Who Gives A Crap is a brilliant social enterprise. Three young guys have used crowdsourcing platform Indiegogo to successfully launch their toilet paper business and raise money to build toilets in developing nations.
A good example of a new business reducing risk to their initial investors through crowdfunding. They’d have a lot to prove if they were asking for millions of dollars, but for fifty bucks, a funny, believable video and a box of toilet paper will do.
It goes like this. If they raise more than $50,000 (which they’ve done in just over 50 hours) they’ll do a production run of their toilet paper and send packs to those who bought them on the site. They’ll donate half their profits to WaterAid to build toilets where there are none. If they raise over $100,000 they’ll go into business and stock the line in stores.
Why has it worked?
The guys have developed their own eco-friendly and attractively packaged toilet paper and a whole heap of hilarious toilet jokes. They’ve set up their indiegogo site with a really funny, effective, high-quality video about their project and have set a good range of options for giving/buying.
They’re selling a product we all value, and we’re all enjoying the way they’re selling it to us and that we’re making a social contribution at the same time!
What’s indiegogo?
Indiegogo began in 2008 as a crowdfunding platform for independent film makers. Each project sets a target amount to raise and contributes 4% to Indiegogo if they meet their target. Tax incentives are only available to US customers through Paypal. Projects on the site also include registered charities, people looking to fund their mother’s holiday, their child’s college tuition, medical expenses or small business.
Having just attended the Social Capital Markets Conference in San Francisco (SOCAP), I was surprised at the lack of conversation about retail investment. ‘Retail investment’ means open to anyone, the individual on the street. It’s sometimes referred to as ‘crowd-investing’, ‘peer-to-peer lending’ or in Australia has been referred to as ‘crowd-sourced equity funding’ (where ‘equity’ means debt or equity).
Emma Tomkinson 