Disruptors for GOOD | Social Entrepreneurs and Social Enterprises - Bootstrapping and Scaling a Social Impact Tech Company - Rachel Klausner // Founder of Millie

Bootstrapping and Scaling a Social Impact Tech Company - Rachel Klausner // Founder of Millie

03/08/22 • 36 min

Disruptors for GOOD | Social Entrepreneurs and Social Enterprises

In episode 132 of the Disruptors for GOOD podcast I speak with Rachel Klausner, founder of Millie, on bootstrapping and scaling a social impact tech company aimed at growing modern giving.

Rachel is the Founder and CEO of Millie, a charitable giving platform that makes giving back easy and impactful. Rachel’s passion for fundraising started when she spent a year after high school living and volunteering on a youth village where she took on a fundraising role during the day and ran programming for kids in the evenings. Rachel is a product designer by trade and spent 8 years designing software at startups. Her expertise is in personalization technology + product design and is excited to leverage those to transform the way people give.

Millie’s mission is to build a home for giving by connecting companies, their teams, and nonprofits. Millie is a Public Benefit Corporation, with impact at the heart of everything we build. We are so inspired by the people we get to work with on a daily basis: both the nonprofit professionals working to make this world better, and the changemakers at companies inspiring their teams to help them. We build tools to help these groups come together and orchestrate social impact programs. From workplace giving to grantmaking, from volunteering to gifting: our team loves to build products people love.

Match employee donations on a budget

No matter the amount, match programs are an impactful way to build a community and increase retention across your employees. Millie helps companies create sustainable match programs that actually fit their budget. With the freedom to customize employee and company caps, approved and off-limit nonprofits, and a comprehensive database of nonprofits to choose from, your team is sure to find the perfect match.

Build campaigns & build community

Use campaigns to engage with employees around an event or cause area. With a flexible design, you can build campaigns around nonprofit partners, launch new initiatives focused on a CSR goal or support your employee resource groups.

Gift charitable dollars to employees & customers

Recognize and celebrate employees by gifting charitable dollars to donate. Or develop deeper relationships with prospects and customers by sending them charitable gift cards. The charitable dollars you gift can be used to donate to one of 1.7+ million nonprofits and can even go to multiple organizations. Nervous some gifts will go unused? Set custom expiration dates and any unused gifts will return the charitable dollars into your company wallet.

Millie also recently launched Giving Madness. Giving Madness is a bracket-style giving tournament. Structured like the most famous college basketball tournament, your company starts with 16 nonprofits in the giving bracket. Companies contribute to a donation pool and employees vote to advance their favorite nonprofits through four rounds of “games" over the course of one week or month. After the championship game, the pool gets divided up and donated proportionately.

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In episode 132 of the Disruptors for GOOD podcast I speak with Rachel Klausner, founder of Millie, on bootstrapping and scaling a social impact tech company aimed at growing modern giving.

Match employee donations on a budget

Build campaigns & build community

Gift charitable dollars to employees & customers

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Spotlighting impact startups, brands, and founders.

To learn more, please visit causeartist.com

Previous Episode

Pioneering Clean Label Foods and Clean Label Manufacturing - Gregory Vetter // CEO of Tessemae's

In episode 131 of the Disruptors for GOOD podcast I speak with Gregory Vetter, CEO of Tessemae's on taking huge risks to start a clean label food company and pioneer clean label manufacturing.

Gregory Vetter is the CEO of Tessemae’s, flavor-forward, organic fresh food company, considered to be a lead innovator and disruptor in the clean food movement. Gregory, the oldest of the Vetter brothers, had the idea to launch Tessemae’s based on the belief in his mother’s wildly popular homemade dressing recipe and how it had the potential to create an entirely new clean food category.

After winning over a local Whole Foods buyer and selling just under 700 bottles in one week, Gregory, his two brothers, Matt and Brian, and his family grew the business to become the #1 organic salad dressing brand in the refrigerated space. Gregory and his family paved the way for clean manufacturing on a mass scale by inventing the only gum-free dressing bottling process.

That manufacturing process led to the invention of the “fresh condiment” category, the first Whole30 approved bottled dressings and condiments, and then continued pioneering of innovation across the grocery store with the creation of the first shelf-stable creamy dressings free of gums and additives with the “Tessemae’s Pantry” line.

Gregory, who values the importance of family and the concept of a wholesome family dinner, spoke at a TED Talk entitled “The Dinner Habit – The Recipe For Change” and is a finalist for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2019 Mid-Atlantic Award.

Tessemae's is an organic fresh food company that makes products with uncompromised ingredients of the highest quality. Tessemae's commitment to healthy eating and living is the core of its mission. As a pioneer in clean label manufacturing, Tessemae's has been focused on producing simple and delicious food with real ingredients that everyone can enjoy.

All Tessemae's products are made and shipped from the U.S., and are available for purchase at Whole Food's Market, Kroger, Sprouts, Safeway, Baker's, Fry's, Mom's Organic Market, Dillon's, Earth Fare, Fresh Thyme, Fred Meyer, QFC, Walmart, City Market, Roundy's, Ralphs, King Soopers, Lucky's, Heinen's, HEB, Harris Teeter, Wegmans, Save Mart, Smith's, Amazon, Tessemaes.com, Target, Thrive Market and more retailers across the country.

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Spotlighting impact startups, brands, and founders.

To learn more, please visit causeartist.com

Next Episode

How to Scale Access and Affordability to Delicious Plant-Based Chicken - Christie Lagally // Founder & CEO of Rebellyous Foods

In episode 133 of the Disruptors for GOOD podcast I speak with Christie Lagally, Founder & CEO of Rebellyous Foods, on using her aerospace and engineering background to scale access and affordability to delicious plant-based chicken.

Christie Lagally is the founder and CEO of Rebellyous Foods, a food production technology company working to make plant-based meat price-competitive with traditional chicken products. Ms. Lagally is a mechanical engineer and holder of multiple patents in manufacturing technology. She spent much of her career in the aerospace industry working on commercial airplanes and spacecraft in testing, design, and manufacturing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Previously, Ms. Lagally served as a Senior Scientist for the Good Food Institute uncovering the technical barriers in the development of plant-based meat and cultured meat. Ms. Lagally holds Bachelor’s degrees in Organizational Psychology and Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering. She is also an active member of the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington, a co-founder of the Humane Voters of Washington (a political action committee) and serves as a Washington State Volunteer Leader for the Humane Society of the United States.

Rebellyous Foods is an innovative food production company creating delicious, affordable plant-based meats for the foodservice industry.
The company has achieved this through the custom design of low-cost, high-quality products in combination with the use of high-throughput manufacturing automation, the development of new, low-energy manufacturing tools, and the design of modular production facilities operated by Rebellyous Foods.

With current plant-based meat products at two-to-five times the cost per pound of animal-based meat, plant-based meat will only truly become widely available when it can be produced and sold at a low cost. Rebellyous Foods is utilizing leading-edge manufacturing methods at scale through R&D with universities, a planned pilot-scale facility in the Puget Sound, and a production facility in Seattle. Working closely with industry partners, Rebellyous Foods equips our facilities with redesigned and optimized equipment for large scale production of plant-based meat.

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Spotlighting impact startups, brands, and founders.

To learn more, please visit causeartist.com