Kyle
Charitable organizations are producing products all the time with the idea to sell those products as fundraisers. Everything form tie-dyed t-shirts, bracelets, hats,ties, baskets, even custom fitted chair backs have all at one time or another been created for and by charities.
The problem was, until last year, that there wasn’t a central online marketplace to buy and sell these charitable goods. Sure churches, civic organizations, and social activist charities may have sold their wares on ebay, Craigslist or their own personal website, but that still meant only a finite number of people would actually see the products and the charities they support.
Enter Zack Rosenberg and DoGoodBuyUs. Last July when the site launched, Rosenberg told the mother nature network:
“Right now, nonprofts don’t have a central marketplace where they can congregate and maximize awareness,” says Co-founder Zack Rosenberg. “I’ve tried to find a functional ‘marketplace for social good’ out there for aggregating meaningful products, and there just aren’t any adequate commerce platforms for distinguishing nonprofits exclusively.”
DoGoodBuyUs organizes all of their charitable products by type of product and also charity. If you’re looking for something specific it’s easy to find, if you’re looking for a specific cause to support, that too is easy to find. They have a wide variety of products to choose from and an even wider amount of causes to back. One of the most interesting things we found was this hammock for every hammock someone buys, treated mosquito nets are given to families in Africa or a malaria research class is held.
With such an innovative socially conscious idea we had to interview Rosenberg. Check out the interview below the break:
At DoGoodBuyUs we believe that everyone can make the world a better place in a small way, every day. The embodiment of this is that we built the largest marketplace of charity made products. We work with over 70 organizations on everything from Tea to Tshirts and Rain boots to Coffee. Everything is both good for you and good for others!
Zack Rosenberg is the Founder of DoGoodBuyUs and of SixDegreesofZR. Prior to founding these social venutres, Zack spent the majority of his career in the Advertising and Marketing field. He spent time with companies such as BuzzFeed, WebMD, SmartBrief and more.He knew that folks who work at nonprofits would be better off spending their time saving the world and not on things like SEO, PPC and all the things that make ecommerce work.
From the consumer side, DoGoodBuyUs offers folks a centralized place to find products that are both good for you and good for others.On the NGO side, we alleviate many of the stresses they face in fund raising and developing awareness for their cause.
The idea started where every good story does: the supermarket. I picked up two boxes of cereal and began to read the labels. One was a name brand and the other was Paul Newmans Own. As I looked at the label on the name brand I saw over 90 ingredients, but I had only heard of 4. On the other hand, the Paul Newmans Own cereal had only 4 ingredients total AND I had heard of all of them.I thought to myself there must be a million other organizations out there that were not only good for me but others as well.With all of this in mind, and the notion that we can all help make the world a better place in a small way, everyday- I built DoGoodBuyUs.
Our secret sauce is authenticity. Without it, we would be just another online marketplace. We love working with charities and have a passionate for making their wishes come true. Hearing about a recent trip to Africa to provide medication for malaria victims or hearing another one talk about raising a school in Africa is very rewarding.
One interesting thing we hear all the time is the question of quality. What does a charity know about making products? I wrote a blog post recently about the “Perfect Banana”. As my grandfather used to say, never pick the perfect one because in nature, that doesn’t exist.The point we are making is that assembly lines and mass production make items cheaper and not at a higher quality. Henry Ford built the assembly line so that cars (which existed for almost ten years) could be driven by everyday people.Folks don’t question girl scout cookies, Wikipedia or Paul Newmans own quality. It will be a learning process but an important one.
While we still remain miles away from our goal, the mission is the same. We want to make the world a better place and simply too! The next year will take us down a path of more partnerships and opportunities for us to work with them in ways beyond commerce. We cannot wait!
