Online fundraising made simple 

Lee Wochner:
Imagine what we could do if we all banded together around an issue. What if instead of looking into each individual nonprofit behind say environmental issues or animal welfare or the arts, you could donate to your core issue as a group with 100 % of the funding going to nonprofits working on that cause. Or what if your own nonprofit were in that group getting the additional funding?

Relieving individuals of the research and speeding donations directly to nonprofits is exactly what the MyCharity app seeks to do. MyCharity app founder, Will Hedrick, has created a system that promises to streamline the donation process and build connections between individuals committed to a cause and the nonprofits addressing that cause. How does it work? And if it works,

What does it mean for nonprofits seeking new ways to get funded? We’ll learn that and much more in this episode of That’s What C Said.

Jaclyn Uloth: 
Welcome to the podcast that lightens the tension when things sort of get hard… 

That’s What C! Said, the Counterintuity podcast, featuring interviews with leaders and doers who have helped to make our world a better place through their actions — and especially through marketing, communications, and embracing change. Here’s host Lee Wochner. 

Lee Wochner:
Will, thank you for joining us today.

Will Hedrick:
Of course, so excited to be here, Lee. Thank you.

Lee Wochner:
So you are the founder of MyCharity. What does MyCharity do?

Will Hedrick:
Yeah, in short, the easiest way to explain it is we are the better way to donate. So we are an online giving platform that makes donating easier, more transparent, and most importantly, we’re trying to make donating something that people love to do.

Lee Wochner:
Cool, well that was succinct. So I believe in convergence, things that arrive in your life at similar times or realizations you make. And I was interested in having you on the show because of what looks like a democratizing micro-investing model, kind of like a combination of Heifer International. You know, Heifer International supports donating farm animals to people around the world in order to help them succeed economically. So between that and then various platforms, I’m on one of them. They’ve done a very bad marketing job because they can’t even tell you their name. And so these platforms where you can make small investments or loans in businesses or nonprofits. So is that kind of what MyCharity is? It’s kind of like that?

Will Hedrick:
A little bit. On the surface, well, I guess not on the surface. We’ll dive into it. So to use our platform right now, individuals go online, pick and choose the causes that they care about from 40 different options. That could be anything from cancer to climate change to sea turtles, you name it, and donate monthly. We then take 100% of their donations to the field and follow up with photos, videos, GPS coordinates, financial reports, and field notes that prove their individual impact down to the penny.

And now the back end of that, of course, is complicated as anything is, but to keep it as simple as possible, what we do is pool users’ donations together. Cancer donations get pooled together with other cancer donations, climate change donations with other climate change donations. And then we make grants to the most impactful, pre-vetted, pre-approved organizations in the field. That’s how we get those photos, videos, GPS coordinates, and proof that we send back.

So what we’re really, really interested in doing with these funds — in short, that’s really what they are, our funds — is just make donating easy, make it transparent, and most importantly, impactful. Answering that question of, “I really care about one specific focus area. I care about cancer, but which organizations do I support?” There are 1.8 million nonprofits in the world. How do you know who to support? And one year, there might be a project worth investing in with St. Jude or another organization, and another year, it might be worth investing elsewhere.

So that’s really where we are, and of course, like any nonprofit, we’ve got some really exciting items coming out in the near future that we can dive into further, but as of right now, that’s who we are, what we do, and how that overarching theme works.

Lee Wochner:
Okay, so that was fascinating to me. And I’ve discussed it on this podcast before, back in 1999, holy cow, back when there were things like pen and paper. I sent out a letter asking people for $10 for my theater company. And I intentionally made it funny. I said, “Send us $10, you know, don’t buy the bad pizza, skip your haircut. When’s the last time you lost $10? But when you send us $10, we put all the $10 together and we can actually pay the actors, get a new lighting board, et cetera. And it was fantastically successful. So when I talk about democratizing donations or micro-investing, that’s really what I mean. It’s that everybody can do something. And in that particular case, there was a person who sent in four $1 bills.

Lee Wochner:
And I knew that person. I was surprised that person had four $1 bills, but I was very touched by that. And then there were two people in a row who sent in a thousand dollars. And so it really did kind of level the playing field. And so when I look at your model, you know, the economy is not great for everyone, but you know, there are people who could probably do $10 a month. And then there are people who could do a hundred dollars a month or a thousand dollars a month. And so if I understand your platform correctly
it again democratizes donation and if I heard you right and I did read your website, all of it goes to that issue.

Will Hedrick:
100% and we separately fundraise. We are on a true two bank account model. So 100% goes to the field. You can, when you donate, make an optional donation to our operations, but it is two separate bank accounts. The money cannot touch each other. So we separately fundraise for operations. That’s my rent, my salary, marketing budgets, ink and printer toner, anything that you can think of. And so because we’re that transparent, we do have a lot of our donors that want to chip in an extra $5 a month, an extra $10 a month, because they love the transparency of what we’re really separating and doing there. But you are exactly right. Keeping everything as transparent and, I mean, again, as easy as possible.

Lee Wochner:
Last night I went to a big family gathering in Santa Monica, and I guess there were 20 or 30 of us there. And I got into a conversation with a relative and I brought up, when I was a teenager, I read Nine Chains to the Moon by R. Buckminster Fuller, which I don’t recommend, it’s impenetrable, it’s impossible to read that book. But he was an engineer and he made the case that if we got serious, we could actually increase standards of living  despite finite resources if we all worked together and got serious. And so my relative and I were talking about how we could readily solve or improve most of the world’s problems. So again, I’m interested in your model, assuming that it extrapolates and grows the way it would need to do that.

Will Hedrick:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The example that I always talk about is Netflix. One of my favorite organizations and people aren’t going to be able to see it, but my favorite book in the world is Thirst by Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water. And they do an excellent, excellent job of A, the 100% model, but B, showing that $40 in general, roughly gives one person access to clean drinking water. And so the reason that I really love what we’re doing with monthly giving and really showing off “X does Y” is because of clean water.

So there are roughly 770 million people without access to clean drinking water globally. To solve this problem, to give all of those people — those 770 million people — access to clean drinking water, it would cost right around 30 billion dollars. Netflix, our favorite eight-dollar-a-month subscription that everyone has, made 35 billion dollars last year. So that is really the example of what we’re trying to do and show: small incremental donations really do add up and make a difference. Clean water, of course, is an easy example because we know how to get access to clean drinking water: you drill down, you drill a well. Obviously, this is a little bit different for some of those larger research projects like cancer research and things like that, but if you’re really giving access to philanthropy to as many people as want it, fundraising this much money, and making it as easy as possible to donate, I believe that we can really start to make some big changes on those other problems as well.

Lee Wochner:
So I’m speaking to you from Burbank, California, where Warner Brothers and Disney are located, and they probably lost 35 billion in streaming last year. So being the early mover is important here.

Will Hedrick:
Yeah… Yeah, yeah, well… It is. I think that unfortunately, and I talk about this all the time, we’re a nonprofit through and through 501 C3. There just is not as much capital, as much innovation, and as much going on within this industry as there is on all of the other tech platforms. I mean, Sam Altman, OpenAI raised $7 billion in another four debt last week. And so it really is… my background’s from the for-profit startup world.

And so that’s what excites me — that if we can really get some excitement, some talents, really high-quality tech, marketing, and storytelling into the nonprofit world, it really genuinely excites me to see what kind of progress we could make if we borderline put a for-profit lens and business model on this, but don’t touch any equity, of course, because we’re a nonprofit.

Lee Wochner:
Well, you’re really speaking my language now. I mean, I grew up in the 1970s, and I have to tell you, this world in 2024 has just about no relation to the 1970s. We didn’t have the same sorts of problems. We didn’t have the same sorts of opportunities. Models need to change. And I’ve spent a lot of my arts career in the theater, and talk about a model that needs to change, an organizational model that needs to change all sorts of things. So again, hence my excitement to discuss this with you. So, okay, given what you just said, why form it as a nonprofit? Why not a privately held company?

Will Hedrick:
Yeah. I mean, we get asked this question about every single day when we’re talking to potential operational donors. And the ultimate reason that it comes down to is that it’s the right thing to do. If we wanted to really take on investment, maybe one day we’ll adopt another stack of books right behind me, a hybrid model like National Geographic. But the only reason we would do that is because we needed more money to sustain our operations. I have no interest in being a billionaire from this. I truly believe that we can figure out how to sustain a very large business model off of our optional operational donations that we receive, plus grant funding, independent donations from individuals or foundations.

And really, when you think about the model of how privately held for-profit companies work, they go on to fundraise very large checks. We could get similar-sized checks — very large Silicon Valley tech company checks aside — we could still get some very large checks in this form of grants, foundations, and things like that. We have a revenue generation model, which is unique, unfortunately, for the nonprofit world. A lot of nonprofit business models are: you fundraise, you do your work, you have to go fundraise again. And so we’re also generating capital in these monthly recurring optional donations that people have to our operation.

So just from the math and sitting down and looking at it, I think that we have created a very sustainable business model. The only downside is we’re coming up on two years old, so we’re very young, and it has been difficult to get in front of those very lofty operational donors because we’re a unique business model. And our growth has been a little bit slower. It definitely would be easier if I said I’m doing cancer research on this strain of cancer. I need X to do Y would be a little bit easier, but it is most importantly the right thing to do. And with that, I think that we can create, excuse me, one hell of a business out of it as well.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah. Okay. So you launched in what year? It was two years ago. So that was 2022.

Will Hedrick:
2022. So it was a little bit over August of 2022.

Lee Wochner:
Okay, and since launch, what has happened with the company?

Will Hedrick:
Yeah, the biggest thing that we have done is obviously generated the first iteration of our platform. That has taken a little bit longer. I mean, that took us about a year to get together, to decide how we’re going to do this, what we’re going to do from there this next year. I mean, again, it’s been a good chunk of this new iteration of the product that we have coming out, which again, we can dive into further within that.

But with that, of course, I mean, heck, I’ve spent probably the bulk of the last nine months grant writing, fundraising, getting in front of individuals for operations so that we can really gear up when we have this new launch of our new product out in front of the right people and really hit the ground sprinting and running. The most important thing with that as well that we have done is just talk to our donors and our users and really hear: this is what I loved, this is what I hated. Taking all of this information and trying to improve upon it.

This is not, I mean again, something that I want a very specific use case for. The example that I use is donor-advised funds and other items like that, where it is just for donors of $25,000 to $50,000 caliber a year, where that’s normally the start. This is not something that we’re trying to do there. The short intro that I always like to say is that I really want to create the Amazon for donating. And so to get to that scale, to get to that size, we need to take in as much information as we can on what people actually want and why they donate, and so much other information.

In short, it’s been customer discovery. It’s been very unsexy donating and a lot of software development and creation in the back end.

Lee Wochner:
So Amazon may be a scary model for you because they lost money hand over fist for 10 years. And famously, it’s been written about widely: when they first decided they would offer toys for Christmas, the toys didn’t arrive, and they went to all the Toys R Us stores and bought the toys at retail and shipped them. But they had private equity money. They had all sorts of equity money. For a nonprofit, that’s going to be harder. You’re not going to get private equity funding.

Will Hedrick:
Never. And we will, I mean, of course we’ll always be able to fundraise for operations. The biggest thing that is wonderful about our business model is that we’ve already been doing it. Now, Amazon in the ’90s — one of the biggest changes and what has happened is I’m a non-technical founder. I’m able to sit down and do a lot of this coding myself and figure it out. Between just perks of being a whopping 24 years old and growing up in this technological world, having a little bit of a tech interest  alongside, we’ve been able to create, which is just wild to say. When Amazon was able to create in probably 10 to 15 years, we’ve been able to create in a few months. That is just the perks of the time that we are in. Of course, it’s a lot more competitive, there’s a lot more moving parts, but man, is it cheaper and easier. It’s not easier on the customer acquisition side. We really have to get in front of a lot of people, do a lot better marketing, a lot better advertising, and tell these stories. But it really is… I spend a lot of time mentoring other founders in the startup space. I truly think that there has never been an easier time to be an entrepreneur and get a product out in front of people, both for good and for bad, I would say.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah, I could talk to you at length about what it was like when I was a boy, starting businesses. I mean, we didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have laser printers. There’s a long list of what we didn’t have. We didn’t have smartphones. It was just about impossible, if you were doing anything. And we used to use a thing called, here you go, the U.S. mail. Yeah, and postage on things. And it was all difficult. So I agree with you — obviously, that a whole bunch of things would be simpler. So, point well made. So I think I heard you say, did you start this at 24?

Will Hedrick:
I started this at 22. So perks of, I was born in December of ’99. So I am however old the year is, except for about a two-week period at the end of the year. So I keep it simple. So I started this at 22, but I had a background. I ran a real estate firm and was a real estate broker for all of college — those four years. And then before that, my brother and I had started a custom furniture company out of our parents’ garage in high school. So I’m coming up on about eight years as a full-time entrepreneur, which is… I mean, how lucky am I to have been able to have started so young and be invested into the entrepreneurship and business world at this age.

Lee Wochner:
Our guest on our last podcast started her nonprofit at 24. And I was really impressed with her and what she’s doing. She is essentially working with and representing handcraft artisans around the world because it’s an important secondary income for them, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere, and kind of putting them together and helping them sell their wares and get known. I was just fascinated to talk to her.

Will Hedrick:
Well, and that’s another part of our work that I get so passionate about — supporting grassroots organizations and seeking out and finding the best organizations making the biggest impact possible. There is a large conversation that needs to be had on who is making a difference in the nonprofit world. And it’s not always who has the biggest Google ad budget that comes up on the first page of your Google research.

Will Hedrick:
And so, kudos to her for doing that and getting into a niche place and supporting artisans and the amount of work that they’re doing. But that is another item that we’ve really been starting to focus on, especially… I mean, again, we make grants, so we search out the best organizations, vet, and work together with them. So it’s more of a unique opportunity, but gosh, we’ve had such an amazing opportunity at our smaller size because we’re only making smaller size grants — a couple of thousand dollars up to ten thousand dollars at this stage.

And it’s not going to make that big of an impact at a multi-billion-dollar organization as it would somewhere else. So I’m excited you brought that up just because it’s always a great opportunity to bring up the importance of small to even medium-sized nonprofits that — man, they’re doing outstanding work, but it is normally two to five employees, if they’re lucky, and they need as much support as possible.

Lee Wochner: 
And we’re going to get back to that topic in a minute. I’m glad you brought that up. Look, startups frequently start small and then grow. And I read your return on your website. And then I went and found your other return. And you guys have started small. In 2022, you had 93.38 in revenue. And in 2023, you had 14,425 in revenue. 12,000 going to your salary, which is not a retirement-level paycheck. So that’s for 2023. Now we’re in 2024. Are you still growing from 2023?

Will Hedrick: 
Yeah. So we are. I don’t even know the revenue numbers off the top of my head for the last quarter, but we are growing. The biggest thing that we are doing that is fantastic is spending a lot of time on the development side. And that is planned. Being able to really create an excellent product is the most important thing possible. The best decision I ever made was doing real estate for four years of college. So even those checks that you mentioned — my salary — they’re sitting in a stack over there, and I haven’t cashed them yet because money is being spent better elsewhere. But it was time to at least get a little bit of a paycheck rolling when the time came. But we are as focused as possible, trying to build the best product we can, investing money, time, and energy into that, and spending as much time and energy as possible talking to people. And figuring out what they want and how they would want to work. We are growing for sure, but our biggest focus this year has been grant writing and foundations, really laying a big groundwork. It’s October, so I’ll be interested to see what comes through in the next two months, because 90% of our applications haven’t been opened yet, which is why the grant world is new to me. But yes, we are growing, but nowhere near where I think we will be in, heck, even three months or next year.

Lee Wochner: 
Okay, a couple more questions, then we’ll take a break. You say this makes donating easier. How is it easier? Why wouldn’t someone just donate directly to a nonprofit that’s doing work they care about?

Will Hedrick: 
Yeah, that’s a great question. We get this all the time, so thank you for asking. I tell people all the time: if you have a nonprofit in mind, go and donate to them. If you have a mission you’re interested in, go and donate to that mission directly. You’ll get on their email list, see what they’re doing, and get engaged on that side — and also save us a little on wiring fees. But what we are really geared toward is supporting individuals who care about the cause, not necessarily the nonprofit. For example, if you care about clean water, go ahead and donate to Charity Water if you prefer. But if you’re more focused on the overall mission of getting clean water to as many people as possible, I believe we’re a better solution. So, if you have an individual nonprofit in mind, I recommend donating directly to them. But if you want to support multiple focus areas and causes from one streamlined location, we’re the solution for you.

Lee Wochner:
Will, when someone makes a donation through MyCharity, how much is the service fee that my charity collects?

Will Hedrick: 
It’s completely zero. Even the 2-3% that Stripe charges for credit card transactions, we cover that out of our operations account. Again, when you donate, you have the option to make an operational donation or cover your payment processing fee. It might be a dollar or two, but we want to make donating as transparent and easy as possible. If you’d prefer us to cover the fee, that’s fine. Most people either cover the processing fee or make an operational donation. But ultimately, it’s about transparency, impact, and ease of donation.

Lee Wochner: 
Great. We’ll take a short break here, and when we come back, Will and I will discuss how nonprofits become grantees of MyCharity and the organization’s plans to make a growing impact. Stick around.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Hi, this is Jaclyn with Counterintuity.

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Lee Wochner: 
And we’re back with Will Hedrick, founder of MyCharity, which seeks to democratize and simplify making donations and improving the world. If I make a donation through MyCharity, is it still tax-deductible?

Will Hedrick: 
Yes, we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit grant-making organization, so your donations are tax-deductible. Of course, consult your attorneys and accountants, but yes, donations are tax-deductible.

Lee Wochner: 
Okay. Do you have regular donors? How many donors do you have now?

Will Hedrick: 
Yeah, we have a mix of one-time and recurring donors. Over the last two years, we’ve just passed 100 donors, including operational donors, philanthropic donors, and small monthly donors. Slow growth is expected at this stage, but we’re grateful and excited to have that many supporters early on.

Lee Wochner: 
Sometimes, when setting up an email marketing campaign for a client, they’ll say, “We don’t have a list.” And after digging, we find they have 25 people to start with, and that grows into thousands. Having 100 donors gives you a base to grow from.

Will Hedrick: 
Exactly. We have 40 different focus areas that donors can support, which helps us understand what they’re passionate about, whether it’s cancer research or sloth conservation. It allows us to tailor our storytelling and campaigns, which I love. We’re putting more time and energy into this as we grow, and it’s exciting to see where it will take us.

Lee Wochner: 

If I donate $100 a month to support the arts, what happens? What’s the process like?

Will Hedrick: 

We pool your donations, and once we hit a recommended grant size — anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 — we start reaching out to nonprofits. We vet them, look through their financials, and connect with their leadership. Arts is one area we could improve, though. Right now, if you want to support a specific category, like a certain type of cancer or arts project, we don’t have that level of categorization yet, but it’s in development. The perk of being a grant-making organization is that nonprofits are eager to collaborate when we have funds to offer, and we’re always excited to support and tell their stories.

Lee Wochner: 

I’m glad to hear that because a lot of my career has been in the arts. You mentioned animals too — certain animals are included, others aren’t yet. But I understand you’re still in the early stages. How does a nonprofit get added to the organizations considered for funding? What’s the vetting process like?

Will Hedrick:

Yeah. So right now, the easiest thing to do is go to our website, mycharity.app, slash nonprofit, and you can fill out a really quick introductory form—who you are, what you do, EIN, the boring stuff like that—and that’ll get sent into our database. Then, when it’s time, we pool money together and make grants once we hit a certain goal. We know what money is coming up and what grants we need to prepare to make. So what we do typically is reach out to organizations that have been on our radar for the last two years. We’ve been really fortunate to work with Eden Reforestation Projects a few times. They came onto our radar a while ago for a reforestation and climate change-related focus area. Our vetting process is twofold. First, I connect with executive leadership, explain our model, and learn more about their organization. We have as many meetings as it takes to get comfortable. At this stage, what’s been really fun is that we’ve supported a lot of North Carolina and more local organizations that fall into these categories. I’ve gone out in the field, seen their work in person, connected with them, and seen what they’re doing. We sit down, go through their 990s, see what they’re spending money on, and make sure everything is in order. That’s the first vetting part.

Now, the second part is with our grant. We itemize exactly what our nonprofits are using their money for, even down to hourly rates and veterinary care for wildlife rehabilitation. We also send photos, videos, GPS coordinates, financial reports, field notes, and outcomes of what happens. So that’s the second half, where it’s just about communication and working directly with these nonprofits. This is a process I’ll be sad to let go of as we scale. What brings me the most joy is spending time in the field connecting with these organizations. Passing that off to a teammate will be hard and sad when the time comes.

Lee Wochner:

Yes, when I was running nonprofits, I had board chairs who would tell me, “I know you love doing this, but this is not what we need you to be doing.”

Will Hedrick:

And it’s a sad, sad thing to do, but it’s true.

Lee Wochner:

When we founded our theater in ’92, in ’99 I got the opportunity to build a second one. I come from a family of builders, and my board chair said, “You know, that’s not what you should be doing,” but I wanted to build part of that theater. He asked, “If you’re the best lawyer in Los Angeles and the best window washer, what should you do?” And I said, “I know you’re going to say, don’t wash windows.” And he said, “No, I was going to say, don’t split your focus.” He was an interesting guy.

Lee Wochner:

So I focused on fundraising, but a few nights I went down and pounded some nails too. What’s your growth strategy for MyCharity? How many nonprofits and donors are you trying to cover in the immediate future and beyond?

Will Hedrick:

Yeah. So our growth strategy is twofold. One of the biggest strategies we’re focused on is amplifying nonprofits. We’ll offer promotions for nonprofits that join our platform and fill out their profile early on. We’re still figuring out exactly what that’ll look like—maybe a “Nonprofit of the Month” promotion period on our platform—so we can get them in front of as many members of our audience and cross-promote with theirs.

Another big growth strategy is that our product is well-suited to replace the CSR or ESG department of a small to medium-sized business. Many of these businesses want to focus on social impact and making a difference in their local communities but don’t have the resources or budget to hire someone full-time. So we’re looking at working with small to medium-sized businesses to help them grow their social impact and tell their stories.

Lee Wochner:

Building on what you just said, how are you working with marketing to spread your word? What’s marketing like at MyCharity? And how are you marketing your nonprofit partners?

Will Hedrick:

Right now, we’re telling as many stories in the field as we can. When we make a grant—because we’ve focused locally—it’s easier for us to go in, get in the field, and tell the story. I take a camera, and we have a board member who runs a photo and video company in Charlotte. We promote the work that’s happening, and to me, that’s what marketing is. It’s all about storytelling and impact. I’m not interested in just pushing out content for the sake of posting.

As we scale, I’m sure we’ll need a more executed social media strategy, but for now, it’s all about quality storytelling and proving that individuals can make a difference.

Lee Wochner:

Final couple of questions about the nonprofit. What worked well right away? You’ve started a nonprofit, you’re working with nonprofits. I’ve started and managed nonprofits, and it can be exhilarating and hair-raising. What worked well right away?

Will Hedrick:

The biggest thing that worked well right away—though it’s not the most exciting answer—was that I had six years of entrepreneurship experience and connections to dive into. I knew which attorney I needed to go to for our 1023 so we could get our 501(c)(3) status. I knew how to set up bank accounts and who to talk to for initial fundraising to get things off the ground. That would be the first thing.

The second is our transparent business model. All of our donors have mentioned at some point that our 100% model is a big reason they donated. While I don’t think the 100% model is right for most nonprofits, it’s easy for donors to understand. It’s clear where their money is going—whether it’s to operations or philanthropy.

Also, our tech focus. When we find people interested in tech nonprofits, they really connect. It’s rare, but when it happens, they’re passionate about our work.

Lee Wochner:

Any mistakes you’ve learned from so far?

Will Hedrick:

Millions. The biggest mistake early on was the customer discovery process. Coming from the for-profit world and having studied entrepreneurship, we always talk about product-market fit—figuring out what your customers want before you spend money building it. The nonprofit world doesn’t have the same kind of product-market fit, or it’s a different version of it.

If I could go back, I’d spend a lot more time talking to individuals, understanding how they donate, why they donate, and what made them choose one organization over another. Then, we might have created this version of our software much sooner. So right now, the easiest thing to do is go to our website, mycharity.app, slash nonprofit, I’m sure, and you can go and fill out a really quick introductory form, who you are, what you do, EIN, the boring stuff like that, and that’ll get sent over into our database. And then what we do when it’s time, again, we pool money together and then make grants once we hit a certain goal. Now, we know what money is coming up, what grants we need to prepare to make. And so what we do typically is reach out to organizations that have been on our radar for the last two years. We’ve been really fortunate to work together with Eden reforestation projects a few times. They came on a radar a while ago for a reforestation and climate change-related product or focus area. And so our vetting process is twofold. I would say first, I go in, connect with executive leadership, tell them our model and how we work, learn more about their organization and how they work.

And have as many meetings as it takes to get comfortable. A lot of the times at this stage, what’s been really fun and interesting is that we’ve supported a lot of North Carolina and more local organizations that still, of course, fall into these categories. But I’ve gone out in the field, seen their work in person, connected with them, and seen what they’re doing. And then, of course, we sit down, go through their 990s, see what they’re spending money on, and make sure everything is in order. So that’s that first vetting part. Now, the second part is with our grant.

We itemize exactly what our nonprofits are using their money for. So even down to hourly rates, veterinary care for wildlife rehabilitation, we also then send photos, videos, GPS coordinates, financial reports, field notes, and outcomes of what happens. So that’s that second half of where, I mean, again, it’s just communications and working directly with these nonprofits. And this is a process that I’m going to be very sad.

To let go of this very early stage. We’re gonna have to keep this up, but man, what brings me the most joy is spending time in the field connecting with these organizations and supporting their work. And as we scale and grow, I know that my needs are gonna have to be in other places as well, but passing that off to a teammate is gonna be a hard and sad thing to do when the time comes.

Lee Wochner:
Yes, when I was running nonprofits, I had board chairs who would tell me, I know you love doing this, but this is not what we need you to be doing. Yeah.

Will Hedrick:
And it’s a sad, sad thing to do, but it is true.

Lee Wochner:
In 1992, we founded our theater, and in 1999, I got the opportunity to build a second one. I come from a family of builders, and my board chair said, you know, that’s not what I should be doing, but I wanted to go build part of that theater. And he said, if you’re the best lawyer in Los Angeles and the best window washer, what should you do? And I said, I know you’re going to say, don’t wash windows. And he said, no, I was going to say, don’t split your focus. He’s a very interesting guy. So yeah, I focused on fundraising, and then a few nights, I went down and pounded some nails too. What’s your growth strategy for MyCharity? Like how many nonprofits are you trying to cover? How many donors in the immediate future and beyond?

Will Hedrick:
Yeah. So our growth strategy really is going to be twofold. As you mentioned earlier, again, the future iteration of this product is coming out really soon. One of the biggest strategies that we’re really focused on is amplifying nonprofits. So we’re going to be offering promotions based on nonprofits that come and join our platform and just fill out their profile in these early days. We’re still figuring out exactly what that’ll look like, whether it’s just a nonprofit of the month, a promotion period on our platform, something like that, so that we can get them in front of as many members of our audience and then cross-promote and get our platform in front of as many members of their audience as well. So that’s one growth strategy. Another that we’re really excited about is our product is really well suited to come in and almost replace a CSR or ESG department of a small to medium-sized business. A lot of these businesses want to be doing social impact, want to be focused on making a difference in their local communities, but don’t necessarily have the resources, the employees, the time, or the budget to hire someone to do this full time. So that’ll be another really big growth strategy that we’re looking into—working with small to medium-sized businesses to help grow their social impact. And of course, again, cross-promote, tell their story, their amazing work and the work that they’re doing, and get in front of their audiences as well. And of course, with all of this, as much storytelling, as much social media as possible to get in front of as many individuals to generate donors and get as many users on the platform as we can.

Lee Wochner:
So building on what you just said, how are you working with marketing to spread your word? What’s the marketing like at MyCharity? And how are you marketing the nonprofit partners?

Will Hedrick:
Yeah. So right now, what we are doing is telling as many stories in the field as we can. When we make a grant, again, because we’ve been focused locally, it’s just easier for us. If they fall into, of course, our restrictions and categories, we’ll go in and get in person and in the field. I’ll take a camera and get anyone else. We have a board member who runs a photo and video company in Charlotte. We’ll get out in the field, tell the story, promote the work of what’s going on. And that is really all marketing is, in my experience of what sticks and what is powerful. I’m interested in telling stories of impact. I do not have an interest in just pumping and dumping information as much as we can, posting as much as we can. While yes, as we grow and scale, I am sure that day is going to come when we have a more executed social media strategy, but it really is heavy on quality, heavy on storytelling, and heavy on proving that individuals can make a difference.

Lee Wochner:
Okay, so final couple questions about the nonprofit. What worked well right away? I mean, you’ve started a nonprofit, you’re working with nonprofits. I have started nonprofits and managed nonprofits, and it can be exhilarating and hair-raising. What worked well right away?

Will Hedrick:
Yeah, the biggest thing that I think worked well right away, which is not the most exciting answer, was I had six years of entrepreneurship experience and six years of connections to dive into that was really easy to figure out. I know the attorney I need to go to, to fill out this 1023 so we can get our 501c3 status. I know how to go set up bank accounts. I know who to talk to for small initial fundraising so that we can actually get this off the ground. That, I would say, would be the first thing. And then the second is our transparent business model. All of our donors have mentioned at some point, whenever I’ve talked to them, that our 100% model is one of the reasons that they donated. Now, I do not believe the 100% model is fit for everyone, fit for, I would say, most nonprofit organizations. I think that

We have shot ourselves in the foot plenty of times because it would be a lot easier to dive into our philanthropic donations. We’ve got a lot more money in that bank account than in our operations bank account. It would be much easier to do that, but our donors love this aspect and it’s easy to understand. This is what your money is going towards. This is whether you choose operations or philanthropy. So I would say those two. And then the technological focus as well. When we find people that are interested in tech nonprofits, which are few and far between, they really connect. And so whether that has been a strength or a weakness, it probably has fallen more into the weakness category. But when it is a really good connection, when individuals have experience with tech nonprofits and even just using a giving platform like GiveWell or Every, some of those that are out there, they really, really are passionate about our work. So Between those three, I would say is what has worked out in these early stages.

Lee Wochner:
Any mistakes you’ve learned from so far?

Will Hedrick:
Gosh, millions. The biggest mistake that was made early on was the customer discovery. I think that one of the biggest issues with myself, I mean, again, coming from the for-profit world and having, I studied entrepreneurship, so I have a degree in entrepreneurship is we always talk about product-market fit and how important it is to figure out what your customers want before you go out and spend a lot of money making it. The nonprofit world

does not have product-market fit. There is, or at least it’s a different version of product-market fit. And so really, I think if I could go back to the very beginning, I would spend a lot of time, spending the first year, just going out, talking to nonprofit professionals, going in and supporting their work, instead of spending the last two years making mistakes and doing that one thing. And who knows if I had done that at the beginning where we would be right now.

Lee Wochner: 
Well, you’re talking about strategy and I’m sadly amazed how frequently I have to talk to nonprofits to encourage them to do strategy because otherwise you’re just running around doing things and you’re in the hallway with 37 doors and you take time opening and closing every door to see what’s behind there and you never get out of the hallway. I mean, strategy saves you time and money and helps you gauge whether something is succeeding or not. And yet, just as you said, and just as I did early in my career, I just want to jump in and do stuff. And then, of course, I’m losing time and money because I’m doing that rather than pursuing a strategy.

Will Hedrick: 
Well, and the two words that we all use to describe nonprofits are overworked and underpaid. There is very little time that you’ll ever hear nonprofit professionals, especially in small to medium-sized nonprofits, say that they have the time to sit down and do a five-year strategic plan or a marketing plan or anything else that goes within there. There is too much time spent.

Will Hedrick: 
Doing all of these other things, which we could go down the rabbit hole of the overhead myth and how important it is to just be supporting unrestricted donations to nonprofits. But it really is difficult to find that time, which is, I wouldn’t say one of the biggest struggles that nonprofits have, but it has to be up there.

Lee Wochner: 
If it took you 20 hours to research, develop, and write a one- to three-year plan, you spend 400 hours not having done it over the course of the initial years. And I’ve seen that again and again and again.

Will Hedrick: 
If not more, if not more, completely agree. And I am a testament to that. And I think that most, most nonprofits, and if we turn the camera around, Lee, I’m sure you could agree at some point that you’ve been in that boat as well. I think that that is just how life works out, unfortunately, for anything.

Lee Wochner: 
Well, I think there’s an imperative to not swamp people’s enthusiasm to get going because that initiating impulse is important whether you’re trying to start the United States in 1776, right, or anything else. You don’t want to dampen the enthusiasm, but you do want to say, you know, it’s a better country if you write these forming documents. If you think about how it’s going to work. And then if you reconvene in 1789 to really solidify it. One of the things that I wanted to make sure that our listeners hear is one of your examples of a successful case study. And I noted this. It’s in your video. It’s on your website. Kaylee funded 1,042 trees in different countries. Now as a tree lover and tree hugger myself, I was taken by that. To fund 1,042 trees in 10 different countries, and God bless her for doing that, is that crowdfunded? Is that her alone? Is she part of that? How did that work?

Will Hedrick: 
That’s her alone. And so that’s really part of what we are offering our donors. So we had within that grant that we made, she was one of the donors and the math broke down. I don’t remember, that’s through Eden reforestation projects. Based off of the time that we’ve planted with them, the rate has changed from either it was 50 to 60 cents a tree versus now it’s a little bit over a dollar a tree, something like that. When we’ve done some other grants with them. But that was when. It is a difficult process to go through and tag every single donation that we’ve made, where they’ve gone and how they’re doing it. But that’s our magic. And so that is where, down to the penny, we are proving exactly what impact was made. And so she had done that and has continued to plant trees since.

Lee Wochner: 
Well, let me make a pitch for trees briefly. I grew up out in the woods, so I love trees. But on October 19, 2003, my eldest son and I, I think he was 11 or something at the time, we got a tree donated by the city here. It was just a stick with a ball of sod at the bottom and we planted it. And now it’s this huge, beautiful tree that shades my house, that attracts wildlife.

And I just love that tree and everybody compliments me on that tree and that tree is fighting climate change and global warming.

Will Hedrick: 
And it’s amazing. Same as you, a huge lover of nature. I grew up in the woods on a few acres outside of the middle of nowhere in Charlotte. And it’s amazing what just that simple act of planting a tree and watching it grow can do. That’s why we support Eden reforestation projects. And if any of you all are listening, either go donate directly to them, donate to reforestation work, or just go and check them out. They’re doing outstanding work. It’s amazing their business model. They hire locals in deforested areas that were previously unemployed, and they go out and plant their trees. So it’s a win for local economies that don’t have access to jobs regularly. It’s a win for the environment. That’s part of our vetting process—finding organizations just like them that are doing outstanding work. They work together with us, sending us proof from the field and down-to-the-penny measurements of how many trees were planted and other items like that. So go and check out their work—they’re really amazing because when you donate, they’ll do the same for you and really break that down as well. It’s outstanding what they’re doing.

Lee Wochner: 
Well, if MyCharity truly succeeds, if it’s really making a larger impact—and I’m already impressed with the 1,042 trees, by the way, so that’s already a success—but you know what I mean, if it really takes off, what will it be like in three years?

Will Hedrick: 
Yeah, three years is a wonderful time period. By then, what we’re really hoping to do is set a very, very strong groundwork. And that is why we’ve gone back and spent a lot of time sitting behind the computer doing the unsexy work so that we can have automated tracking. We can give our donors the best donation experience possible. And what that looks like is ultimately the best go-to donation platform humanly possible in front of as many people humanly possible. I wish I could give you a ton of numbers on how much money we’ve raised and what that came down to, but it’s too much up in the ether and it could go so many different ways. But our goal is to make donating as easy, as transparent, and as impactful as humanly possible. I mean, heck, the world can very quickly change by one individual who starts a fundraiser or who donates ten dollars a month, whatever it is. And when we can sprinkle that mindset into as many people as possible, that’s where I get excited. And the fact that that is really what we’re trying to do with MyCharity in three years, that is really the goal. Get in in front of as many people as possible, work together. We’ll still be in the early years, but work together with those early donors to see what we can improve and change, but create something that empowers individuals. And then hopefully, watch the rocket ship take off.

Lee Wochner: 
Well, I would imagine that a lot of people want to get in touch with you, particularly our listenership, given that it’s nonprofit leaders. What’s the best way for people to connect with you?

Will Hedrick: 
Of course, I am a lover of LinkedIn. So my name is Will Hedrick. If you look me up on there, I am easy to connect with—reach out, send me a message, do anything on there. And then of course, go to our website and fill out that introductory form. If there are any nonprofit professionals, which is the majority of your audience, fill out that introductory form. And note, I don’t know if we’re allowed to expose the date when we’re recording this, it’s mid-October. We might be in the in-between phase of releasing our new software, so if there are a few different bugs or if our website is locked, know that that is expected and just send me a LinkedIn message. I’m always happy to connect and most importantly, really looking to support your work.

Lee Wochner: 
Will, a real pleasure meeting you and congratulations on your vision and your desire for change and improvement. I really, really wish you the best and hope this works out really, really well.

Will Hedrick: 
Lee, thank you so much. This has been wonderful connecting and I’m super excited to continue listening. I’m a true fan of your podcast and that is not me blowing smoke. I really love anything that’s dedicated to nonprofits. So thank you for adding me.

Lee Wochner: 
Well, thanks a bunch.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Thanks for listening! We’re glad you came. That’s What C! is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please like and follow the show. Visit Counterintuity.com to sign up and learn more.