Best Startup
philanthropy made easy: an all-in-one platform that helps donors and wealth managers find reliable and tax-deductible nonprofits.
we believe everyone should vote with their dollar, not only as a consumer and/or as an investor but also as a donor. the movement we’ve seen in fintech with wealth management platforms should also happen in the philanthropic world.
Tell us about yourself?
Rochelle is a proud immigrant born and raised in Brazil, a serial FinTech entrepreneur, founded her first tech company at the early age of 15 years old, having vast experience building technical B2B SaaS and fintech products.
She has experience in the payment industry and was directly responsible for the development and implementation of the company’s main solutions and leading in the areas of technology, people relations, and institutional relations.
She has grown from 2 people to 50 team members under her leadership in four years.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Growth and comfort can’t co-exist. Trust the process and be intentional with whom and how you spend your time.
What problem does your business solve?
Inefficiencies in the philanthropic world: Philanthropy gets U$471Bi annually in donations, yet it is a black box – the technology used is usually no more sophisticated than spreadsheets and email.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
How can we give more? With this question we started exploring the philanthropy market and how we can inspire people to donate more.
We chose to work in this business because in the past 3 years Ba has been serving influential high net-worth individuals at the multifamily office she founded, and understands deeply the problem and the need for an efficient solution.
Donors are ready to pay for the service. We believe that everyone should vote with their dollars, not only as a consumer, and/or investor, but also as a donor.
The more we researched about it, we realized that philanthropy should be easier and more efficient and that there isn’t a tech-enabled solution bringing efficiency and guidance to donors on their “giving back strategy”.
On top of that, there isn’t a solution to find a trustworthy and reliable institution that supports causes that connect with the donor’s values and how to follow closely the work the nonprofits are doing.
Because of that, many donors end up not donating to any charity (and missing the tax benefit) for lack of security/information about nonprofits or, larger donors, end up donating to well-known charities or to their own foundations (although stay restricted to the impact they could have) only to meet the tax deduction deadline.
The movement we’ve been seeing in fintech with wealth management platforms should happen in the philanthropic world as well.
Ba was an angel investor at companies like VISE, Public, and Seeds, and following closely as a consumer solutions like WealthFront, Wealthsimple, Betterment, and as business solutions to financial advisors like Altruist, Ethic, so the inspiration for building giveback comes from the wealth management/fintech movement, a visually engaging platform, extremely user-friendly, elegant and sexy.
The philanthropy market is unattended; the vast majority of giving solutions look at one side of the market: charities or donors. We see an opportunity to be the “one-stop-shop” for philanthropy for wealth managers and donors.
Rochelle has been an entrepreneur since she was 15 years old, having experience in fintech SaaS product development.
Ba has been an entrepreneur since she was 13 years old, coming from the fashion industry and finding her path in the investment world at the early age of 20, she wore multiple hats over the years, with more than 80 direct investments in startups, multiple venture capital funds, and $370M AUM at the family office she launched only 3 years ago, having large expertise serving influential high net-worth individuals with the mission to create and redefine wealth, mainly working for Conscious Athletes & Celebrities.
What is your magic sauce?
The experience and execution capacity of our founding team combined with an obsession to solve the “black box” problem of the philanthropic world is what will make us a defining category company.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We envision giveback to becoming the #1 platform when it comes to donations, the company that reinvented the industry, bringing efficiency and increasing the level of joy significantly for donors and wealth managers when donating, because with giveback, they can not only have an engaging visual experience throughout the platform but more importantly, they see the impact of the dollars they donate.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
On giveback’s journey, figuring out a business model to solve the egg-chicken problem of a match-making platform and finding our sweet-spot targeting wealth managers instead of D2C.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We want to reach out to more donors and wealth managers to help them efficiently build their giving back strategy. You can register for our waiting list here: https://www.giveback.social/
