody doesn't give. It was I guess, the most important issue and question to raise. We realized that people feel giving is a transaction. You give money and you get the feeling back. And this feeling, most of the times is vague or non existent. It's not covered by like a beautiful thank you note or by an impact report of a feeling 50 page PDF that nobody would read. But it's kind of on the surface for us the problem of how do we get people to feel the human moment behind it. And I think this was the biggest inspiration that drove us to scale this in Greece and then come to the US and launch here and really, really grow this.
- [00:42]
B
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 the show as together we hear how they are making their world better. Welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast with Rob Harder.
- [01:20]
C
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.
- [01:32]
B
Thanks for listening. Now here's Rob. Hey everybody, Rob here, your host for the nonprofit leadership podcast. Happy Summer. How is your summer going so far? My hope is you're finding time both to get get lots of good work done in your mission driven organization, but also taking time for yourself to enjoy life and to remember you're a human being, not just a human doing so. I hope you're enjoying some of that for this summer. I know for my family and I, we just walked through the most amazing hike. It's called the Narrows in Zion national park in Southern Utah. And if you've never heard about the Narrows, I encourage you to Google it. The Narrows are very intense. It's an incredibly fun but very challenging hike and I'll tell you more about it maybe in my show notes, but I'll just say it was a wonderful thing. It was over 23 miles, took a little over 11 hours and it was an amazing thing. So I Felt like my summer definitely kicked off with that hike. I felt like I was officially experiencing adventure and some of what the summer can bring, which was so fun. So I definitely encourage you. Check it out. The narrows in Zion National Park. It's the best way to experience Zion National Park. It's quite fun. All right, well, for today, we've got a great guest transitioning. Now back to the show, and this one's an interesting one for you today because it's two founders that are coming together, and they have started what's called GiveLink. And it's a model that is really focused on transparency of giving. The whole inspiration for them to start this thing called Give Link was the idea that often when you give to nonprofit organizations, you're not sure where it goes. You give and it, like they say, it turns into a black box or a black hole. Right. You don't. You're not sure where does it go. They're committed to making sure that you know where every single gift goes. And so there's high level of transparency. And they've created this process where as soon as you give, the idea is that you're gonna get a picture of the people you just gave to. And it's really an interesting, intriguing way to increase donor transparency with the idea that the trust will follow. In other words, the more transparent you can be, the more trust you'll build your donors. And guess what? When you have more trust, they will re give again and again. They've seen donor retention rates go up by 60% by doing this and some of their models that they are putting into place through GIVLink. So it's a fascinating organization. Again, the founders are with me on the show today. Their first names are Panos and Anthony. They're originally from Greece, but they now live in San Francisco. And it's a really fascinating show, so always glad you're here.
- [04:07]
C
Thank you.
- [04:07]
B
Thanks for tuning in today. Now onto my interview with Panos and Anthony. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox. DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Welcome, everybody, back to the nonprofit leadership podcast. We have two special guests today that have launched their own really unique donor platform, if you will, called Give Link. And we're going to talk all about Give Link. But here are the founders with me, Anthony and Panos. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
- [04:40]
A
Thank you, Ro. Thank you for having us. It's a great honor to speak to such an engaged audience with giving and philanthropy. I would love to explain to everybody how this works. And what inspired us to start all of this? Yeah, that.
- [04:52]
B
Well, that's why I wanted. Good. I wanted to start with. That is every time I have a guest on the show, I ask the question, what motivated, what got you to where you are today? And in your case, what inspired you to start Givlink? And what gap in, in social impact giving were you trying to solve? And so maybe Anthony, you could start and then Panos, you could also fill in.
- [05:11]
A
So a little bit of background. We started this when we were still at uni. All of us, all of the team, we didn't know each other yet. I was out of business and administration. I always had in my mind that I wanted to do a startup and I wanted to solve problems. But I had much like more of a money centered idea before. And then I came across Social impact as a concept, which I doubted at first. And then once I got like really deep into it, I really understood the purpose behind it. So it all started with my purpose that was developed through social impact, which became not just solving problems for like people solving problems for societies in a more foundational level, rather than like a feel good level as I had it in my mind before. So this is how I guess it all started. And then I came up with the idea about giving when I read an article from a Greek nonprofit that is like very known in the country asking people to stop giving items to them during Christmas because we're like full stack and extra supplies all over the place. And I'm like, Greece still has problems. There's no way you kind of solve a problem in one Christmas. So there's definitely a logistical issue there. I dived deeper into it and I realized that people that give items rarely know what is actually needed or like keep track of what is actually needed. And they end up donating the same items. Those items are causing a surplus. And then other items that are needed are not donated. Or other nonprofits that don't get so much traction and need help and help people cannot access those surplus donations. So it started I thought about the platform that people can see what a nonprofit needs and then they can buy items instead of giving money based on their active needs. That's how it kind of started. But further down the road, I think the big inspiration came in. This was the practical problem. I suppose the big inspiration came in when we really dived deep into what drives giving. Why somebody gives or why somebody doesn't give. That was, I guess, the most important issue and question to raise. And once we kind of understood the problem better. We realized that people feel giving is a transaction. You know, you give money and you get a feeling back. And this feeling most of the times is vague or non existent. It's not covered by like a beautiful thank you note or by, I don't know, an impact report of a 50 page PDF that nobody would read. So this kind of like a surface for us, the problem of how do we get people to feel the human moment behind it. And I think this was the biggest inspiration that drove us to scale this in Greece and then come to the US and launch here and really, really grow this.
- [07:50]
C
Yeah. Personally I was very involved into startups from a young age, 18 years old. I started my own stuff and was working along like other companies, wanting always to do more and let go the extra mile. I founded this, I founded Anthony a little bit randomly, honestly. So I was in a cafe working during July, end of July, no another, no one else was working there. And I overshared the conversation. He was talking with my other co founder and they were speaking about philanthropy and how they can make it better and a vision to actually show the impact and track every step of the way. And this felt so motivating for me because I also have a bigger purpose of helping people out there, like impacting people. Doing something that's not only generating money but also generates impact and adds value to the society so intrigued me and honestly I went there to speak to them, see what they're doing, to learn about them and it end up I joined them as a co founder. It deeply aligns with my values as a person and it helps people out there. So that's what motivates me to continue on this journey.
- [08:55]
B
Well, it's really fascinating that your philosophy is summarized by this. If we can track a package, we should be able to track impact. And I like that. So I'll say it one more time, listeners. If we can track a package, we should be able to track impact. That's really shaped your philosophy at Give Link. So maybe Panos, maybe you could start with us. Tell me how you came up with that and why is that so important? To track the package and track the impact?
- [09:20]
C
Yeah, so the vision of the philosophy came from like ordinary E commerce. You can go there for you via Amazon, via FedEx, whatever. You can track every step of the way, you can know exactly where the, the order is and you can get it delivered to your place like in one day or something. But when you give, when you give to another charity, another organization, you cannot track exactly what's going on with this. You usually give, and this is like a black box. You don't understand what impact it actually have, has this specific donation. So there's a mismatch, a gap between what people give and what happens afterwards and this knowledge gap. So this became our main, like, vision and goal because in our platform, people can actually give products that nonprofits need and track it all the step of the way, get photos of their impact. When the products arrive, the organization get impact photos afterwards with stories of actual beneficiaries and videos of what happened, actually. So we want to save this end to end visibility, not only through our orders for ourselves, but to our generosity to people out there who are impacted. And this creates a fulfillment to both the donors, but also to the whole ecosystem, which is transparent and can get more donations afterwards.
- [10:44]
A
We've built as humanity incredible, impressive systems to track everything on the way and kind of fulfill our own need to, like, have control and know what happens. But we haven't done the same when it comes to more foundational and more important. In my opinion, things which is having impact can change people's lives and giving to people that don't have. So that's the systems that we are trying to create.
- [11:08]
B
Well, there's no doubt being able to measure your impact is so important for every social impact organization and those who struggle to do that. That's really. It's a problem because donors don't know. Like you said, it's a black box you put in. You have no idea where that money goes and if they're not measuring the impact. So I love your. I think the philosophy is right on. Okay, so let's go into your transparency model, because transparency is another thing so important for fundraisers for development folks, people in the nonprofit sector. When you have transparency, you build trust. When you build trust, people give more to your organization. Typically, you are big believers in transparency. And in fact, you have a transparency model that you have measured so far. And it's so effective, I'm learning that it drives about 6, 60% more repeat giving every year. And that's maybe like the golden nugget, right? Everyone wants to have donor retention. They want repeat gifts year after year. What has been your secret to getting this transparency model so effective that you're seeing an impact and how many people are giving? Anthony, maybe you could start and then Panos, you can jump in.
- [12:12]
A
From our perspective, it has become a lot of very complex. You know, we track from algorithms that track how many lives an impact an item impacts based on, like, the Information we have nonprofit to tons of tons and tons of technical solution. But I think the the main cause of this metric is simple. People know what happens and when. You know what happens when you see your actual donation being turned into something for someone and this is specific, you don't anything else. Imagine that this retention comes without any subscription model. We don't have, we haven't launched yet like subscription model and we still see 60% more retention during the year. I think this is a pure kind of for us a pure green flag on okay, we're on the right track and this is where we need to build on further with this transparency. The way we do this now is that we work with of course Chart Navigator and other evaluators. So we know that the nonprofits that join us have been checked for transparency. This is the first part. Then we have AI that scans the nonprofits as well. Tries to understand the stories, the work and how it works on like a foundational level. Not just like a theory or how the presents is but how does it change a single person's life? How does a beneficiary's life look like on the organization? So that's the second step. And then I guess the main part of the process is people donate items. This alone makes it much more tangible for somebody. They get receipts for their items and then they get a photo from the organization with their items and optionally a photo with the beneficiaries and the impact they had after. So this is I suppose the main engine that drives transparency and drives the retention that we see.
- [13:50]
C
Yeah, I wanted to add specifically regarding the in kind giving model that currently most nonprofits use Amazon Wishlist or Amazon Registries where people donate there but they don't share their data so they cannot reengage with them. They cannot send them, put them in their CRMs. They cannot like share specifically what happened to this specific donor sector. So through our platform like getting this data integrating into other CRMs, telling them their stories, sharing their impact from in kind giving to the actual ecosystem of nonprofit and donor ecosystem they have. This adds a tremendous value and this kind of exists in the ecosystem of in time giving. So we really help with this as well.
- [14:35]
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. Well, you know, it's one of the things that I want to talk about now is the fact you offer this free to nonprofit or social impact organizations. I've had a few people on my show that are offering similar things where these wonderful platforms or donor forms different things to help people with fundraising and they offer it free now. That's amazing. And yet at the same time, the concern, I'm sure you probably had people ask you, how are you going to be able to do this sustainably over a long period of time if you're giving it away for free? So maybe you could talk about the business model of Givlink, because I think for a lot of people that are going to learn about what you do, they're not sure maybe how does it work that you can offer this for free and yet you've got to keep going and you hope to provide this, you know, obviously for a long time and really a sustainable solution. So Panos, maybe you could speak to your business model and how you develop. Developed it.
- [16:08]
C
Yeah, sure. So it's 100% free for nonprofits. There are no extra fees, no contracts. We try to make it as simple as possible, like getting their profile ready and start like asking for donations. We want to keep it like this. So the business model works with two ways right now. The first is the optional tip. So donors voluntarily in the end of their donation and the checkout can like add the percentage from 0 to 25%, which is very typical and classic, like in fundraising platforms like GoFundMe or like all the others that exist in the market. And donors can do it like voluntarily. We see right now this is quite good. It's around 10.5% per donor. So it really helps. And if we have like a volume of donations going on, this can let us sustain and grow over time. And the second one we have is through supplier commissions. So basically we partner with retailers like either retail suppliers or wholesale suppliers, who provide their products to our platform. Donors buy these products for nonprofits and these suppliers deliver to the nonprofits themselves. So because we act as an affiliate seller for them, we make money for suppliers. We get a commission from the products, we get discounted prices. We can get an extra like stable revenue source from the suppliers. And the more donations that we can have in the platform, the more we can help is on trophies the better discounts we can get and the more the business model will be sustainable in the long term.
- [17:39]
A
I'd like to emphasize this because I think it's a very kind of reason. It uniquely works like the way it does optional tips, everybody can have them. But I think the value of adding the, at least in kind for now, suppliers is that in this model, somebody makes money, right? People donated on profits, and this money turns into something. And usually when it's in kind, it turns into revenue for the people, for the business that sell those items. So we thought, okay, we can charge the people that already make revenue through this process and don't have to charge the people that do the good and need the items and need to use the items. And we strive always to keep the products at the retail price so we don't like, have too expensive products whatsoever. So it's, I think it's a very good way that has helped us so far to not need to charge the nonprofits, essentially, because beyond the ethical part, I think from a business perspective, you can charge a person that doesn't make profit or like important revenue from this and helps. You need to charge the person that already has a benefit from this transaction.
- [18:42]
B
No, that's helpful to understand how you're seeking to make this sustainable. And one of those things, you just mentioned it briefly, both of you, about tips. Why did Givlink choose optional donor tips as part of its funding model? My guess is because that is a source of revenue to keep this going. And it also encourages people to be even more generous. I mean, I think about most stores you go to in the United States anyway, they offer the opportunity to round up your money, right. To whatever it is in order to give to a nonprofit or give to a good organization that that particular organization, grocery store is supporting. So talk about how you came up with your donor tip idea. Is it similar and is it just basically part of the model of how you can fund this?
- [19:23]
A
Yeah. So the initial idea was that we saw the big, like, platforms using it and we're like, it seems to work. Let's test it. And the tests were very impressive. And the idea, I think makes sense. We didn't want to charge donors, neither like payment processing fees, shipping fees whatsoever. We want the items to be just items. So given the opportunity to, if they want, tip us at the end, I think it resonates more with the context of this transaction. And especially I think it's beyond the practical part. I think it's, as a business is a very, very, very effective way to test if what you build is liked and if you are in the right direction. Because when people voluntarily want to be charged extra for this service, it's a great sign. And what we track, for example, is that retained donors tend to increase the tip over time. So this shows that this kind of, once they do the whole process, once they're really satisfied that they want to pay a little bit extra to make sure this like sustains, we make sure we inform people that, you know, this is free of charge, non profits, that's the way we make revenue. So I think it resonates a lot with people donating.
- [20:30]
C
Completely agree with what Anthony said on
- [20:32]
B
this was that's good, you're in agreement, that's always good. Mission alignment, that's important. Okay. So another thing I wanted to ask you about because we've had a lot of people talk about on the show, AI technology. New technology to implement into a nonprofit or social impact organization. And a question that often goes around this idea of utilizing AI or new technology is this, how can we remain human even in the midst of adopting AI or using more technology? We need to keep our human touch. In other words, when it comes to particularly the nonprofit sector, the social impact sector, that's what we're known for. Right. Is that human touch. And we don't want to be so automated that people don't feel like there's any heart left in what you're doing. How have you really tried to do that? I know that's part of your philosophy with Givlink is you try to help reconnect donors with real human moments and measurable impact. We talked about the impact. Now talk a bit about that. Those real human moments. Maybe Panos, you could start with that. How do you incorporate that in so it doesn't become just AI and technology only.
- [21:33]
C
Yeah. You know, we live now in San Francisco and AI is like always surrounding us, hearing from people, like doing credible stuff. And we believe in this technology. But on the other side, this makes human moments, like, more important overall. So that's why we change our tagline to stay human, which is our new motto and how we do this. So the first thing is that we want to have like photo proofs and video proofs of actual nonprofits uploading what's going on to every donation, every donor sharing exactly what's. What is happening with this. This is very important. This is actually can be verified, verified and transparent. And every donor can see exactly what is going on with this. And the second one is that we integrated AI to this so that it can understand what every donor gave in terms of products, can understand what photos were uploaded and the description of what nonprofits said about what they are going to do. And it actually personalizes to every single donor what happens with a specific donation. So I gave like backpacks for the back to school program now in September to a nonprofit organization. I get like photo proof back. And I know that I specifically helped these three kids go to school and like be happier and like come to pride and ready to get educated more. So we want to create the specific type personalized stories that are verified, that are true based from sources, from nonprofits and from whatever exists, like in the market and actually so personalized what is going on, the human moments that this creates. Because giving is not just a transaction, it's not just an abstract thing. It's something that actually helps people out there. But donors can want to see it and if they donate products or services specifically, this can be easily tracked and be given back to them, which leads to more engagement, which leads to more retention afterwards and makes the whole like giving experience better.
- [23:35]
B
So, okay, so basically you capture pictures of people that if you give to an organization, you mentioned the backpacks. You actually get a picture of, here's the three kids that got backpacks this year. And then you get what, an email, a text right back to you. The donor.
- [23:48]
A
Yeah. And of course the image, it's original from the nonprofits. It's not like he's innovative whatsoever, of course. So.
- [23:54]
B
And I think is it AI generated?
- [23:56]
A
Yeah, of course not. And that's the only thing that, you know, no matter how technology advances, I think is one of the things that would never change, at least in our platform because this is what makes it real. AI is helpful to make the holistic experience better, but the core experience remains human, as it should be. And I think in general with all technology and especially AI, it's a double edged sword. And we see that happening, you know, you, it's, it really depends on how you use it. And in our case, if we did not use it to make giving food more human, it wouldn't be successful and you wouldn't have any purpose to use it whatsoever. So we're really trying to find ways that through AI will make it feel more human. We can see the things that without this technology wouldn't be seen. We can distribute, for example now any amount into the most effective support for the most effective nonprofit that fits the donor preferences in seconds so they don't have to browse through like tons of nonprofits we can do that in a few seconds. So I think it really the whole motto drives us to find human use cases for this technology.
- [25:00]
B
Okay, so as I think about Givlink and you're wanting to scale your organization obviously in your business, what does it look like? What are your plans to help scale give link so more and more nonprofits and social impact organizations can really use your technology. Maybe Panos, you could start with that and Anthony, you could chime in after.
- [25:16]
C
Yeah. So to give you a bit of sense for our journey, we started this in Greece. We hit like around 10,000 donations, became the mainstream donation platform over there supporting all the nonprofits. People like we saw their attention so like increased giving and this had to expand. So we came to the US like one of the best market to do that. There is no singular solution right now in terms of transparency, photo proof but also for in guide giving there is only Amazon Wishlist where there are gaps from the north data and stuff. So we started as a pilot in the San Francisco Bay area. We partnered with around 40 nonprofits here. Like we validated everything we saw. Everything works well. Like did partnerships with like three suppliers provide these products and now we're like expanding very fast nationally. We started with like new nonprofits around new states of the US and we want to partner with as many nonprofits as possible. We want to help them. This is a free tool for them. They can also embed in their website, add it as a link for in kind giving. And the more in profits we can have, the more donors we can bring to this ecosystem. And everything generates value for the ecosystem through network effects. So this is like an important priority for us free model. And we want to help and increase along the way the features for nonprofit for donors make the experience even better. We always want to learn here from the people we are surrounded and build something that is valuable, is useful and will create a better philanthropy moments.
- [26:46]
B
Excellent. Anthony, what would you add to that?
- [26:48]
A
So yes I would add that we started with in kind and as Panos mentioned, rightfully we want to change from like the whistles and the commerce with lists to this tool for in kind. But the idea is not to stick with in kind. We're going to apply the same model to services, payrolls and all non profit expenses. Because the idea is not just to like buy items, sending kind items that don't need is that the donor can purchase the thing that is being that is going to be that the money is going to be used for. Whether that's a service. Even if That's a payroll. Imagine you could, you would be able to say that I want my hundred dollars to pay this person's wage. And the impact will be this, that's kind of the mechanism we want to create that turns every amount into support, whether that's in kind services, payrolls, whatever is needed most right now. So I think that's a kind of vision and bigger steps forward as we progress.
- [27:38]
B
Sounds good. Well then for my listeners who are learning about Givlink for the first time and hear a little bit about your model and are, you know, want to learn more how best can they connect with Givlink and how best can they get to know you two better?
- [27:49]
A
I mean the website is if you search giving on Google, the first thing that's going to pop up. So it's very, we've made it very easy for somebody to reach out to us. You can, if you're a non profit, you can just directly book a call there and see if it works for you. At Durham, everybody can try the platform from anywhere right now. So it's very straightforward. And also on LinkedIn, if you search our names as you can see them here, you can find us. And we'd love to connect and talk about whether that's going to be helpful for you or if you have other ideas of how this could work, other experiences. We're still young, we're still younger than the ecosystem so that we're, we've been working over three years with nonprofits but I think that we'd love to hear opinions from people in the space so we can learn and improve for people
- [28:30]
C
who want to do the extra mile. We also have a mobile app. They can Download Android or iOS or they can see some specific nonprofits that have giving in their websites to see how it looks like as an embed widget, how like it creates value to the in kind giving. And also in social media we are in Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Happy to chat from there too.
- [28:54]
B
Well, I love that you're emphasizing transparency for donors and making it easy for them to know exactly where their money goes. Like the, the idea of the, you know, you give money for the backpack program and you get a picture of these kids that actually got the backpacks. Like that is brilliant. And I think there's, I know a lot of organizations that's exactly what they want. They want to be able to show the measurable impact of people's gifts to their organization. So to make that easy and to make that, you know, really seamless is I think a really good gift to nonprofit and social impact leaders. So thanks for what you're doing. Thanks for taking time to be on the show too to share a bit more about Gift Linked. Appreciate you being on the show.
- [29:29]
A
Thank you for having us. It was a great opportunity and thank you for the work you do and the opportunity to give to people in the space to talk about their work.
- [29:37]
C
Thank you Rob. It was a pleasure.
- [29:40]
B
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, DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.