The two founders, Farkas Barsony, dr. and Arnold Bujdosó, dr., both lawyers, decided to start something new in the summer of 2015 along their long discussed ideas. Beside their daily work and responsibilities, both were very active in helping a number of charity organisations for many years.
However, at one point they decided to seek solutions by themselves for the problems they both saw and faced in the area of giving. Furthermore, they were also missing the impact what commercial advertisements can have on consumers in the interest of good causes, whether it is social or environment related.
What were these main problems? Use of donations received is not transparent enough, therefore, there is not enough trust in the charity organisations. Giving is not simple enough, therefore, many people are just too lazy to give, donate. There are many people who would like to give, but have no financial resources to do so. There are many respected charity organisations who do not have access to bigger companies who have more resources to give help. Companies are more and more willing to give within the community they operate, however, there is too much risk due to the lack of the required level of transparency. Commercial advertisements do not carry immediate positive social or/and environmental impact. On the other hand, certain social, environmental and sustainability expectations do not appear as a general consumer need yet, therefore, still lot of education is needed. Problems like this and many other similar problems led to a low level of culture of giving and also stuck with mostly an ineffective use of commercial ads (i.e. no immediate impact) and with people who do not really care about social, environmental and sustainability goals.
The founders decided to invest a lot of work, energy and money to find solutions to these problems with the help of the latest, most recent digital technologies.
First they contracted a Big4 consulting firm (where Dr. Bársony was a partner at that time) to do a study on the culture of giving (in the international context too) to validate the problems the founders identified and the project (Sharity Impact) immediately started.
The main first significant result, a product of this work, is an application (Sharity app) which can already be downloaded on both IOS and Android. The ‘angel investors’ of this stage of the project were the founders themselves. Their digital solution became a TOP100 most interesting innovation in Hungary, with a special CSR award. The WSA (World Summit Award) also recognised Sharity Impact as the best digital solution in Hungary with significant social impact.
Sharity Impact – on the one hand – is a donation intermediary with the use of the app, where the user (of the app) surfs among the good causes and the charity organisations, then supports the ones carefully selected, with just a couple of clicks. No commission is deducted by Sharity Impact on this activity, which is also unique in the world.
The charity organisations collecting via the Sharity platform are required to meet the so-called high Sharity Transparency Standard (STS), under which they have to account with the donations received. This is supported by a risk monitoring and analysing software developed by a Big4 consulting firm on the request of the founders.
Sharity Impact – on the other hand – makes it possible to donate money (to the selected good cause) even if they do not have money. How? People can actually give only their time to the good cause selected by watching a short video. The (legal or natural)person/advertiser – whose video is watched – undertakes to give donations to the good cause based on the number of video watches. With that, Sharity Impact’s digital solutions quickly became the first purpose driven, impact marketing/advertising technology in the region. The videos can be watched not only within the app but on the contracted web pages too, therefore, measurable views are not limited to the (otherwise fast increasing)number of the app users.
One of Sharity Impact’s main principles that it does not deduct any commission from the donations made via the Sharity platform. Therefore, its sustainable operations are secured by the advertising fees received.
The strategy and activities performed – to reach the above results – generated – as the founders call it – the primary impact marketing. Sharity Impact could pull people in who could not afford to donate money before, therefore, Sharity Impact started to build an even larger and stronger community around good causes to support them (impact).
In a way, advertisers together with now a larger number of people can join their efforts in the interest of these good causes.
However, there is a secondary impact marketing angle in here. It is in the best interest of the advertisers too to make certain social, environmental, sustainability expectations to a consumer need. Massive education is required to get there. Like it or not, advertisements have the largest impact on consumers, therefore, we should use the power of commercial ads to educate people in this direction. Sharity Impact, therefore, makes ESG videos too on request of advertisers. Sharity Impact also operates its own Fb online stream (ShariTV). Latter works with the help of the contracted, well known celebrities, ambassadors of Sharity (all of them open their live Fb stream at the same time when online discussion of a topic is in place). It goes to Youtube too (views are 20-30k per program today).
Sharity Impact’s first large customer in the region is SYNLAB Hungary along Sharity Impacts’s purpose driven advertising activity. Lot of additional good ideas were discussed as a part of this cooperation between the firms.
Sharity Impact did not stop developing the app. The Sharity Coin is in the process of being introduced. The app will be able to collect (QR codes, fintech solutions) the charity margins built in the prices of products and services into the Sharity Wallet of the app user. The user then can donate the collected charity margins, ‘Sharity Coins’ to the selected good causes in the app.
The operation of Sharity Impact is actually an effectice cooperation between the „B”s, the good causes and the „C”s, with the help of the marketing/advertising agencies and the Sharity Ambassadors (number of contracted celebrities). The „B”s reward the „C”s with giving over the right of allocating the donations to them for the views of „B”s purpose video ads.
In summary, the combinations of the above innovative solutions in Sharity Impact and the efficient, sustainable and purpose driven operation of these represents a very unique digital innovation in the world.
Sharity Impact seeks the cooperation of those companies and marketing/advertising agencies who are open to innovative digital solutions carrying significant positive social or/and environmental impact.
