Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 99. Disrupting the Crowdfunding Sector for Good - Max Friedman

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99. Disrupting the Crowdfunding Sector for Good - Max Friedman · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm john.
• 0:02
  Unknown: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the we are for good podcast,
• 0:06
  Becky Endicott: nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community, where nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started.
• 0:37
  Unknown: Hey, Becky, hey,
• 0:37
  Becky Endicott: john,
• 0:39
  Jonathan McCoy: what's happening?
• 0:39
  Becky Endicott: I'm just so excited. Because, you know, when you make new friends and kindergarten, and you just like, you, you meet, like the most amazing people and you're thinking, like, I just want to hang with this person, because their ethos is so good. And their humanity is so large.
• 0:56
  Becky Endicott: Like, we're kicking it back to kindergarten with one of the nicest most kind individuals who just happens to run a company.
• 1:02
  Jonathan McCoy: Yep. So Max has pulled himself up in our sandbox here in kindergarten. We forced him to come over and hang out with us. Yes. So guys, we are not
• 1:11
  Max Friedman: I met my best friend in kindergarten. So it's like, oh, my gosh,
• 1:16
  Jonathan McCoy: that is amazing.
• 1:16
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, you know, we love hearing founders stories. And Max, if you don't know max Friedman, he's our guest today, he's the co founder and CEO of Givebutter. If you don't know him, you definitely probably have heard of give butter. They power 1000s 10s of 1000s of organizations online giving online and they're just disruptive, because you know what, they started in a college dorm, and he's gonna tell the story of how this happened. But very much people first, very much all the value alignment that, you know, you hear from us that we talked about, the thing that was really stuck out with us with Max and his team, when we've gotten the chance to get to know them a little bit is that, you know, they deeply care about our passions, and the values of just putting donors first and it's just, it's gonna be a wonderful conversation. So we're really excited to have max here today. He's also legendary.
• 2:02
  Jonathan McCoy: And notice that I said dairy because he drops the puns like nobody's business about butter.
• 2:09
  Jonathan McCoy: So I want you to be listening for those. I'm going to keep a small tally over here. But Max is, let me give you just a little bit about his his bio. He started give butter in his dorm room I said in 2016, and it's now grown to one of the fastest growing and number one rated nonprofit fundraising platforms according to get app jeetu all the software ranking and review systems put give better at the top because people just love the platform. Max is also the proud new dog dad of give butters official mascot Buttercup
• 2:39
  Becky Endicott: princess better pup. If you're not following her on Instagram, you're missing out on the cutest part of your day.
• 2:46
  Becky Endicott: Absolutely.
• 2:47
  Jonathan McCoy: So Max, thanks for joining us today. So good to have you here.
• 2:51
  Max Friedman: Yeah, thank you both. It's It's awesome to just chat for, you know, with like minded with folks. And I really, I love what you're doing. So I'm glad to be here.
• 3:01
  Jonathan McCoy: We appreciate it. Well, would you kind of tell us a little bit about your story. I mean, maybe you need to start in kindergarten, because that's pretty legendary alone that you met your best friend in kindergarten, but just tell us a story of give butter and how you ended up being in this space today.
• 3:15
  Max Friedman: Yeah, and I do hope you turn puns out throughout the course of this episode.
• 3:19
  Jonathan McCoy: I'm one and you're zero so far. So.
• 3:24
  Max Friedman: So yeah, I mean, shout out to Jonah, if you're listening my best friend from kindergarten and you both a three. We go Jonah, um, we, we started give butter in my junior year of college. Before that, though. I got really hooked on starting a company and my freshman year of college, I got into coding and built this app called happening. In channeling my inner Scott Harrison, I'll fast forward and say that I ended up sort of turning that event app into basically ended up like a club promoter. Just trying to get the app off the ground, I was sending I went to Washington, DC for college at George Washington University.
• 4:00
  Max Friedman: And a lot of the events on the app kind of Lent lent themselves to the nightlife scene, not really why I started the app.
• 4:06
  Max Friedman: And that's kind of where it went. And when that sort of started winding down, I was looking for what to do next. And I never really thought about it too, too much at the time. But I definitely was sort of searching for Where can I make my impact?
• 4:19
  Max Friedman: How can I use these skills that I've learned in coding and technology and that passion for entrepreneurship and do good.
• 4:25
  Max Friedman: But I had no idea what that looked like. And so I picked up some side projects. I moved in with two roommates named Rick Rosner and the Ron Cohen, who ended up being my co founders.
• 4:36
  Max Friedman: We built this website called originally, this is sort of a fun fact that I've never really shared. I mean, people who saw it at the time would know but the original name of the site was the big cash game, which quickly pivoted to we give to for branding. Basically, it was like an online sweepstakes. You can go on the site and we had a pool of money and you could win If you won part of it would go to charity. And everyone that was sort of pooling, the money got a place on the site as like an advertisement. And part of those proceeds went to charity too. So the truth is that the charity piece was a little bit like a gimmick, it was just to kind of like spin up the morality of this idea of this, this sort of silly sweepstakes, like a, like a bulletin board of ads, enter your email when sort of thing. But the charity piece was the most interesting part of what we were doing. We had a lot of nonprofits reach out, we ended up getting some press in the Washington Post. And we were learning more and more about the fundraising space generally. And the gap between all of the sort of the nonprofit space and the younger generations who want to be involved want to get back but weren't really sure how to get involved. And so that's like the Genesis forgive butter. It's a very roundabout origin story, but not so much in terms of Yes, we were in a college dorm room.
• 5:52
  Max Friedman: And that is where the company officially got started. I love founder stories. So
• 5:58
  Jonathan McCoy: I feel like Yo, we're like Facebook, and I
• 6:00
  Becky Endicott: say, this is like the healthier version, version, much healthier version of a founding story than Facebook is. But I, you know, I read that Washington Post article, which is really fascinating. And we'll find it, we'll put it in the show notes.
• 6:12
  Becky Endicott: But I just think that you glommed on to something that I think is very unusual for a young male, whether you're a freshman in college, like under trying to understand this, how do I use this tech and this desire to be an entrepreneur?
• 6:28
  Becky Endicott: And how do I channel it for good, and I love that you started in the college space, because I actually believe that there are so many college age students who are trying to find themselves and trying to discover who they are and what they want to do with their life.
• 6:47
  Becky Endicott: And we really just focus so much on the career aspect of that.
• 6:50
  Becky Endicott: And it's like, no one is really pouring into the this is how you can also make a difference, or how the two can come together.
• 6:58
  Becky Endicott: And that, to me is the genius behind give butter that it's just so kind. You're starting in these, like formative ages, and you're getting people excited, and you're getting you're giving them that drug of serving somebody else and understanding how good it feels. And so I just really applaud you guys. And I just think it's so fantastic.
• 7:18
  Becky Endicott: And I and I wonder where that came from? How did you decide that I want to start leveraging the stream I have for good?
• 7:26
  Max Friedman: Yeah, I think that a lot of it was like we, we were in student groups at George Washington University that raise money for their own mission or raise money for charity. It was very prevalent on campus, just raising money. And it was interesting, because when we had this sort of seed of an idea for get butter, it was very easy to get some early wins with people who were just like, yeah, sure I use fill in the gap, you know, fundraising platform. I'll try what you're doing. That's, that's easy. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. And over time, you know, it made a lot of sense for, since we had that use case right in front of us. But also a lot of our friends were in other universities to build an ambassador program where the mantra there was spread the butter, they were all called butter ambassadors, or 300, butter ambassadors on different college campuses. That was a lot of fun. And that's where we got started. And it's been cool as we've grown, that those same people have gone on and joined nonprofits and started nonprofits and are continuing to get involved with giving and fundraising very broadly. So that that's been interesting to see that progression as like going from, you know, 80% of our user base, being students to that totally shifting and being much more on the nonprofit, traditional nonprofit side institution or, you know, actual incorporated nonprofits, not just the general group fundraising. But we definitely saw a ton of that. And I think that sort of spark of giving is the like through line is, everything from why we started the company to our little better mascot is all about having fun and building community and giving in whatever way that you can as a, maybe that's a peer to peer fundraiser, maybe that's starting a fundraising campaign, maybe that's donating or maybe that's just raising awareness for a good cause, like we want to be a voice to all that or empower all that through the stuff that we do. But also the things that we build in the people that we work with.
• 9:17
  Jonathan McCoy: You can be mean, because you can imagine why we had such alignment with Max and his team because we were with you. I mean, community is everything you guys were harnessing this belief, first through your friends, but just this kind of viral growth of your company. And I love that the last time we chatted with you is just that the way that you've optimized and improved is that you're just listening and you're being responsive to those needs. So you're not this, you know, huge company that's not willing to pivot or try things but you're just in this space of, we're gonna provide the best product that these nonprofits need. And you're just here to build that you know, and to keep adapting and growing. So I love that mindset that y'all just all embody so much for people knew to give butter would you kind of give us? What makes y'all different? And, you know, I think y'all have really disrupted the space and a lot of ways, what are those key differences?
• 10:08
  Max Friedman: So, I was thinking about this the other day, actually, and I learned or did a little bit of research, scrolling through the like, you know, Google fundraising platforms, and just scrolling through the list of results. And I think we are the only fundraising platform with a mascot. I don't think any other.
• 11:00
  Jonathan McCoy: That's why I would choose and
• 11:02
  Becky Endicott: that is the gift better difference.
• 11:03
  Max Friedman: So that's a good one. We, we really think about two things that give one or more than anything else. They're very simple. People product people product is like something that we repeat all the time. And there's like internal and external, very variations of that. But I just don't think there's any other company. And this is not a super tangible thing, but is as devoted to the people who work at given butter and use get butter in their communities. as we as we do, I just don't think you'll find another poem that says people centric as good butter. Now, you also find one that says product centric. A lot of the platforms in our space have sort of other goals, they focus on dollars data on sales, we very much subscribed to this movement in the tech space of products led growth. And a lot of that comes back to listening to your customers, building to their needs, not subscribing them, forcing them into annual contracts and hiding your pricing. Anyone that signs up for good butter can just come to the front door, and we'll welcome you in open arms. And you can try out the product and see if it works for you. And time in a trial, it's actually free, we totally run our business off of the optional tips from donors that can support the platform, or you can turn this off and have a platform fee. But otherwise, you know, we don't think that has to come at the cost of the value that you get from from the platform. So anyway, customer service, putting the people first but also the product and having that sort of steer our direction. And then I like seeing the mascot thing too, just because it's like we like to have fun, I think that you'll find a lot of platforms don't really prioritize that either.
• 12:44
  Max Friedman: That, you know, giving is something that should bring people together and build community. And I think it's it's not been as much of a focus for a long time, understandably, just in that the nonprofit sector can move slower and be a little bit more risk averse, which can make sense to some degree. But also, you know, not prioritizing the gaming experience also makes sense to some degree when you can still meet in person and do a lot of in person things. But now when our experiences, hybrid or totally remote, or you know, that stuff just matters so much more. And I think we deliver on that, that giving experience for not just the admin, the person who's setting it up and making sure it integrates into their CRM, we do that. But the donor, what's their experience look like? What How do they engage with your cause? We
• 13:30
  Becky Endicott: care a lot about that. And I just love that, like being fun. I'm using my air quotes is such an easy way to humanize, because I hope it's okay that I'm sharing this. But you know, the last time that we all visited, we were talking about how there were a lot of people that came in hated on give better for the name alone.
• 13:47
  Becky Endicott: And I just think that that is such old thinking. It's small thinking because you've created whimsy, and with what you've done, you've made it fun, you're in a crowdfunding space, there is nothing about that that should be buttoned up and formal. And corporate. I mean, it should be wimzie. That is why we're all kind of pulling into community is because we want to we want to have fun with each other. We want to have a great time while we're doing good. And so I just want to like give Mr.
• 14:19
  Becky Endicott: Better. You know, his time in the sun. He'll melt. Okay, great. All right, I've done my one. I'm not gonna do another one. But I want to just applaud that because this is why we love you guys. I mean, you're so much our people. You're disruptors.
• 14:35
  Becky Endicott: You're innovators, that was really unexpected. And I think just even you saying that we have a mascot is different.
• 14:41
  Becky Endicott: Somebody might think that's really catchy. But it's actually really imperative because if you're going to humanize your company, and you're going to show we're not just a bunch of people sitting in ties in a back room trying to like count our beans. We're actually like committed to making this experiential to making it an incredible experience. And we want your we want you to love it so much that you keep coming back that you keep fundraising for the causes that are important to you. So I my hat's off to you. I totally get what you guys are doing and we are here for it. And we love the disruption of it
• 15:17
  Jonathan McCoy: and I don't want you to miss I mean, Max, I know y'all went like on a pivot at some point and said no, we're going to do this completely free. I mean, that took some guts. I mean from a CEO perspective to say we are going to trust in the kindness and goodness of people that They're going to support this platform from the tips that y'all call it. I just think that's a really interesting, powerful move y'all made. And clearly the winner on this is the nonprofit and the donor side. But you talk about that moment, I'm just so curious of when you said and double down on that, because it's, it's really cool.
• 15:51
  Max Friedman: Yeah, um, is a brief history, we started off the platform has always been free to use, from a functional standpoint, you can, you can sign up and create an account and use all the features that we have to offer. Without paying anything out of pocket, we've always taken a fee, on the dollars raised. Part of that credit card processing fees, you see those everywhere, they're unavoidable. And that usually ranges from like 2.2 to 2.9%.
• 16:19
  Max Friedman: We've always made that transparent, we've always given donors the option to cover those. And then there's the platform fee, which is how we support what we do. And we've played with that in different ways. We started off with this model where the more you donated, the smaller that percentage fee was. And we've done things where we break it out per product, whether you're doing a forum or a fundraising campaign or an event. And then we have to give a hat tip to GoFundMe who introduced sort of tips to the mass market as a concept, which I believe before that was you carrying which they acquired. And so they kind of normalized to some extent seeing tips in donation forms. The thing that they didn't do, though, that I think is really important is they sort of forced a model on their community, they said, we're going to keep processing fees hidden. And we're going to ask people that.
• 17:10
  Max Friedman: And so what that resulted in is still today, if you run a GoFundMe campaign, now on the GoFundMe charity side, which is shutting down, unfortunately, but on the main platform side, GoFundMe, you'll see an option to tip the platform. And at the end of the day, if you raise$10,000, GoFundMe takes 300 of that, they take 3%, their processing fee, forgive butter, what we do is we give, everyone has control, they're in the driver's seat, you can hide platform process, by processing fees, you can show processing fees, you can even require that donors cover a processing fee.
• 17:47
  Max Friedman: And if you don't like the tip option, you can turn that off, too. And there's just a very market rate, platform fee added, based on the features that you're using. We don't charge for anything else, except for things like custom branding, and priority support. But the thing I want to get back to your question on is we actually introduced this in the very beginning of COVID, this sort of experimental tip feature, and we were specifically enabling it for organizations that were impacted by COVID, as like a and during the George Floyd. Racial Justice events happening and we wanted to uplift and include more communities in what we had to offer. And we wanted price not to be peace or cost to be a reason why they weren't able to do it. But it was so successful with those organizations that we just actually rolled it out across the whole platform. And so that's kind of where we started. And we had some innovative thinking for how can we support? Can we do this sort of experimental model that works relies on generosity, we don't have any way to monetize other than if people need these tips, and it worked out. So yeah, as of, I think, December of last year, we just rolled out that model sitewide, where people can use every feature we have to offer without paying anything out of pocket and totally relying on those tips.
• 19:07
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, friends, this episode is presented by virtuous and they just happened to be one of our favorite companies. Let me tell you why.
• 19:11
  Jonathan McCoy: You know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you see an activate donors at every level. And here's the thing, virtuous created a fundraising platform to help you do just that. It's much more than a nonprofit CRM.
• 19:27
  Jonathan McCoy: virtuous is committed to helping charities reimagine generosity through responsive fundraising, which is simply putting the donor at the center of fundraising, growing giving through personalized donor journeys. And by helping you respond to the needs of every individual. We love it because this approach builds trust and loyalty through personalized engagement. Sound like virtuous may be a fit for your organization, learn more today@virtuous.org or follow the link in our show notes.
• 19:54
  Becky Endicott: On behalf of the$1.5 million or million nonprofits in the US alone, I want to thank you for doing that because that was such a forward thinking generous move, and it's really allowing missions to do more with their dollars and I just really appreciate your out of the box thinking on that and I want to like paint it paint a picture for our listeners because everybody that's that works in a nonprofit has a group of we call them rabid fans. You know people who love your mission they want to go to bat for your mission. When you ask for help. They're the first ones To raise their hand. So could you walk us through like a client success story of someone who leveraged your platform to create a meaningful impact for the nonprofit that meant the most to them, because we really want to make sure that our listeners know how they could empower those rabid fans to use a platform like give better to do more for their mission.
• 20:58
  Max Friedman: Yeah, I love to I love to give two examples.
• 21:01
  Max Friedman: Actually, I have one in mind, that's not a nonprofit, but I can give an easy nonprofit one that I love, do both. Um, so one that jumps to mind is, it's actually a restaurant called rasa, it's in DC, Washington, DC, and like many small businesses super impacted by the pandemic. But they were very innovative in that they wanted to find a way to support their business keep keep them selves going keep their employees staffed. But also to try to find a way to help people who are even more in need healthcare workers who aren't finding time to eat meals are people who are just impacted economically who were unable to afford good meals for themselves. And they actually ran a fundraising campaign on give butter, that empower them to keep their staff employed through the dollars that they raised, but then actually use those funds to give away their original goal is 5000 meals, which was at a$24,000 $4,000.24 they got a matching grant. So it might have been double that but but 12,000 or $24,000, raised and actually raised $75,000. And that was all about the community, like community, community community, they, they basically said, here's what we want to do, here's our story, we'd love to invite you to support us and what we're trying to accomplish and people came, people gave people engaged. One of the cool things about good butter is that we got this really great supporter feed where people can leave gifts and drawings when they donate and photos and messages of support, and emojis and all the things that you'd expect or want when you want to share, you know, share with others what you care about in this in this cost. And I think that was a huge part of their success was seeing seeing that sort of social community online of who you're engaging with and participating with. So that's the restaurant example. The nonprofit example is called human education. I've been involved with them since day one. Actually, Daphne, the founder signed up for our mailing list when we were so small that I was looking at every single person that was subscribing to our newsletter.
• 23:04
  Max Friedman: And I was just reaching out and saying, hey, like I saw that you subscribe was one of the first like.org domains that actually subscribe to our newsletter. And I ended up actually joining their board. And they've been involved since the early days.
• 23:14
  Max Friedman: And they actually we didn't have a donation form product for for a while way to embed donation forms on your site. And they ended up using donor box, which is a competitor of ours, which was totally understandable because we didn't support things like recurring donations or embeddable forms. So they ended up doing that. And I was really excited when this year they actually came back around and moved everything back on to give butter. And what I love about that is a nonprofit, like human education can centralize their peer to peer fundraising, their donation forums, their event, ticketing, their virtual events, all the stuff that you want to do to engage your donors online and ask or just at least generate awareness for whatever projects and campaigns your mission that you're trying to accomplish, get better can put that all under one roof. And so they're a great example of a nonprofit that's been able to do that all in one place without having to have multiple tools, multiple data sources, and having a sort of unified experience for their community across all the different types of campaigns and things that they want to do.
• 24:11
  Jonathan McCoy: Where to go Daphne for signing up.
• 24:14
  Becky Endicott: And where to go max for like personalizing that relationship, I can just tell from the way that you're talking about her that you guys have a great, like professional friendship now because of how lean ding you were early on. PS john and i are completely in the throes of looking at every person who subscribes to our email list,
• 24:35
  Jonathan McCoy: or Instagram follower. We're geeking out Yeah,
• 24:38
  Becky Endicott: and it just feels good like to be seen and for somebody to see you and to acknowledge that you're here.
• 24:44
  Becky Endicott: And I just could think that that would be really powerful to max to reach out to her and say, how can we help so great stories, I love that I even love the restaurant story that was wonderful.
• 24:54
  Max Friedman: Related to this, anyone who's interested we've been doing these video features of success stories on our site pretty much once a week. It's in our it's on our blog. And we Rachel on our team just does these sort of video interviews and I could have picked any of those there's like 40 or 50 at this point and they're just so amazing. The stories but I always Daphne in the human Education team has a special place in my heart for sure for just like they've they're probably the longest like they are celebrating our five year anniversary like dafis five years on get better. And that's just really cool to see how that's grown and developed and as their nonprofits grown and the things they've been able to accomplish is really cool.
• 25:29
  Max Friedman: Awesome. I
• 25:31
  Jonathan McCoy: love it so much.
• 25:31
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, y'all, you know your passion Yours in the crowdfunding space of like what you're doing, and that is really kind of leading edge and definitely the terms of the tech pieces of it. What have you, you know, learned from crowdfunding?
• 25:43
  Jonathan McCoy: What is the power of it? What is kind of the secret sauce of what makes one campaign work, whereas another one, maybe not so much.
• 25:50
  Jonathan McCoy: shed some of your wisdom after 10s of 1000s of campaigns running through this platform?
• 25:58
  Max Friedman: Well, the success stories of lots of that they're the real experts. For me, I see definitely a few things with with crowdfunding that are, that are tried and true, since day one, and it's why we've built some of the features and prioritize some of the things that we have with like the supporter feed, for example, people give to people, like the number one reason we see people getting on give butter is because someone they know, asked them to. Yeah, and we can only help so much with that. But what we can do is that when they get there, they see you know, john, and Becky and Julia, and they're like, Oh, I like I see my people, you know, I'm here, I'm part of this community. And I want to be involved with that.
• 26:43
  Max Friedman: It's not, you know, I like to say, like buying something on Amazon, where you're sort of, it's like a checkout flow, and then you like Add To Cart. So putting the people at the forefront, even not even always necessarily, because everyone's giving because of the mission.
• 26:56
  Max Friedman: like no one's like, I don't support that, like actively anti that and I'm not gonna give like everyone. If you're giving, you're donating, you're you're you're supporting that mission and you care about it. But the thing that I think most people are not to, like, put them at competitive with each other. But I think it's by prioritizing the people in your community, bringing them together, whether that's part of the campaign or just highlighting those those stories, is something I think people don't focus on enough or approach enough. There's the classics, the goal, the urgency, elements of like any successful crowdfunding campaign that I always encourage people to, to have, um, but it's so different for every organization, I want to be able to be like, here's the like golden goose sort of, like, piece of advice that's going to make all your fundraising dreams come true, I think just sticking to the people and leveraging them, like a lot of people think about acquiring new donors or growing outside of their existing base.
• 27:51
  Max Friedman: Yeah, start with the people that you have, you know, and building those relationships and getting them to then go one layer deeper and one layer deeper. And it's not about posting on Facebook.
• 28:00
  Max Friedman: Like that's just not going to create a retained long term donor. It's like, even when you get that new donor, what happens, then? What's the relationship that you're building? Then? How are you reaching out and calling it same same way that Daphne has been around for five years? Like, there's so many parallels to the way that we've built a business that I'm sure a lot of nonprofits could take away?
• 28:18
  Max Friedman: Where when you get that new newsletter subscriber, like, are you calling them? Are you reaching out, you know, because that person could become a supporter that changes your whole world in five years, you know, as a case study on your, you know, set about your mission? Like that's, that's the kind of thing I think people need to think about is first time donor retention, but also focusing on the community are probably my two, like, catch all pieces of advice that I'd give but
• 28:47
  Jonathan McCoy: and have masked out,
• 28:48
  Max Friedman: oh, yes,
• 28:48
  Becky Endicott: it has a mascot mascot. I just love that it can be so simple as as to just say I at least this is the way I'm visually visualizing on someone's website. Do you love us? Do you want to help us?
• 29:00
  Becky Endicott: Here's a couple quick ways you could do it without even involving us, you know, like you could crowdfund and here's some three quick steps on how to do that. And that is so low pressure. And you can say it in a way that is so kind and gentle. That's like, do you just want to keep perpetuating the good work that we're doing? I mean, I have seen this so many times in nonprofit where people say, Don't give me my birthday gifts. Don't buy me a Christmas gift, like give to me in this way. And that would actually mean so much more to me. And so just having these little hacks and having these platforms like get better, which by the way, I'm going to give a little plug here. They're the only ones that accept Venmo. And I mean, we talk about, like, you have to have ease of use and no friction, the least amount of friction possible on your giving pages. That's one way that this could be a hack. And I just think that any way that you can help your rabid fans figure out how they can be a light to you, because not everybody has a million dollars to give. Not everybody is old enough to start setting up I guess you could give a planned gift anytime you know you could be 20 but it's like you're just not in that frame of mind. This is a way that we can connect you don't have to be Gen Z You don't have to be millennial, you can be anybody to help and it's a very simple way. So I love this discussion on crowdfunding. So we love to ask each of our guests about a moment in philanthropy that touched them and I'm and just stayed with you and has had resonance in your life. I can imagine you're watching 1000s of stories. goes through your company. And I wonder which one is percolating and, and the one that you might want to share with our community today?
• 30:45
  Max Friedman: Yeah, it's a great question. And I, I really do have so many that I could could think of one that just sticks out in this is a sort of a catch all for recent events is I'm living in Austin, Texas. Someone has a temporary, temporary home.
• 31:02
  Max Friedman: And it was one of the first times where I've been a part of, I guess you could call it like a natural disaster, there was a lot of power outages, we didn't have power for almost a week, we had to boil water, if we wanted to drink it and conserve water when there was water. We also just had our new puppy Buttercup, and she had to go through all that trauma. And our new home is like, well, what are these people doing? I mean, so that was that was quite an experience. But then Austin, and just Texas, sort of relief campaigns were the top campaigns on give butter and seeing, you know, we we had our own situation that we had to deal with, there were people that were a lot worse off than us in terms of how that affected them.
• 31:42
  Max Friedman: But seeing that, like in my own community, the sort of call it like that action oriented fundraising of stepping up and finding ways to provide for those who really needed it in Austin and in Texas was was really cool to see. And there was a lot there were five or six campaigns that were at the top of our we have a sort of like a daily active campaigns to see who's who's active, and who's raising and what's going on in the platform. And to see that like happening right here where I was just very close to home and cool to see. So that was something that was pretty recent that I was, it's cool to be able to be a part of that in our way that's, you know, we I think of, you know, I don't I didn't start a nonprofit, I'm not I'm not working for a nonprofit, the way that our lot of our users are, but when I think of how I relate to that sort of user empathy, it's all about like, being a change maker, and like, this is my change, like I'm able to provide a platform that that helps them help people. So it's like, it's like a degree higher or a degree, it's like a different, you know, there's a chart there that you can probably connect the dots, but it's fulfilling for me to be able to see those impact stories that are so close, don't like full circle,
• 32:46
  Becky Endicott: I was literally just about to use that
• 32:49
  Max Friedman: hierarchy there.
• 32:50
  Becky Endicott: I could see your flow chart as you were describing it, but it really is.
• 32:52
  Becky Endicott: So such a beautiful like anthem to what you've done here that you have created a platform by which is helping so many people and then all of a sudden your platform is one of the top platforms that is giving back to your community. And thus you could make a gift to through your own platform to help people that you know and love. It's just such an epic story. I just love it so much.
• 33:18
  Max Friedman: I don't say very meta.
• 33:19
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, I always love to ask founders What is your dream for this space Max? I mean, you've already cut through and I'm sure what you were sitting in yells apartment, dreaming of what this thing could be didn't have an idea that it could be as big as it is today. Where does max go next with give butter? What's your dreams?
• 33:38
  Max Friedman: it oscillates, sometimes between day and night.
• 33:40
  Max Friedman: Like, um, I would say right now, like, I'm living the dream, like, you know, like we, we've, we've, I'm so proud of the team that we've built and our building and the product that we build in the community that we get to work with, like, I can't, you know, it's like, I definitely have dreams beyond but during the day, it's like, I think I think I'm living it. To appreciate that. I think it's nice. Beyond that, like and then at night, we're on sort of like what's you know, I have downtime, and I'm like,
• 34:11
  Jonathan McCoy: existential.
• 34:14
  Max Friedman: Yeah, we, we I think the dream forgive butter would to be synonymous. When you think of like email marketing, you think of MailChimp. You know, when you think of event ticketing, you think of Eventbrite. Like I want to think of people when they think about giving the think about getting butter. And today we do crowdfunding, and we do events, and we do forums, but I really think that there's so much that can still be improved and giving and that we're doing all those things, but I think we could be doing them even better. And yeah, there's a lot of that just sort of just getting started feel happening, give butter, I think we're we're putting together a really cool team. And the biggest learning for me, it's just like, as someone who's been doing the work for four years and have such growth in this last sort of fifth year scaling and seeing where other people take it as the coolest thing in the world. Like we're not like the best thing I can do to sort of support the company is to just like, open up my arms and just welcoming amazing people who then go and make it better their own and I can help them. Yeah, that's that's that's what I'm really excited about is I think that team that we're going to build and the impact that they'll have and seeing that scale.
• 35:29
  Becky Endicott: I mean, this is that was a true entrepreneur like purus kind of a response like never being content, always adapting, always trying to find creative ways to do things differently. And the fact that you're keeping like the people at the very center of it tells me exactly why you guys are so successful. And john is this way too. And he will be annoyed that I'm bringing this up. But we'll be working, you know, at like two in the morning and texting back and forth, and we have 42 things we need to do. And then john will just get a light bulb moment of something he thinks we need to do. And we'll talk about it for 20 minutes, you know, back and forth. And then we'll just say, yeah, we'll do that in like 2031 are, like, putting it on the back burner. But I think that that is just like creative energy. And if we're not having those conversations, we can't just be in the grind of, you know, and I think this is true for nonprofits, we can't be in the grind of just churning out our outputs. You know, we need to take time to be creative to remember our why to remember who we're doing it for. And we need to embrace this dreamy quality because, again, we talked about mindsets a lot. I mean, that abundance and creative mindset is only going to lend us to doing more and more and getting better and better. So great answer.
• 36:49
  Jonathan McCoy: Love it. Okay, Max, we asked all of our guests, what's their one good thing. And so that could be a secret to your success or a piece of advice to help move the needle?
• 36:58
  Jonathan McCoy: What's that for you?
• 37:01
  Max Friedman: First thing that jumps to mind is something that you may be familiar with him? I don't know. But the audience is Inbox Zero. I don't know if you've ever heard of Inbox Zero was
• 37:11
  Jonathan McCoy: like end every day with no emails in your inbox idea. Right?
• 37:15
  Max Friedman: Yeah, doesn't have to necessarily end every day with with no emails. But that's generally the idea. Yeah, is basically like, instead of having like, unlimited emails all the time marking as read unread folder systems, you basically archive everything, or you snooze it for later. So you can sort of block off periods of time to do email, but it almost turns your email into more of a to do list that you kind of controlling your own time I've turned off email notifications, I basically have like morning, middle night time where I just go on my email. And yeah, it's more like a to do list, I've actually created a filter where this is a fun one. Anything that sends says unsubscribe. In the email, I'll just put into a newsletters folder. So that pretty much anything that's actually more like a personal email, I'm getting that right into my box with Gmail might filter that differently. So maybe that's not so novel. But the point is, Inbox Zero has totally changed my like approach to work into email, where everything is more like I kind of control my destiny when it comes to email. It's not like notification respond and at some undetermined time so
• 38:16
  Becky Endicott: Max, how can listeners connect with you? How can they connect with Mr.
• 38:19
  Becky Endicott: Butter? How can they connect with princess butter pop? Like give us all of the social channels and the websites?
• 38:29
  Max Friedman: Yes. So butter pub, most importantly, think? On instagram@princess.in butter pup, her name is Buttercup, but we don't like butter pup I think it was taken but I like butter.
• 38:45
  Max Friedman: And then give butterscotch calm.
• 38:45
  Max Friedman: I'm at max like good butter calm is my email. please reach out.
• 38:48
  Max Friedman: Don't use the word on subscribe.
• 38:52
  Max Friedman: And yeah, I love to connect Twitter, LinkedIn anywhere. I'm definitely in a place where I just love hearing from people.
• 39:01
  Max Friedman: So if anything, I said resonated you have a question. You want to chat, just reach out. And I'd love to, I'd love to hear from
• 39:06
  Becky Endicott: you. JOHN, when a CEO gives his personal email address away to a mass audience, you know that people matter most to them. So thank you for that personal email. And we will try not to do anything with it rogue. You guys are so great. We just love love the people that you are we love the ethos that you are permeating throughout all of your business. And, yeah, for anyone that's listening that has some curiosity about how to take your crowdfunding to the next level or to even start it.
• 39:40
  Becky Endicott: I mean, this is such a great starting point for you. And to know that it was founded by really good humans who want to do some good in the world. I mean, that just makes it so easy. I think for somebody that has a nonprofit mission.
• 39:52
  Jonathan McCoy: And then we're not getting kickbacks, either friends, we're just saying just like, if you feel stuck in a platform that you can't leverage, just set up a profile and use it for a campaign and see how it goes. Because I remember being on inside a nonprofit and feeling like we're so locked into our long term contracts that you felt stifled of what you could try, but you don't have to feel like that, you know, this is an incredible value proposition for listeners.
• 40:16
  Jonathan McCoy: So thanks for being here, Max.
• 40:16
  Jonathan McCoy: Every time we talk we feel boosted so appreciate you. Yep.
• 40:21
  Max Friedman: Thank you. Thank you. It's truly I love what you're doing. And like you said it's It's such an honor to be able to work in this space. And I hope that gives others resource but also just in the content we provide the tools we provide sign up, it's worship.
• 40:32
  Max Friedman: Great if not no commitment, so give it a shot and I know this is your podcast but plugging for just we are forget just everything you're doing if you're not already subscribed to their newsletters tribe, if you're not listening to podcasts inside on, you know LinkedIn post and you're not falling on the iTunes or Spotify or wherever you go do that. They're awesome putting out amazing content. Oh, man,
• 40:54
  Unknown: you gotta stop. So first, our heads,
• 40:56
  Becky Endicott: we got to get out the door.
• 40:59
  Unknown: Have a good week, everybody shoot you,
• 41:01
  Max Friedman: by all.
• 41:03
  Becky Endicott: Thanks for listening to today's conversation. We hope Max has given you plenty of inspiration to explore how crowdfunding can be leveraged by the rabid fans who love your mission. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission. That's why we'd love for you to join our good community. It's our own free social network a place to meet new friends find inspiration and help you when you're stuck. Sign up today at we are for good calm, backslash. Hello. One more thing. If you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us. Thanks friends. Our production hero is at the same level of awesome as Mr. Butter Julie Confer It's an honor. Our theme song is sunray by Remy borescope