Last week at Change The Game: A Thankyou Gala, hosted by David Koch and Ash London, social enterprise Thankyou launched Chapter One, a book written by its 28-year-old co-founder and Managing Director Daniel Flynn.
When customers purchase the book that tells the real start-up story of Thankyou at their own determined price, they instantly invest in a crowd-funding campaign to fight global poverty.
As of Saturday 27th February, Flynn and the Thankyou team are packing and sending books until $1.2 million is raised.
“Thankyou exists to empower people to end global poverty through the sale of consumer products. We have no shareholders and we give 100 per cent of the profits from our water, food and body care products to fund our projects around the globe. We’re proud of the sustainable business model we’ve built over time but it does make scaling up pretty challenging. This book is the solution to that. Chapter One gives people the power to fund the future of Thankyou, and just as with our products, 100 per cent of the profit from this book will help fund our future with the aim to eradicate global poverty,” said Flynn.
“I know it sounds a little crazy to be growing an organisation from funds generated by the sale of a book, because traditionally books don’t make a whole lot of money. But at Thankyou we don’t usually do things traditionally.”
Chapter One, which is published in a landscape format, and reads top to bottom instead of left to right, is Flynn’s personal account of the Thankyou story.
‘There’s an unsaid rule that you’re only meant to write a book when you’ve ‘made it’, and we’re a long way off from that, but my aim with Chapter One is to inspire people with our story – full of set backs, challenges and also the successes – and encourage them to make their dreams a reality. I’ll keep writing our journey as we go, my hope is that there’ll be many more books, or ‘chapters’, to come,” said Flynn.
To watch the Chapter One campaign video click here.