Learning Series | Social Impact With Rachel Klausner & Millie

March 18, 2022

Summary

We chat about Social Impact Software with Millie's Founder & CEO Rachel Klausner. We dive into the importance of social impact and how companies can focus on giving and volunteering to improve their company.

Interview Transcript

Ben - WeHero: Rachel. Thank you so much for jumping on the we hero learn series. So excited to hang out with you for a few minutes and the goal of having you on and for folks that don't know, Rachel, Rachel is the founder and CEO, right? Rachel Millie. Perfect. and so we have a lot of folks that ask us about different CSR platforms that are existence. You know, what the differences are what they should, what they should be considering when it comes to selecting a CSR platform. And milli is one of those platforms that we've come across time and time again, and Rachel you and have spoken before. And we just felt it was right to have you share a little bit about what Millie is and why you all are so special. And then of course share some trends in regards to what we're noticing in the world of volunteering and corporate giving right now. So maybe Rachel, if you could just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about that story of getting Neely started, cuz I think that's really special in and of itself. We'd love to hear that.
Rachel - Millie: Yeah. I love it then. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so fun getting to know you you know, we've nerded out on bootstrapped businesses and just volunteering and the space in general. So I'm excited that we get to have a live chat and you can put me in the hot seat and ask me all the tough questions. So yeah, I Millie is a social impact software. We started about three and a half years ago originally focused on individual giving and democratizing general advice, funds, making, giving accounts kind of accessible to all and very gratefully early on in the, in the, in the, you know, six months into our beta. A few I'm so grateful to them. A few Boston companies came to us and asked us to build out this, you know, something for employees. And I was like, oh, isn't there software for that.
Rachel - Millie: And they're like, not for our size business, you know, we're 500 people or we're a thousand people. Like we don't really qualify for some of the, the bigger platforms. And so we were like, oh, okay, this is interesting. And so that's really where millions of up, you know, making this really early major pivot. And since then we've really been focused on corporate giving and helping companies specifically kind of mid-market medium size businesses, some SMBs as what, some small businesses as well start and grow impact programs. You know, that Don have a huge CSR team that don't have 15 people. We're really focused on those companies that don't have a lot of resources to dedicate to this, but they want to start a giving program. They wanna start a, that volunteering program. And so, yeah, so we do, you know, all the usual like match and volunteer stuff and all the, all the fun stuff.
Rachel - Millie: But we also have some really fun, different tools on our platform that are really exciting. We have giving madness, which we can dive into, which is like a game unified giving tool, like marked madness brackets, democratizing grant making, where you're putting money in and your employees are voting nonprofits through a rack, super fun, really timely right now. As it's March and companies are running them as we speak. And then we also do really cool integrations that, you know, are very on the cutting edge. We were like, you know, the first to do the slack integration. And we're about to roll out a teams integration and really thinking through where are your employees and how can we pull all the things that you're working on into that? We, a lot, we have a lot of gifting tools that are really popular. So a lot of our customers do gifting through us where they gift charitable dollars to, you know, whoever customers, employees. So yeah, that's who we are. We are you know a, a, a bootstrap team. So we're very different in our space. You know, we're going up against some really big, amazing players who have really transformed this space and created it. But we definitely are, are hyper focused on some of those, you know, mid-market companies that might not have a huge team to run one of those really large platforms.
Ben - WeHero: So what I, what I love about Millie is that it seemed like previously CSR and software, like yours was reserved for the large companies, the fortune 500, 1000 that could afford to have a program like this and that we're actually focusing on building teams out, investing in software to be able to do some of these things. And what's so exciting to me right now is that you see a lot of small, medium sized businesses raising their hand, going, we wanna do this as well. We wanna prioritize this. Our employees are asking for this and having a solution like Millie actually makes that really fees, which I think is really exciting in how this industry is expanding right now. I'd love to get your thoughts, Rachel, just on for companies that are either a medium size business, maybe a small business, as they're thinking about starting a social impact program, or thinking about, you know, launching a software, what are some of the things that they should consider? What are some of the common challenge challenges that they face would love to just get your sense on for folks that are looking to do this, the things that they should be thinking about right now?
Rachel - Millie: Yeah. Really lean into what you, as as a company wanna be doing, right. If you really wanna be focused on volunteering, then make sure to dive into the details of the platforms around volunteering. If you're really focused on giving, if you're really focused on engagement, like what are those things that you really wanna get out of this platform and make sure that you in going into these conversations, cater it towards that, right? Cause these platforms have a lot of different areas of things. So if you, for example, we say this a lot. If you have, you know, a large foundation where you're doing a hu running, a large grant making process where folks are submitting, you're getting hundreds of applications. We in the first interview will say, we're not a good fit for you, right? Like that's not our skillset we're really focused on, in impact around your employees.
Rachel - Millie: And so for us, when it's just direct external stuff, like we send all the time, we send to our competitors who are better at that. And so I think it's really important to go into these conversations, knowing that each of the softwares out there have pros and cons, right? They're good at certain things. And they focuses and we're all making decisions as we build things. And, you know, we have to give up certain things to build other things. And, you know, in prioritizing these pieces on the, on what you see, then we're taking out those pieces. And so really just thinking through like, what's the important thing for your team? What are those tools that you think are really important to, to to the program that you're running? And so I think it really depends on what you wanna accomplish out of it.
Rachel - Millie: Like, what are your goals? Ask a lot of questions. We always say do a lot of demos, like when someone comes to us and we're the only demo we tell them, go look at other software. Like we want you to come to us after having seen everything else and be like, oh, wow. Cause we don't want you, you know, a bunch of months in hearing about another software and like, oh, I should have looked into this more. So, and we, you know, we we're, I guess we're a little confident or, or just, we just want people to feel really happy about their decision. And so what we found, which is super counterintuitive is to encourage our prospects, to go looking at a few other softwares. So I definitely encourage folks do a bunch of different demos. See the big players, see the small ones, see, you know, the one, so you can, so you'll start to get a better sense of what you're looking for. Because again, these, this kind of software, you know, it's not like impossible to pull out, but again, you're implementing it across all your employees. You don't wanna roll something out and then a year later to be like, oh yeah, yeah, we're moving to a different one. And so I think, you know, making sure that you're making the right decision is important upfront. And so, yeah, that's kind of what, what I would say to someone as they're evaluating.
Ben - WeHero: Yeah. I totally agree with you on the goal setting piece. I think there's so many companies that go like, oh, this is something we can do. Let's check the box, get a software and then call it good, but they haven't set any of the goals around like what they want their social impact program to accomplish. And you're spot on in the sense of like there's different software, that'll help you reach those goals depending on what those goals are. And so I always tell, you know, I always have the same slow down to speed up, like, think about what the goals are for your company, for your employees, for your social impact program broadly. And then back into that with the right technology, with the right programs, to be able to actually reach those goals in those targets. You, you touched on something Rachel, I want to double back on around the engagement piece and you touched on slack and immigration and gamification.
Ben - WeHero: And I wanna talk about that because I think a lot of companies, they really struggle with employee engagement, but they also struggle in regards to onboarding employees to actually use a CSR platform. I hear time and time again about, oh, we only have, you know, 40, 50% in some cases of our employee base using our CSR platform. That means like they're missing out on matching gifts, missing out on volunteer opportunities. And I think it's interesting how you are playing with gamification here, as well as like actually integrating Millie into the existing workflow for employees like yep. And I think that those are lessons on a, what Millie's capable of, but two, what, you know, folks that are in the role of CSR, they should think about regards to how to engage their employees. So can you talk a little bit about those two things for Millie?
Rachel - Millie: Absolutely. Yeah. So from the beginning, I remember I was doing a bunch of research when we were first deciding to like go into this space of corporate impact and, you know, should we pivot from individual to company? And in doing the research, I came across the average participation rate in these programs which was 11%. And I was shocked that was participation in any sort of giving capacity with like a least a dollar, right. Not even like the utilization of the match, but just, just the, anyone just that participated in least a dollar. And I could not believe it. Right. We always talk about all this money that's being left on the table. There's just so mu like it is in my opinion, a stain on our industry yeah. That we have, haven't figured out this engagement piece, right. We're out there helping companies check those boxes of features, but we're not thinking about what is the goal of this program, right?
Rachel - Millie: Why are you implementing this? Wow, well, you're implementing this to actually have an impact on the community, right? You want some volume going through the system and you're also doing this so that you can create that bond with your employees, right. Create that connection amongst them and with, with their employer. And so if utilization is super low, if this participation rates low, you know, you're only really you doing it with such a small group of people. And so that 11% number really became a target for me to shift on our platform. And so we knew like, you know, of course we would make it super user friendly and make a really fun database with badges that you can filter and profiles that nonprofits can drag drop things. And it's, it's a really exciting, beautiful experience. But I knew like we knew from beginning that wasn't gonna be enough.
Rachel - Millie: Right. Like making it beautiful, usable interface. Yeah. It'll move the needle a little bit, but like, how do we really prove that needle? Like how do we make that 11% double or triple right. Like, or beyond, right. How do we, you know, so that was really important to me. And so we started with slack, right? The first question I had was, you know, where are people like, where are our customers? Where are their employees that aren't engaging in these tools, in these programs? And so that's why we built out the slack app. That's why we're building out a replica app on teams. Because that's are their employees are right. Like I think, I think a big miss for a lot of the platforms in the space was they really tried to make the platform, the destination. That's not what the platform should be.
Rachel - Millie: Right? Like the platform's not a destination, no one's buying these platform forms to make, like, they tried to make them into like social networks is really what a lot of them do with comments and this and that. And they, that's what they built. They built tons of features to make it into this social network. And one of the things that you learn about a social network that we we've learned as this millennial generation, as we've grown up with the various social networks that have of grown up with us is that a social network is only good as the social, the, the people on it, right? Like if you don't have people coming to that network and commenting and doing all those things. And so I knew if we would try to replicate what they had, we were gonna get that same miss, right. We weren't gonna move that needle.
Rachel - Millie: Where are people, where are they socializing? Where are they having these interactions? And so it just kept coming back to slack and teams. And it was like, why are we trying to create why trying to create these social networks around impact, right. They already have a, a place where their social that's, where their company has already established all their communication lives, you know, to try and replicate that with an impact twist just felt a little off. Especially for me as a product designer, my background, right. I always, as a product designer, you know, like you design all these pretty mockups, but you also want to, I always try to design a mockup version of what it's actually gonna look like, even when it's underutilized. And so I think that's, what's really important because you can build these platforms and if no one's using them in the way you intend, then it, it looks bare.
Rachel - Millie: Right. It looks sad. And so I think for us, it was really about how do we get these, this engagement rate to be higher. We don't wanna pull people onto Millie. Like we don't need us to be the focus, right? The employees are the focus. So pulling in what the program admins are building onto slack was really much more important. So now the slack integration is crazy. I mean, it's like the coolest features. I cannot take any credit. Our engineering team did an amazing job building it out. It's so extensive. You can build out channels for different ball, volunteer events. You can connect different channels to campaigns that you have running. It's super cool. And then all the you can search anywhere in slack for groups, volunteer events, like directly in, in your, you know, know typing bar anywhere. It's really cool. Like everything that you're doing on it gets pulled into slack natively. So it, it ended up being like, you know, we didn't know when we were building it that, oh, this was for sure gonna like change the game. Obviously now after it's been live, we can see it cuz customers tell us how much it's changed their engagement. So yeah, it's been, it's been wild to watch.
Ben - WeHero: That's so cool. And I think you're so spot on that. Nobody wants another app. I feel like I always hear that. Yeah. And I always say that nobody wants another app. So try to figure out a way to work into somebody else's workflow. It's gonna make your life so much easier. Tell, talk to me for just a little bit about the gamification piece. Like you're doing the March madness piece right now. I want to hear about that. Cuz hoping it sparks some ideas for other folks in regards to how they can get increased engagement as well through something like gamification.
Rachel - Millie: Cool. Yeah. So that actually started from like the craziest story a bunch of years ago. So when milli first started three years ago, I was a few months into this. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have a product. It was like me solo in the wilderness. And I, you know, you know, early days for anyone who's a founder like begging everyone have a coffee with you. You're just like, give me a half an hour, give me 15 minutes. Like I just wanna pick your, and I just, so that was me in the early days. I'm just like coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. Even though I drink tea, so I just had to fake it till I made it, which I still haven't. But you know and I grads coffee with this guy, Tim Smith, who used to work at the Boston foundation who now works at pledge 1% and tides.
Rachel - Millie: Okay. Jointly incredible like philanthropy genius. He was so gracious. He gave me like, I think we went on a few coffee rottens together and we chatted once in the month of March. So it was actually probably three years ago, like this month and it was during March madness. And we're talking about like, how do we get philanthr? We're just like thinking big picture. We're like, how do we change philanthropy? Like what do we do here? And now looking back I'm like, why was he giving me the type of TA as we had these conversations? And he said, you know, I remember him saying something like Rachel, I just I'm obsessed with bar madness. Like someone needs to do something I'm giving and March madness. Like there's gotta be something there. And I was like, that's brilliant. I am gonna do that. I think he thought I was joking.
Rachel - Millie: I, I, I think like now looking back, I remember I emailed him a few months ago and I was like, FYI, it's built. And here it is. And you could not believe that it came to fruition. But yeah, so he suggested this idea and it kind of stuck in my brain. I was I'm, I've always been like a, you know, obsessed with basketball and competition. And I just always thought this was really fun. I was like ran a sports camp when I was a kid for, it was for a lot of years. So like my family makes fun of me that it just always comes back to brackets for me. Like it just has to die back in. And so I think from that experience, it really just, I knew that there was something there, like whatever Tim said, I was like, it resonated right then.
Rachel - Millie: And I was, I think this is gonna be big. And as the idea evolved, it became more and more apparent that we had to build it because there was such a large funding gap to nonprofits between January one. And I would say usually like, mid-November, there is a little bit of a spike of foundation money that come, come in at the end of June, but really for the most part, most giving happened in the last six weeks of the year. Yep. And so, you know, nonprofits like, you know, are throwing these hail Marys, hoping that something lands and it's really painful, right? A lot of nonprofit layoffs happen in the beginning of the, of the year because of it. And so what, what we really were trying to do once we kind of realized this was like, wait a second, March, this is perfect.
Rachel - Millie: Like there's this gap in giving right in March, like this is the middle of the gap and what if we could really build momentum around this? And then the other big factor was okay, we have giving Tuesday huge success started a decade ago out of the 92nd street. Why really as this idea around giving and time, which was another reason why I loved this, you know, giving madness concept. Cause it was so, so time focused and we knew time based events work. It's why volunteering so successful. Right? giving campaigns are so successful. You know, you gotta put a time around something because it will get people much more excited and energized and it will move people to act. So we knew that like giving Tuesday was super successful, but it was focused on individuals, right. There was no moment in the year where we, as a society were saying, Hey corporations, what are you doing?
Rachel - Millie: How are you giving back? You know, it would happen every so often when something bad would happen in the world, but it was never this annual moment where there was a little bit of pressure, right? Like, like on giving Tuesday, we as individuals feel that pressure to give that doesn't really exist for companies. And so we really wanted to try to create that at around March because we thought, oh, this is so great. Most March madness, basketball brackets are filled out in the workplace, right? Workplace brackets workplace is the most common place that people fill out brackets, not with family or friends, but at work. And so ha it's already this familiar thing at work. 70 million brackets are filled out every year. That's crazy. That's a crazy number, especially cuz most people don't watch college basketball compared to that 70 million. Right. Like a fraction. And so I think that was really powerful.
Rachel - Millie: Like seeing those numbers, seeing it was such a workplace thing, everything just kind of felt like, wow, let's create this moment around giving. So it's been amazing. So we just, this month, every day, we're just more and more companies are launching these brackets giving away. I would say on average, the brackets have been somewhere around 20 K each some much larger, some smaller, depending on the size of the business. But for the most part we've just seen unbelievable giving happen through these brackets. And it's a lot of fun. The companies, essentially companies put 16 nonprofits into the bracket, all the nonprofits end up winning something, but they put 16 nonprofits in put this large pool of money towards it. And then their employees vote the nonprofits through the, of bracket over the course of a one week period or a one month period.
Rachel - Millie: So it's been a lot of fun, totally wild. Definitely not. You know, now that it's like live and happening, it's just, it's, it's exciting to see so much money flow to charity from this weird wacky concept that came from a coffee slash tea chat. So yeah, but it's, it's been fun and honestly gamification has hugely helped engagement numbers. So we're gonna be putting out a whole case study about this in probably end of April on how these first brackets did, what worked, what didn't, what really drove engagement what were those engagement rates? What did they look like? Right now, just from these first brackets that have finished, like engagement's amazing so much higher than what engagement normally is in these programs. And so it's really cool to see like net new people that weren't doing volunteering weren't necessarily doing their own give, but wanted to vote in a bracket to help the company choose where to give the money. And so it was, it's been super cool to watch.
Ben - WeHero: It's so awesome. I think it's such a brilliant idea. And again, to the point of just like, this is one example of gamification, like really working, but there's so many other ways companies can take advantage of that gamification to really engage their staff, create something new and exciting. I mean, employees are so used to the same calls of actions to donate now, you know, volunteer now, like having something that's new and exciting is an experience for folks to go in and participate in, I think is such a great way forward for so many companies. They hope more companies start adopting ideas like this. And I hope we keep hearing is of how companies are implementing some form of gamification. Maybe it's not March madness, maybe it's something else, but yep. I'm, I'm glad, you know, hopefully under the March madness, Brack have, you know, credit to Tim for, for,
Rachel - Millie: Yeah. He's all over our site. I like sent to Tim before it was live. I'm like, I hope it's okay. I'm blasting your name everywhere.
Ben - WeHero: Oh my gosh. With the few minutes we have left Rachel, a, a few kind of industry, broad questions. I'm really curious. What are you noticing right now at being some of the largest challenges that CSR professionals are dealing with? Would love to get your take on what they're struggling with right now?
Rachel - Millie: Yeah, I think in general, what we're seeing is a capacity problem. So our, you know, core demographic of companies is this like midsize company, right? A few hundred employees to like five or 6,000 employees. That's most of our customer. And so most of those companies don't have teams. It's usually a one person show maybe two who are running impact. And oftentimes it's like an HR person or an engineering manager that wears this as like an additional hat. And I think that's a really hard thing. I think we're starting to, I'll see a much greater movement towards turning these into full-time jobs, especially in this mid-size market. And I think that's really what we're seeing as a challenge, right? It's convincing the C-suite that this is an important role to have because it's really hard to run this program, even if you're a full-time person and doing it by yourself, let alone, if you have another day, day job, and you're just doing this on the side and you're expected to have high engagement rates and know how to, you know, respond to tragedy really quickly.
Rachel - Millie: And there's just a lot that I think for the last five to 10 years, companies just coasted, you know, letting the most eager employee take this on, you know, pro bono slash moonlighting and just doing it. But that's, that's not gonna be able to last forever, especially as more employees are demanding these kinds of programs and we're seeing them work. And so I think I think the big thing is gonna be around, how do we convince? And this is part of my job is like, how do we convince the C suite that this is important, right? How do we convince the CEO that this is important? Because I think ultimately there's so much interest from the team. It's really just making sure that there's someone to take it on that isn't burdened with another fulltime job. So yeah, that's what that's, that's the, I think the big thing that I'm hoping that we can fix over the next bunch of years.
Ben - WeHero: Yeah. I second that I spoke to a woman the other day, she's the single CSR leader for an 11,000 person company. Wow. Like the amount of work like that's on her should is so challenging. And I, I agree with you, it's so important that the C-suite starts recognizing like how important this function is. You know, one of the things that we've been spending a lot of time on is we focus on a lot of strategy work. And so we're really trying to tie investment into these CSR programs and how that relates to revenue growth, cost savings, employee engagement broadly. And I think the more we can do that and the more we have like platforms like nilly providing data, showing that like, Hey, this is actually really working the better it's. I think, you know, some companies, they think of this as the first step it's gonna that check the box like, oh, we need CSR, we need ESG, let's hire a person, put 'em in that role. And they'll take care of whatever needs to be taken care of. And that's so challenging right now. So I definitely second that that's being a really big challenge right now in our space.
Rachel - Millie: Yeah. What do you think are the biggest challenges?
Ben - WeHero: That's one of the big ones capacity, I think to the point we were talking around gamification, I think companies right now are really struggling with engagement. Yeah. Whether that's engagement with giving engagement, with volunteering it's really challenging. And especially what's making it increasingly more challenging is hybrid remote in office and the decisions that have to be be made there. And so companies are really trying to find an identity of what their culture's gonna be and what their work life is going to be right now. And I think that's impacting a lot of those engagement pieces for their staff and and with a, you know, a high focus on retention right now, it's, it's, it's, there's a lot of pressure on this. And so I think I'm seeing all those things as, as pain points right now, as companies really try to increase engagement, focus on CSR and ESG and do that and a really efficient man amids everything else they have going on right now, right in the macroeconomic world,
Rachel - Millie: Wild times.
Ben - WeHero: It's wild. Rachel, my, my last question that's top of mind for you is that what's exciting. You the most right now in our industry, when you look broadly across, you know, all the CSR players, ESG players, the technology that's coming out different vendors are what is really exciting you right now in our space.
Rachel - Millie: Yeah. So what I'm excited about is when I like take a step back and think about where the space has come from and where it's going right now, we as an industry, you know, match programs, impact programs, volunteering, any giving, anything around that. We maybe, I don't know the exact statistic, but I'm guessing we maybe have touched 1% of companies. Maybe that is the most exciting thing for me, because I truly believe that is shifting like crazy, right? I think when we look at this space in 10 years, it's gonna be expected that someone has a match program or a volunteer program or something impact oriented. Like it's gonna be a, we already see the young people are asking these questions. They're asking when they're interviewing, what are you doing? That's why a lot of people come to us, right? It's come from, you know, potential hires, it's come from their employees.
Rachel - Millie:  so I do think that this there's this tipping point that's happening now, where companies of all sizes are feeling this pressure. It used to just be that if you're a fortune 500 company, it's a checkbox that you've, you know, you gotta check off, you gotta have your match program, just like everybody else in your industry. But you know, five years ago were small businesses having these programs. No, they would never even think of it. And so I think that's changed a lot over these last few years and I think moving forward, it's only gonna change more and more so I'm most excited because I think there's so much more impact to be made. Right? Like we've barely touched the surface on this and I know that we're gonna see so many companies of all sizes start these programs. And so I think it's just, it's just very exciting to me to think about that. Like, wow, we can help enable these companies start to think about what should they be doing? How should they convince their CEO? This is important. How like, we're really helping them lay the groundwork at their company, whether they're 50 people or 5,000. Right. And just, it's very exciting to me because I just think there's so much opportunity, right? We're not, we're not building, I don't know. What's like a generic software, but like building like a, to do list or a management, whatever software that's like, it's saturated the market face filter, you know
Ben - WeHero: What face filter.
Rachel - Millie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Right. Exactly. There's enough of those out there. Right. Or everyone uses, you know, whatever. Yeah. It's those, these industries, you know, software has saturated so many industries and I think this is one of those spaces where it barely, barely, and I think this is where software, I think can help these companies adopt these kinds of programs. Whereas imagine you're a 200 person company and you're trying to run a match program and you're running campaigns and you're, you're asking your account department to do all these charges and you're managing it in a spreadsheet and a form and this, and it, I mean, it's like a nightmare. That's what most people do before they bring on software and realize like, wait, actually I can make this super easy. So yeah, it's, I think I'm very excited about that. I just think we're gonna, I think there's just gonna be, I think corporate giving in general right now is a small portion of giving and I think it's gonna end up being a large portion of giving if we do this right over the next few decades.
Ben - WeHero: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I was so excited. I was working with the company 10 employees, so small, and at that stage they were already thinking about their social impact strategy. Wow. And like, that's like, I was just like, I was so excited by that though. Like this company at this stage is already thinking like that. And I think we're at tier point, we're seeing more and more companies do that. And going back to the challenge, you and I talked about just a capacity issue, it's a, it's a challenge to see that capacity issue. But I also see as a strong signal, I meet with a lot of CSR professionals. Like I am the very first CSR professional at this large company. And this is how they wanted get started. And you know, that's painful for that individual, but I think it's a strong signal that like companies are trying this on for the first time. Yep. In many cases. And I think that gets me really excited cuz the demand is definitely there.
Rachel - Millie: Yep. I'm excited. It's fun.
Ben - WeHero: Rachel, where can people learn more about you? Where can people learn more about Millie? How can they find about all that?
Rachel - Millie: Sure. Yeah. You can check us out on milli giving.com. You've got a lot of cool things rolling out in the next bunch of months. If you wanna hear more about giving madness, you wanna giving madness.com to hear more about and see that start a bracket totally free for companies that are under 25 employees. So we highly encourage folks that is thanks to a very generous grant from the gates team. So huge shout out to them. And yeah, really excited to kind of see where this goes. And if anyone is a nerd like me in social impact, always love chatting. So umm, you know, my, my emails open rachel@milligiving.com. And yeah Ben, thank you so much for having me like this is so fun. I feel like we always end up having fun whether it's recorded or not. So yeah, hugely grateful to you for, for freaking me on and, and letting me tell the milli story.
Ben - WeHero: It's so fun. I feel like our stories are so similar in this industry. So I love chatting with you for folks that do reach out to Rachel to meet up, take her for a tea. Don't go out and get coffee. She's already told you she's not a coffee drinker. So actually go to a tea bar, something like that. Oh thanks Rachel.
Rachel - Millie: Thanks Ben.

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Andy VandenBerg
Andy VandenBerg is the co-founder and COO of WeHero where he works closely with hundreds of companies to help them reach their social impact goals. Andy speaks actively about the importance of aligning strategy with social responsibility and how companies can pursue both purpose and profit. Andy’s past experience includes private equity and family office investing. If he’s not in front of his computer, you can find him in the Pacific Ocean or Lake Michigan.
Ben Sampson
Ben Sampson is the co-founder and CEO of WeHero where he works closely with hundreds of companies to help them reach their social impact goals. Ben speaks actively about corporate social responsibility, volunteerism, sustainability, and how companies united with activism drive powerful change. Ben’s past experience includes leading product teams, building startups, and studying sustainable business strategy at Harvard. In his free time, he’s an avid outdoor enthusiast focused on skiing, surfing, and mountain biking.

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