Goodworld

Scaling social fundraising

Company: Goodworld provides a platform for social fundraising that works with nonprofits, as well as companies and their employees to make charitable donations simple and secure.

HQ Location & Year Founded: Washington, DC, 2015

Founder: Dale Nirvani Pfeifer, Founder and CEO, is a leader in social impact and applying technology to help cultivate philanthropy and volunteerism. She has worked across research, communications and leadership in the realms of politics, academia, for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Dale holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Psychology and Management from Massey University in New Zealand.

Funds Raised and VC Investors: $4 million from 76 Forward, Astia, Camp One Ventures, Fenway Summer Ventures, Icehouse Ventures, MasterCard, Nyca Partners 

• Where did the idea for Goodworld originate?

I have been involved in social causes since I came to the US from New Zealand 15 years ago. I worked at a nonprofit in New York City and also conducted research at the Harvard Kennedy School alongside Professor David Gergen. In studying philanthropic giving and fundraising, I observed how friends were giving money with a very different mindset from how organizations were raising money. I felt that technology could be a bridge and I wanted to create a company with a broad mandate to bring philanthropy to younger donors.

• What is the key problem that Goodworld intends to solve? 

Goodworld is about increasing philanthropic giving through engagement with nonprofits, companies and employees. We do this by making “giving” a social experience and one that creates buzz and virality through the use of social media and also by making donations a tool for employee engagement. We provide CSR and ESG software to companies as well as an engagement platform that is built for nonprofits.  

• How are you most differentiated as a service?

We have created a full system that companies can implement that allows for employees to choose organizations that they wish to support alongside employer contributions. It is a turnkey platform with a menu of ten features that employers can offer, that includes tracking features, matching grants and corporate skills-based volunteering. We’ve partnered with Salesforce to offer a seamless CRM that can be easily implemented by any organization.

• What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?

We have implemented our platform with eight companies so far, with more onboarding soon. We have 4,000 charities that manage social engagement through our cost effective platform for nonprofits. We also have 1.7 million charities onboard that donors can select from. We are working with both large enterprises and SMEs across a wide range of industries. 

• What lies ahead in the plans for Goodworld?

We have big plans to grow our team and our partnerships that will help the cause of growing charitable giving. We will continue to offer more features, especially on the ESG side.

Ron’s Take

This blog covers many aspects of how startup companies are solving issues of wealth inequality that relate to money, health, education, housing, food security and the like. However, it is also important to consider the actions that anyone who has the means can help. The simplest and most tried and true way of doing this is simply by contributing a small amount of one’s savings or income to the causes that they most believe in. Nothing revolutionary there. However, there are innovative companies such as Goodworld, as well as Cauze and Givz, which have been previously featured in this series, which are elevating the status of the giver and bringing a social dynamic that has proven to increase engagement and overall donation sizes. Goodworld’s founder Dale Nirvani Pfeifer is an energetic voice that will help lead the company to empowering nonprofits as they engage their supporters as well as companies that are looking to put power in the hands of employees to decide where their contributions can best be put to use.