Ronny Sage

If every time you bought clothes and shoes, you would also be donating to nonprofits, wouldn’t you want to spend more? Well, that’s exactly what ShoppingGives aims to do through their social impact commerce platform. By enabling e-commerce retailers to donate a share of their revenue to a cause of their customers’ choice, social impact is created and this has always been the vision according to ShoppingGives CEO and founder Ronny Sage. 

Ronny shares how he first started working for a digital agency but saw a problem that needed to be addressed, and so ShoppingGives was born. Founded by the belief that doing well equals doing good, ShoppingGives hopes to create an impact with every purchase or transaction. Consumers and businesses these days are becoming more and more conscious of where their money is going, and so this has allowed ShoppingGives and the nonprofits it supports to thrive.

Ronny talks about their business model, the dynamics, the pillars, and the great retail reset that has put social impact at the forefront of consumers’, retailers’, and organizations’ decisions and actions. Ronny also shares how he was able to bootstrap his business while still working full-time and his advice for first-time founders on how to do the same. He emphasizes the importance of having conviction and explains how his own conviction led ShoppingGives to where it is today, with thousands of direct-to-consumer partner brands that support nearly 2 million charities around the world. Listen to this episode to find out more about ShoppingGives and the impact it creates.

Ronny’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “If a business doesn't have a bottom line to do well, they don't have a bottom line to do good.” (4:13)
• “We are the generation of impact.” (5:28)
• “Any founder who has the opportunity to learn on somebody else's dollar and to grow their arsenal of skills and ability to level up while making money and to learn on somebody else's dollar, cease that as much as you can.” (22:00)
• “The difference between a dream and a vision is the actions in between.” (24:03)
• “The path least expected results in outcomes unimaginable.” (31:08)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• Ronny’s background and how ShoppingGives came to be (1:34)
• The ShoppingGives business model (11:12)
• How ShoppingGives fares against its competitors (16:18)
• Ronny’s advice on how to raise funding (26:24)
• Pivoting the business but staying true to your vision (34:13)
• The world in 10 years according to Ronnie (36:42)

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Transcript of the episode

Maiko Schaffrath  00:02

You are listening to Impact Hustlers, and I am your host, Maiko Schaffrath. I have made it my mission to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to solve some of the world's biggest social and environmental problems. And for this reason, I am speaking to some of the best entrepreneurs out there who are solving problems such as food waste, climate change, poverty, and homelessness. My goal is that Impact Hustlers will inspire you, either by starting an impact business yourself, by joining the team of one, or by taking a small step, whatever that may be, towards being part of the solution to the world's biggest problems. In today's episode, I speak to Ronny Sage, the CEO and founder of ShoppingGives, a platform enabling ecommerce retailers to donate a share of their revenue to a cause of their customers' choice. Ronnie founded ShoppingGives in 2016, and the company is now working with thousands of direct-to-consumer brands supporting more than 1.8 million charities globally. He's previously worked as a digital strategy leader for a major digital agency and has worked with a range of retail brands in launching marketing campaigns and loyalty programs, and it's exciting to have you on the show today to talk about ShoppingGives.

Ronny Sage  01:27

Thank you so much for having me. 

Maiko Schaffrath  01:29

Alright. Give us a brief overview of what ShoppingGives is and how it works.

Ronny Sage  01:34

Absolutely. So, ShoppingGives is a social impact commerce platform. At the root of the organization, I want to go back before I talk about where we are today and share with you a little bit about how it manifests into where it is. With my background in digital marketing and in my journey throughout my career, I saw first in the affiliate space and then gift card and financial space and then working with educators the need for fundraising, and then going to brand side marketing and performance marketing and working with some of the largest brands across the world, IR top 100 retailers, the commonality is always, "How do we create more loyal customers? And how do we create increased customer lifetime value? And how do we increase our leading KPIs?" And so, it's always driven by those hard numbers and KPIs and then ultimately lands back to the P&L. And in where I was and seeing what was important to me and then trying to bring some of those values to the conversation with the retailers and what's important to those relationships, it was the commonality of that value alignment that they're looking for and how to create more authentic relationships with their customers. And in trying to create social impact campaigns and bring these ideas, there was always some contention or some challenge around bringing impact to the table and doing well to the table, whether it be, "How do we measure this? Who do we give to? It's too expensive. The regulation's too much." So, there were a lot of barriers to entry. When we initially started ShoppingGives, we focused on, how do we enable the consumer and the nonprofit to utilize tools to raise money? Quickly, after a year of running this after I had left, I'm sure we'll go back there, left the agency, we pivoted into this model clearly seeing that there was a gap of authentic connected giving, that there was no ability for retailers to bring social impact into their customer journey in an authentic and meaningful way that aligns with the customer's values and to align doing well and doing good, that if there's no bottom line, there's no budget. I always say, Maiko, in the space of retailer ecommerce, if a business doesn't have a bottom line to do well, they don't have a bottom line to do good. And so, if we can enable retailers to make more money, we're enabling retailers to give back more at our core, so doing well equals doing good. That's the center of why we're a B Corp and the center of our thesis of how we make money. So, at our core, the concept of doing well and doing good is where we started. And when we pivoted into this model in 2018 and really had an early thesis on this, it was around three core areas and those three core areas stay consistent, always around the concept of creating impact with every action. Every purchase, every single transaction in a future point in time, we want to power the giving economy and create impact, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, that there should be a moment of choice and impact created to a cause that we, as consumers, have one pair of pants, two pockets, and $1, and how we spend that dollar is what we are empowering is for the customer and consumer, the microphilanthropists, the agents of change, we are the generation of impact. We're enabling them to vote with their wallets and to create impact in that process with their wallets. So, how do we do that now? We do that as a social impact commerce platform, and what that means is we're connecting what we call a giving economy. We're enabling and democratizing impact lending of any retailer of any size, from moms to the masses, we say. So, from selling to your mom first day on Shopify to the largest brands, Coach, Coach outlet, top 50 retailers, give back to any 501(c)(3) nonprofit that's in good standing with the IRS, over 1.8 million nonprofits and enabling the retailer to give back or the brand to give back to what's important to them and feature those causes, or- it's an and/or statement that they can enable the customer which is a little bit of a change from where we started initially. When we started this thesis, it was the AmazonSmile for everyone else. That was the key, is AmazonSmile could do what they were doing, but nobody else could. Why? So, that's where we spent our early days was rebuilding that model to democratize that AmazonSmile approach. What we learned is that not every retailer wants to give the complete option to their customer, that there is value and there is conviction around the causes that are important to them. Many times, that retailer wants to give back to a specific nonprofit, or many times, they want to give an option of three nonprofits, or many times, there's not a value alignment with a specific category of causes, or they want to do capsule collections, they want to enable different products to get to different causes. And so, really, what we've created at this point is the ability for that retailer to get back to any 501(c)(3) the way that they want to give or enabling their customer to give to what's important to them to drive that value alignment, and that's the core of what we do. Now, when we look at these three key pillars of how we do it, the first tenant of that is the regulation and compliance, so democratizing impact, enabling any retailer of any size to give back, completely breaking down those barriers of the regulation and compliance that's required both for that retailer and for that nonprofit. So historically, nonprofits that are small nonprofits can't partner with retailers online, because they don't have solicitation agreements in all 50 states, and if you're selling online, you're required to have those solicitation agreements to be able to collect those funds. And then, the retailer has to do the commercial venture, the bonding, the CCP agreements, all the registration, keeping their files, all that good stuff, and that's per nonprofit. So, we are enabling them to donate to any-

Maiko Schaffrath  08:33

You're taking that friction out.

Ronny Sage  08:35

Yeah, exactly. So, we're completely taking that friction out, enabling a shift to those budgets of cost into the impact and have double bottom line control of who and how they want to give, and we're helping them with all the backend office or all the reconciliation of purchases. They can either give a percentage or dollar amount, by product, by SKU, or by purchase amount total to that nonprofit. And then, if there's a return or anything that happens, we can reconcile that. But then, we also, from taxes and payouts, 100% of donation goes to the nonprofit. So, if there are no returns, we handle that. But if there are any donations to be made, 100% of that donation is granted to that nonprofit of choice by who they're choosing. We also enable the retailer to let their customers give, whether that be roundups or add on donations or loyalty points, all the various ways, and we do that both online or through point of sale as well.

Maiko Schaffrath  09:34

Got it. Amazing. I'd love to dive a little bit deeper around the business model and the dynamics of the business model. I think one thing that I found really exciting about your model, in the impact space, there are obviously a lot of idealistic entrepreneurs out there that want to make a social and environmental impact. But one thing that I see the most successful ones too is, like you said, if there's no revenue, you can't really do much, basically combining that with a specific customer problem that you're solving. You talked about your career and designing loyalty programs for big brands, and I assume a lot of those loyalty programs that you've designed before starting ShoppingGives are pretty much around rewarding customers with discounts, with points, whatever it may be, basically giving them some money back in exchange for being loyal to the brand. That's the classical model, and brands are spending a lot of money on those programs. I guess the way I understand it is ShoppingGives basically takes that money that they spent, put it into the pockets of charities, but can still achieve very similar results in terms of loyalty, in terms of conversions as well. So, talk to us a little bit more about those dynamics. What's the user need from a big brand beyond doing something good that gets them convinced of, "Okay, we should actually be doing this because it makes business sense?"

Ronny Sage  11:12

Absolutely. We talked about social impact as part of the customer journey, that this is a filter of your marketing. Typically, when we look at where the money is coming from, if a brand doesn't have a CSR budget, then this is coming out of their marketing budget as a media spend. And when there's a media spend involved or invoked, it has an ROI or ROAS, which is a return on ad spend. And so, we call it RODS or return on donation send. So, what is the return of every dollar donated to your incrementality? When we look at that concept, when there's a bottom line approach to this, so we always talk about that. It's impact first. We're not a conversion optimization tool. We're not an A/B testing tool. We don't do a blanket A/B test. That's whitewashed giving. It needs to come from the people. When we talk about giving, it's around four key pillars of impact we talked about is your community, your customer, your product, and your team. Your team, community, customer and product. We approach it in that method and you're saying, "How are we including this in our paid search, in our paid ads, in our Facebook, in our Instagram, in our affiliates, in our bloggers, in our email customer welcome journey, in our cart abandonment journey, in our pop up journey, in our onsite banners?" Throughout that entire awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, evangelist, that funnel of marketing, we have all these different tactics that we introduce and how we personalize engagement. So, when we talk about actually the second pillar of our business, it's about creating higher converting customer experiences and more authentic customer experiences through impact. And so, what we see as a result of this is higher conversion rates. So, when you're adding our technology before the customer gets even to the cart page, on the product page, and you're adding it above the Add to Cart button, so that customer is having this concept of cognitive constants where they're aligning beforehand, "Do you care about this cause?," "Yes, I care about this cause," there's an alignment there, then they get to that product page, and they re-see that cause, and they select a nonprofit, that conversion rate goes up between 5-19%. That's a blended average. We have case study after case study in our site of partners who are testing the location of it, not blanket on or off the location of it but it's always on somewhere, and they see higher conversion rate. We can also attribute that back to our technology, and we have analytics on it, or we can hook it up to their Google Analytics, let's say, and we can see how customers are engaging with it and look at what we call fully attributed revenue, how the click path of them engaging with the impact changes their behavior and drives conversion rate, drives an increase, a correlation of more adding to cart, not a causation. I apologize, a causation, not a correlation. So, there's a correlation which is people who are checking out also engage more likely with impact. But also, the causation is people who engage convert higher and it drives more conversions. We're able to then quantify the impact back to the bottom line, which is very important. And then, we just have very clear numbers in our dashboard of average order value if you're doing a on or off opt-in campaign. We have various brands doing this, how much AOV is increasing based on customers who are selecting causes, engaging with nonprofits, which is exactly what we want to measure and show is that value of giving back.

Maiko Schaffrath  14:49

Got it. Basically, you're getting to a pitch of telling big brands, "Every dollar you spend on us, you get a return on that dollar. It's not just charity dollars. It's returns that you generate for your own growth"?

Ronny Sage  15:08

Yes. 

Maiko Schaffrath  15:09

Got it. Amazing. Yeah, that's a great model. I guess when you started out, as you say, you were first modeling yourself after AmazonSmile in some way. You've kind of- I wouldn't say pivot. You developed a little bit further in terms of how you're defining the product, which is an interesting journey, but even by now and last year, for example, Stripe announced or they've launched now a program where-

Ronny Sage  15:47

The carbon offset? 

Maiko Schaffrath  15:48

Yeah, the carbon offset, right, so Stripe launched this carbon offsetting program. Obviously, they don't allow you to donate to any charity, but they basically offset at user percentage of revenue of retailers to offset carbon emissions, and they pitch it in a very similar way of optimizing convergence as well, which seems to be the case. Do you feel like the big players like Stripe are going to push more and more into this charity space as well? And how do you feel is the role of ShoppingGives versus some of those players?

Ronny Sage  16:18

It's a very interesting question. Today, that donation for Stripe and it's not a donation for the store. It's not a donation for the customer. It's also not considered a financial tax credit at this point. It's carbon emission where you're getting back- it's typically a financial instrument, carbon emissions, and you're not getting that either. So, the concept of doing well, which is fantastic, but I think we're seeing a point in time, and I talk about this consistently since 2019, coming out of COVID is we are the generation of impact, I've always said, but the definition of the decade of impact has happened now with COVID, that we are in a mindset and mindset shift, and this happened and you saw this in the ecommerce numbers and in commerce numbers that we are now buying from people behind the brand. It was the great retail reset. It was the commerce reset, is that every brand had to ask themselves too hard questions and say, what do we stand for? How are we going to present this? What are we going to do? And how are we going to include this into what's important to us because it is important to us? Maybe it's not important to us, and those brands are quickly being recognized, and you won't see those brands in a few years. But every brand was required to either have the hard conversations with their team about, what do they stand for, how are they going to communicate what's important to them. And so, we saw this great retail reset, which is driven by the consumer, by us, is that we're looking at the people behind the brand. We're looking at the Ronny's, the Maiko's. We're looking at the individuals and what they stand for and how the brand positions itself, and that is what you're seeing all of these brands leaning on is the need to display and talk about what's important to them and at least let their customers flex what's important to them throughout that journey.

Maiko Schaffrath  18:37

Amazing. Let's move a little bit into your entrepreneurial journey. I think one aspect that fascinated me in your journey is that you actually started out bootstrapping the business while you had a full-time job and then agency and you were actually in a leadership position. So, I imagine working in a position, you had full-on days, packed days, and there's founders listening to this podcast that may be in a similar situation. They have a business concept that they want to work on, but there's this question, "Okay, should I just leave my job and go for it? Should I raise funding straightaway? But I don't have anything to show, or should I do what you did, stay on and work nights and weekends on the startup?"  How did you actually practically do it  when you bootstrapped the startup? Did you really just strictly schedule every day, "I need to work at least a few hours on this business"? I know a lot of people struggle with combining a really busy job with bootstrapping a company, so I'd love some insights on that process.

Ronny Sage  19:49

I wasn't an executive member of the team. I was a Director of Strategy, so I had a few team members and was leading, working with the brands, and it was a hybrid of strategy and sales and innovation and more entrepreneurship as well where I was working with David Yurman, Gap, Nikon, some of these big brands, digital marketing strategies, and new innovation around what they were doing in the marketing, some really cool stuff, but those were very full days and long hours. And when I went in there, I had a thesis on this, and I truthfully had them sign a non-compete, and I guaranteed them two years. I promised that I'm going to be responsible, you're going to see the results of what I do here, and I led their sales numbers for two years which was a testament of how much I put in there. The result of me putting in that time there resulted in me being able to afford to invest into my company. The more I put into the company and the more time I spent at the company and invested into results, the more money I had that was expendable for me to invest into my own company. So, it was an infinite game that I was able to play where if I was able to put more money in, I was able to get more money out, my time and money. So, if I put more time in, I get more money out, put more time in, get more money out. And then, if I put more money into my own company and I get the right people there and invest into that, it eventually becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So, I really focused my time at this agency and really building a thesis around what I wanted to build. It was a wrong thesis, initially. I spent a lot of time and money getting it wrong, which is okay, because that's typically what you do initially. And if you can figure that out faster, awesome. But I spent two years there, and it was incredible. I would say that any founder who has the opportunity to learn on somebody else's dollar and to grow their arsenal of skills and ability to level up while making money and to learn on somebody else's dollar, cease that as much as you can until you are either in a position to support yourself or have privilege to be able to be supported by others. I could have a whole 'nother conversation with you about startup being privileged, and the opportunity that I have versus many other people is very different. I had an incredible, my wife and her in-laws, we had a very serious conversation before I left and I said, "I'm not going to take a salary. I'm going to be paying people out of our savings," because I didn't have any investors yet. And so, I had two full-time employees that I was paying essentially out of our savings account, and I was living off of our savings and my commissions for over a year. I mean, I had a little bit of friends and family money. I didn't take a salary for a year and a half, two years after leaving the company.

Maiko Schaffrath  23:13

Yeah. Do you think that step was necessary, to take that leap and use your savings to build the company and focus on it full-time, or would've that in any way of you pulling similar results while still keeping the job and not using savings?

Ronny Sage  23:31

No. There's a moment in time where you have so much conviction. On our second-year anniversary at this role, they offered me a new role and I said, "No, thank you. I want to go focus on this," and I had enough conviction at this point and belief that I need to take this risk, and I thought there was a greater risk and reward that comes out of it. And of course, my conviction is right. The difference between, I always say, this is consistent, I talk with about my team is the difference between a dream and a vision is the actions in between. I'm not just dreaming about it. I'm not just saying, "Oh man, it'd be incredible." Every single day, I'm taking another action to push my vision forward and make that dream into a vision and make it into reality through those actions that I'm taking. And so, there absolutely is a moment of risk, and you have to have that appetite for it. But I will say, we tried raising money and I'm glad we didn't earlier. Because if we would have raised on the old model, we would have not been in the position we are, that we quickly realized after getting shut down in that earlier model, that the unit of economics of it didn't make sense to invest money into which was a really great mindset shift of, "Where do we go next?," and that's where we identified the need to pivot into where we are today was based on where we came from and all the different learnings we had along the way and the money that I lost and the money that we invested into it. While painful, it's a short-term loss for a much bigger opportunity, and continuing to be able to bet on yourself is a much different mindset. It takes a different type of gut to be able to invest into yourself and bet on yourself long-term.

Maiko Schaffrath  25:33

Love that. You quickly mentioned as well the privilege of being able to do that. First of all, being in a position where you can juggle a full-time job and under startup, but then also leave and funded through savings and get some maybe friends and family money to fund your company. It's been a few years since you went through this. Do you think nowadays, there are a few options for people that don't have a bunch of friends and family that can put a few thousand into your startup if your early days, you don't have a product yet, you need to validate, you need to focus on it? Do you feel like there's some advice that you can share with founders on what they could be doing in that situation?

Ronny Sage  26:24

There are a lot more funding sources now and a lot more money now. I feel like there's a been a shift in democratization of funding with crowdsource funding, different concepts. But if I can go back in time, I would say validate and start with the customer. There's always a point of validation creatively. There’re more tools now to validate with Figma and quick development resources, going to Fiverr and building a proof of concept and getting people to pay you for something is more validating than any pitch deck. If you can show that 10 customers, 20 customers, and 100 customers can buy from you, you're onto something. How do you get paid for your concept and be able to have paying customers? Even in the early days, give it away for free and to have somebody say, "Here's what I would pay you for it." But fundraising and money is a tool. Capital is a tool. Throwing money at the business that's not going to be successful doesn't solve the problem. It wastes money.

Maiko Schaffrath  27:46

Yeah, I speak to a lot of, let's say, first-time founders, maybe people that are still in full-time jobs, they have a startup idea, and they want to work on it and very often, I see people make the mistake of saying , "Oh, I need to raise funding, otherwise, I can't do anything on my idea," pretty much. And the challenges, there's very little funding out there for a very rough unvalidated idea. I think it's pretty much non-existent unless you have a bunch of rich friends that really believe in you.

Ronny Sage  28:15

I mean, I knew zero investors initially. I didn't have this network of investors and people that I knew. This was a grind to network after network after event after event and testing my thesis and conversations and navigating this conversation and vision until I get to the right people, and it took years to work through that, and it's not a linear path. It's not just keep on pushing through it. Yes, it takes a ton of grit and tenacity, but there is a level of validation needed, and there's difference between a $5,000 or $10,000 grant that you get people to buy in on or Kickstarter versus real investment money, hundreds of thousands, friends and family, which is harder to get if you don't have that network, but finding real investors, there's lots of money out there and if you have a good idea and you have validation around that idea and you're scrappy to get in front of people, there's every method out there to get in front of people, there's so many ways to get in front of investors, to network. Investors want to give you their money; that's why they invest. There's sometimes a made up conversation of you have to work your network, you have to create a network. Work the network, and get in front of those investors. They exist to give you money, so it's not like, "Oh, I have to have friends in order to give me money." No, I didn't have friends that gave me money. You create that network by creating value and creating something that people want to buy and be part of, and having a vision, and having a strong vision and a strong conviction on what your vision is and how you're going to execute on that.

Maiko Schaffrath  30:11

Got it. If you were to start ShoppingGives today, obviously, you know a lot of things that you didn't know when you started, but let's assume you start again with the same knowledge that you had around the space you're entering into, basically, the question is, what would you do to validate the problem you're working on if you started again? Or do you think it's just a lot of trial and error you went through? Was that just the process you had to follow?

Ronny Sage  30:47

I mean, it's always catch 22. Hindsight 21 is really what it is. If I can go back and do it, again, it goes back to another one of my isms is that the path least expected results in outcomes unimaginable. The path least expected results in outcomes unimaginable. There is no prediction or linear path. I have a very strong conviction on the end of where I want to be and what I believe that core vision is of impact. Every action has impact. Every purchase has an impact, and what we are creating, and the path in between is completely unknown and can move in any direction. But where I'm heading to is very, very clear. As long as I have that flag in the sand, and I continue to preach that message, it helps drive me and stay true of what I want to do. Of course, there's learns in between. If I can go back and do things over again, I would create way less product upfront, way less technology upfront, validate so much sooner, take things to the market so much sooner. I mean, we move quick and scrappy initially. But continuously staying there, you get into a mindset of overdeveloping and overcreating, because you want things to be perfect. Nothing's ever perfect. There's always a balance of validation and quick versus quality and always finding your center of excellence, which can vary, is challenging. So, what is your happy place for fast? And validation? Quick and fast versus beautiful and maybe not validated. How do you get to that point of fast and validated as fast as possible is where I would continue to focus.

Maiko Schaffrath  32:50

Got it. That's a really good point and, yeah, something that I see quite a lot of entrepreneurs not do, especially if they're first-time entrepreneurs, so really good advice. Thanks for sharing that. What I'd like to move on as a last question, actually, we're almost running out of time, is the future of ShoppingGives. Well, let me rephrase it actually. Let me edit that because I want to dive deeper on one more thing, actually. So, let's edit that out. Once again, I wanted to dive deeper on a point that you said around the vision, yeah. So, you basically just said around setting a vision for the long term, have been very clear where your North Star is, and then being very flexible on how you get there. That's how I understood what you just said. How do you make sure that your North Star as the right goal as well? You had a different vision when you first started out than what you have now, I assume, so how do you stay flexible while also still heading for the right goal?

Ronny Sage  34:13

Yeah. The vision has stayed the same. It's just the method in which we're approaching it has changed. The impact of every action has been, since the beginning, creating impact with every purchase. Just the language may have changed slightly, but the thesis has always been very clear. And the method in which we get there may have changed. There's a lot of different levers we can pull and methods we can pull, but being obsessed about that vision and outcome is what I think attracts people to it. It's what attracts the employees to it. It's what attracts the team to it. It's what attracts investors to it, is having such strong conviction in that. And yes, conviction leads to finding the solution that works, that creates revenue. But if that conviction is around doing well, even better. That's what I think drives the world forward and me forward and the company forward and the people around us forward is that that mission is for impact, and the result of that is bottom line. But in a general sense of entrepreneurship, when you have that conviction and you obsess about the problem and obsess about the vision, whether it may not be what you started on, you end up finding a solution that is validated and is an opportunity to create revenue around that. Somebody wants to pay for it, people want to pay for it, because you're obsessing about how to solve the problem. And eventually, you'll land on something that is, it may not be where you started, it may not be the second time, it may be where you come back to, but you end up obsessing about it and then looking for an end place and, how do you create an opportunity of revenue around that obsession?

Maiko Schaffrath  36:15

That's a great way of putting it. Thank you so much. I'd love to talk about the vision of ShoppingGives. You already articulated it in different ways that you basically want to enable people to give and to have every transaction to give to good causes. I'd love to know from you, how does the world look like in 10 years if ShoppingGives is successful? How do you imagine the world to be?

Ronny Sage  36:42

I see us as a singular point of impact, a single signon of impact, that you as a consumer have the ability to create impact with every action, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, driving, locking, paying your mortgage, paying for gas, that any type of commerce or action can be aligned with impact, and that it is passive still. We are passive in nature. We don't want more things to do, more apps to go to, or things to see. So, it's how do we communicate that impact authentically and create the ability to make giving an impact simple for everybody, consumers, retailers, commerce, and power the giving economy through our technologies. I don't like saying the X of Y. I don't like giving those examples. I think where we started in learning, it was easy in the early days to give the AmazonSmile for everyone else, but it's well beyond that now and what we're creating. That's a function of what we can do, but it's more about enabling everybody, every business, every consumer to create as much impact to any nonprofit in the world as possible and making it as transparent and clear on all sides. As a retailer, who do my customers care about and who am I giving to? As a nonprofit, who cares about me and what retailers are donating to me? What brands are donating to me? What actions are driving to me? How can I get more constituents and spend so much money to acquire customers and revenue? Because nonprofits are still businesses. And as a customer, where are my dollars going? Where am I giving to? How am I giving? How are my dollars going to work? Where can I give to? So, clarity into that across the entire ecosystem is really where we're focusing and driving.

Maiko Schaffrath  39:03

Amazing. Thank you, Ronny, so much for sharing your journey, your entrepreneurial journey, the mechanics behind ShoppingGives, but also some really good tangible advice for anybody starting out. Thanks for joining us today.

Ronny Sage  39:17

Of course, thank you so much for having me.