Teaming Up for Good

We started Good St. over a year ago to make giving charity easy and meaningful. Good St. members sign up to donate 25¢/day and we send a daily email discussing one cause and present two vetted charities approaching the problem in a different way. If today’s cause was Breast Cancer, for example, one charity might be focused on research, another on family support. With the click of a button, members can then click to choose which charity to donate their daily quarter to. Through this model we both empower individuals through choice and emphasize the power of the collective to produce positive change. Since our launch our community has grown to over 400 people, giving nearly $50,000 to causes of importance this year.

Last year I was lucky enough to raise funding for my startup, RebelMail. When my cofounder and I started hiring, we adopted the usual perks: unlimited vacation, snacks, swag, and so on. I soon realized, however, that something critical was missing. We were courting engineers from big companies with incredibly robust corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, and my startup had none. While I understood that startups do not have significant capital to expend, that didn’t justify forgoing the principles of CSR completely.

I started discussing this void with a few other friends running startups and it became clear there was a genuine desire to encourage and facilitate a giving culture within their teams. I, along with my Good St. cofounders, realized that the Good St. model could prove an especially powerful tool for teams and startups to fill that gap. We’ve spent months closely working with a few fast growing companies to refine our vision and today we are incredibly excited to announce “Good St for Teams”.

Casper, Splash, SocialRank, HomeHero, Urban Stems and my company RebelMail are some of the first teams to join our community. The program is simple and powerful. Teams sponsor each of their employees’ 25¢/day donations, enabling them to interact and give through the daily Good St. email. We’ve found that team-members love starting their day giving to others, and many have even personally signed up their spouses. There is something powerful about an email that permeates the daily grind, provides perspective and prompts you to give back with your company as a partner.

Apart from a meaningful CSR program for every employee, these companies are giving their daily donations in a powerful context — alongside other teams and individuals within the Good St. community. Good St has made me cognizant of the true power of the collective and I’ve witnessed our collective 25¢ donations create real world-changing impact on a daily basis. In three days alone our community has provided books for children in developing countries, food for thousands in need, and lifesaving vitamins for the malnourished. We are changing the world one day at a time and I hope that Good St. for Teams will help our community provide lifesaving aid to thousands more both at home and abroad.

Every individual or team we add to the community increases our daily donation and grows our community of givers. If you’re interested in learning more please email me at joe@goodst.org

Keep saving the world,