Acceleration Partners’ Publisher Spotlight is an ongoing series where members of our Publisher Development team shine a light on innovative publishers from across the world.
This month, Timothy Bruderek, Publisher Development Manager at Acceleration Partners, chatted with Mike Biller, Senior Brand Partnerships Manager at Giving Assistant.
Giving Assistant has grown to be one of the leading charitable giving platforms – how did you get your start and how did you get to be where you are today?
For all of Giving Assistant’s founders, giving back, volunteering, even being involved in our local communities—it’s all been a big part of each of our lives. In part, because we believe it’s just the right thing to do, but it’s also fun and fulfilling for us and we’ve seen how much joy it gives others to get involved too.
We started Giving Assistant hoping to create a product that would make it possible for anyone to experience that fulfillment, even if they didn’t have a lot of time to volunteer or a lot of money to donate. Of course, we also wanted to support as many nonprofits as possible and we needed the product to be sustainable and scalable.
The coupon marketplace ended up being the perfect avenue for achieving our mission. The huge scope meant reaching millions of people and helping more nonprofits grow. Plus, we all brought experience and successes in affiliate marketing, retail, business development. We ultimately assembled a team of amazing, passionate people that have made all the difference.
What is the best way for advertisers to partner with Giving Assistant to fully maximize their partnership and get the most exposure to your customers as possible?
Our dedicated Brand Partnerships team is very knowledgeable in working directly with a brand or agency, such as Acceleration Partners (AP), to create the best campaign that will hit their ROAS goals or any specific KPI.
If you’re looking for co-branded experiences with specific nonprofits, we can create a tailored campaign. We can tell the story of their company or focus on a specific product launch. We custom-create all our creative in-house free of charge and offer our dedicated time to address all your questions and concerns.
It’s best to reach out to our team at brandpartnerships@givingassistant.org and request more information on ways we can work together.
What do you look for when creating new partnerships with advertisers?
We are open to supporting all different types of partnerships. We value partners that are interested in supporting our mission (making it easier for shoppers to save and give back). We are always open to exploring new ideas and new opportunities.
Tell us about some of your Q4 promotions outside of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
We will be launching a Giving Tuesday campaign the first week of December.
Giving Tuesday takes place the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and is a global movement to create an international day of charitable giving. We work closely with our nonprofits and create an easy experience for our shoppers to shop and give back.
What else is Giving Assistant doing in the marketplace to stand out from the pack?
As one of only a few thousand B Corporations in the world, one of the many things that sets us apart is our mission: our primary commitment is to make this world a better place by making it easy for consumers to turn their everyday shopping into charitable giving.
Our business must thrive for us to make that happen, so of course we’re also committed to building amazing relationships with our customers and giving them the best product we possibly can.
But we also dedicate a lot of time to teaching others that small actions add up in big ways when we all do them together. We regularly feature nonprofits on our site so our community of shoppers can learn about them. We offer our employees paid volunteer time and volunteering is part of our quarterly Company Fun Days.
We’re also committed to upholding all the responsibilities we have to our employees, our community and our environment as a certified B Corporation. This all certainly helps us stand out in the industry, but we’d do them anyway!
What types of brands or deals resonate best with your audience?
Our member sweet spot is 25 to 35-year-old altruistic millennials who want to shop at top brands and give back while doing so.
Historically, we have done well with big box stores, fashion, beauty and travel but we are always willing to test with a new partnership as we have a diverse audience.
Any exciting news you would like to share?
In 2018, we launched our premier charitable SaaS product!
Our product enables online retailers to deeply engage customers by transforming every purchase into a charitable donation. Our SaaS solution provides a charity search-and-selection process seamlessly integrated into checkout, making it easier, faster, and more customer-centric to give back.
Dedicated to helping businesses lead with purpose, this is the next evolution of our premier online consumer giving and shopping rewards platform and is the only certified B Corporation among current market solutions, a prestigious industry certificate measuring a company’s social and environmental performance.
Any last words or quotes to live by?
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
I’m fairly certain any life lesson or words to live by can be found within the context of a John Hughes movie.
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