cause-marketing
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The Startup Turning Charity Into a Feed You Actually Want to Scroll
Jason Hausske wants giving to feel less like a year-end tax chore and more like a habit you post about. His bet: philanthropy grows when it stops being private.
Dana Seguin
Dana Seguin is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Altar'd State, the fast-growing Knoxville-based women's fashion retailer, where she leads all creative, marketing and eCommerce work across its family of brands - Altar'd State, Arula, Vow'd, Tullabee and AS Revival. A brand builder with roughly 25 years in retail and fashion, she began in merchandising at American Eagle Outfitters before moving into creative marketing for SPANX, Chico's and Aerie. She is best known for leading the creation and launch of the Aerie Real campaign, which stopped retouching model images and helped make body positivity a mainstream retail message.
Altar'd State
Altar'd State is a Knoxville, Tennessee-based women's fashion and lifestyle retailer founded in 2009 by Aaron Walters and Brian Mason, built around a simple structural choice: give a fixed slice of revenue away every week rather than treat philanthropy as a marketing line item. Through its Mission Monday program, 10% of net proceeds from a designated day each week goes to a local nonprofit chosen by each individual store, a practice that has routed money to thousands of community organizations. The chain sells apparel, accessories, jewelry, gifts and home decor in boutique-style stores in malls and lifestyle centers across roughly 39 states, and online at altardstate.com. Altar'd State is the flagship of parent company Stand Out For Good, Inc., which also operates Arula (mid- and plus-size), Vow'd Weddings (bridal), Tullabee (baby and toddler) and AS Revival (activewear), plus a majority stake in Los Angeles furniture maker Lawson-Fenning. Reported annual revenue is in the $500-570 million range with roughly 2,700 employees.
Good-Loop
Good-Loop is an ethical advertising technology company that turns ad spend into a force for good. Its 'view-to-donate' formats let people unlock a free charitable donation - funded by the advertiser - simply by choosing to watch an ad, while its Green Media tools measure and cut the carbon footprint of digital campaigns. A certified B Corporation founded in Edinburgh in 2016 by Amy Williams and Daniel Winterstein, Good-Loop has raised more than $6M for charities including Save the Children, WaterAid and WWF, and works with brands such as Unilever, Nestle, Levi's and Asics.
Change
Change is a San Francisco fintech that lets businesses plug charitable giving directly into their products. Its Donations API and compliance dashboard connect companies to more than a million U.S. nonprofits, automating the tedious parts of giving - nonprofit verification, fund disbursement, and the tangle of state fundraising regulations like California's AB 488. Companies such as Lyft, Brex, and Bonfire use Change to run round-ups, sweepstakes, loyalty-point donations, and percentage-of-purchase campaigns without building giving infrastructure themselves.
Sonia Nigam
Sonia Nigam is the co-founder and CEO of Change, a San Francisco fintech that turns charitable giving into a few lines of code. Brands drop a Change button into checkout and the company handles the unglamorous machinery behind it - vetting, compliance, and disbursement across more than 200,000 nonprofits. A Northwestern computer science and business grad who engineered frictionless payments at Braintree and Venmo, Nigam quit her job at the start of the pandemic to build the donations API she wished existed. She and co-founder Amar Shah landed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for social impact and raised a $5M seed round to bring giving on-chain.
Beam Impact
Beam Impact is a New York-based social impact technology company that helps e-commerce and retail brands turn everyday purchases into measurable charitable giving. Through an embeddable checkout integration and consumer app, Beam lets shoppers choose a vetted nonprofit at checkout while the brand donates a portion of the sale at no extra cost to the customer. Founded by Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees Viveka Hulyalkar and Alex Sadhu, the platform pairs mission-driven brands with high-impact causes to lift conversion, average order value, and repeat purchase rates - while pursuing a goal of shifting $10B toward nonprofits.
Viveka Hulyalkar
Viveka Hulyalkar is the co-founder and CEO of Beam Impact, a New York customer engagement and loyalty platform that lets shoppers direct a slice of everyday purchases to nonprofits at no extra cost. A McKinsey alum and Brown honors graduate, she set out to fix what she calls broken retention marketing by tying brand loyalty to the causes young consumers actually care about. Beam works with 130+ mission-driven brands including Instacart, IKEA and Roots Canada, and Hulyalkar's stated goal is to shift $10 billion from brands to high-impact nonprofits. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Social Impact.