Ash Rosshandler first created Karma Currency as an alternative to spending money on unneeded, unnecessary and unwanted gifts that would end up in landfill. The site allows a giver to purchase a Charity Gift Card, and the recipient to allocate the amount to a charity or a project that makes their heart sing.
Whilst growing Karma Currency, Rosshandler came across GoodCompany – a skilled volunteer matching platform. In 2012 GoodCompany and Karma Currency merged. GoodCompany was then re-launched as Australia’s first online Workplace Giving platform empowering companies and staff to give their Time (general volunteering), Talent (skilled volunteering) and Treasure (donating once off and ongoing pre and post-tax).
Third Sector had a chat with Rosshandler about his recent award and workplace giving.
TS: How did you feel about recently winning a Top 20 Westpac Businesses of Tomorrow award? What does this mean for your organisation?
AR: We are honoured to be included in the Top 20. It’s an award that we share with our charity and corporate partners and the 50,000 plus donors who are registered on our platform. We are thrilled that ‘giving back’ is considered an integral part of the future vision for Australia and we look forward to each and every day where we get the opportunity to bring the vision to life.
For GoodCompany, the recognition and tailored prize package will enable us to achieve even more for the community. Thanks to Westpac we have $100K to spend on professional services and also an international study tour in August. We look forward to enabling more giving with this support.
What impact have you seen so far through your platforms?
To date we’ve helped over 51,000 registered donors and volunteers to support over 1400 charities with over $8.5 million cash and 178,000 volunteer hours. We are growing at 30 per cent year on year. We’re just getting started!
Why is workplace giving so important?
For organisations, workplace giving is a valuable way to support their staff to connect with charities that they care about. Workplace giving offers staff a simple, efficient and ethical way to give to charity. Through [our platforms] they can be assured that 100 per cent of their donation gets to their intended charity recipient, which is not always the case with other platforms or when donating to chuggers on the street.
Is there much competition in this space?
There are a few new kids on the block. But no other platform has our experience in this space nor offers a unified giving solution that enables corporate partners to choose which modules they’d like to use, selecting giving options that suit them now and enabling them to grow in the future.
Where do you hope Good Company is in one year?
We have recently launched in NZ and in a year’s time it would be great to launch in a new country. India or China would be awesome. Why not?