 Good morning or good afternoon, whatever time it is that you might be joining us today for another episode of the nonprofit show. We are thrilled to have you here. Today we have with us Russ Howard and Russ is the CEO founder at card funder and he's going to talk to you about gift cards and this innovative fundraising solution for your nonprofit. So excited to have this conversation. I've already had some dialogue with Russ and I think we're already jiving in our innovation mindset so excited for this conversation. Sorry to Julia she's missing out today and Julia Patrick we do give you tons of thanks for setting up this platform. March of 2020 is when we started the nonprofit show Julia serves as the CEO for the American nonprofit Academy. And I'm Jared ransom Julia's personal nonprofit nerd but really there's plenty to go around nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group and so honored to be here, each and every day to have these high level conversations with some really cool people. 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So Russ this conversation that we're having are about to have right now will be available in perpetuity to so many thousands hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. I want to welcome you by saying, you know, thank you so much for being here for those of you watching and listening. Again, this is Russ Howard CEO and founder at card funder. The web address is card funder.com Russ welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jordan. Pleasure being here. I'm so thrilled to have this conversation with you. And I'd love for you to start a little bit about what is card funder, and how did you find yourself in the CEO founder seat. So this is a 30 minute show right now. You have to consolidate. Well, thanks again for having me on and card funder is an innovative platform that allows nonprofits charities churches sports teams, anybody who's trying to raise money. We provide an innovative way to do that. Most people understand and interact with gift cards, you know, it's approaching a trillion dollar global business now domestically, you know, we're approaching $300 billion. And, you know, Gen Z and millennials are the real, you know, the real champions and real users of the platform so unfortunately, you know, it's a high growth industry, but it has a lot of breakage. So it's estimated that there's about $40 billion worth of unspent gift cards on the sidelines, and that that grows annually by three to five billion so the average consumer is sitting on $175 and unspent gift cards. So, you know, we saw that as a role, you know, a real challenge, you know, for the retail industry out there they don't really recognize that revenue till it's spent. It's on their liability sheets. So that breakage, you know, even a, you know, holding up Starbucks card there's a billion dollars of these unspent out there. So that's a real problem, right. That breaks my heart, honestly, and I have to admit, we have them here in my house as well. But I think the culprit is my, my preteen son. Yeah, Gen Z. Hey, they're they're right there in the in the in the sweet spot so I wasn't going to, you know, get you going down a confessional but you know you just you did it. I did. You know, so again the average, the average person sitting on $175 worth. And generally speaking they're tucked in a drawer somewhere. They're not they're not really in a wallet. They sit there and they sit there and so you know my background is specifically in retail and recently, most recently with with GameStop. And really, you know, I was there at, you know, pre IPO, we were trying to model out the business we had three or four different models, and we really we really landed on the secondary market and the ability for the consumer to trade in a game. You know, $50 for it, sitting on the sidelines collecting dust you want to go buy a new game. Well, you know, take the game in and trade it acts like a coupon. So I really, really fell in love with that secondary space. It's, you know, it's sustainable. It really speaks to, you know what we're looking for and value. You know, we saw an opportunity with gift cards sort of the same similar characteristics. We said, okay, there's got to be a way that we can, we can unlock these cards and unlock the value of these cards. You know, and in doing so, we were very, very pleased early on, you know, the results that we got from from some of our early campaign campaigns and it was fun, you know, a lot of people came back said hey I'm tired of selling something you know I'm tired of asking. So now they're just picking up trash for people and I'll take what you got there, not asking for any money and you know it's these have five 10 $20 $50 on them. So it's it's it's meaningful it's micro donations that have a have a real macro impact. I have already floored me honestly and by the way I'll take that Starbucks one and probably Home Depot as well because I have plenty, plenty of projects but let's talk about a little deeper into the gift cards in the American economy. You've touched on many statistics which we love because we think data is sexy here, but tell us a little bit about you know the gift card impact perhaps in the American economy. Well, it's it's mainstream now and you know I read something recently that was, I think it was Black Hawk that did a survey about the holidays, and it talked about millennial and Gen Z specifically. And, you know, as in a traditional sense where we grew up at least you're a lot younger than I am but you know cash was king and you might have wrote road check and then you know as we, but they're this holiday millennials and Gen Z. Illustrated eight ways to buy something in the holidays gift cards were number one at 4043%. But, you know, by now pay later is, you know, rising quickly so now you have, you know, all of these illustrations about how you conduct commerce, and you know as millennials are getting older Gen Z is coming up as behind them. You know, they're the norm for them is not the not the traditional norm. So you use the term disruptive I, we want to be careful about that I think we've been described as being disruptive. But it I think that we are highly innovative, but we're not really displacing anything that's that's currently out there. We really want to compliment what's going on and we really want people to, you know, I mean there's $40 billion sitting there and we're just trying to unlock that. So imagine what 40 billion could do for nonprofits and I want to acknowledge the disruption and thank you for doing that I think the word disruption gets a bad rap and you know it doesn't have to be for bad disruption can be for good. You know, innovation for nonprofits as you and I talked about, you know so many nonprofits and we say there's 1.8 million registered in the US. We are craving or so they say innovation, but there I find I'll speak for myself, often very late to adopt right and when very much so this hurry up and wait mentality we provide an innovative option we provide innovative solutions. And they say we want it we want it but yet they're not taking action. So you know, like that to me is interesting. We have $40 billion out there. And it's, you know, it's interesting you say that because as well versed as we are in the gift card space and really consumers in general, you and I talk pre show that, you know, the nonprofit world's new, new to me specifically. And I think that the key learning so far is one is that sort of everybody wants to innovate. You put it there in front of them and then there's a hesitation why is there hesitation one, it's these slow, slow cycles well I'm already planned out 18 months from now. Okay, to there's a trust factor right. And so no one wants to go first. And but yet you can't be an innovator if you're not willing to, you know, step out there right. And we see this as a totally non risk situation there's there's no investment. It's super easy to sign up. And all you're doing is going out there and and collecting, you know, really what's on the sidelines. Yeah, absolutely. So, if we're collecting what's on the sidelines you at card funder you literally help organizations convert these cards into cash so what like what does that look like lately and I'm curious if you could throw out some numbers of like how these transactions have really helped the nonprofit community. Sure, sure. So we started out in a physical world. So what we do is we enable the, and we we become the platform that that created that provides the service right so if a church, for instance where we tested collects the cards, they put them and we send them to us, we process those cards and send them back a check so it's really, there's no, there's no work on their side other than collecting the cards so we still do that we still offer that service in a physical form. And then, you know, we rolled out an app. So then we onboard a nonprofit into the app and give them their own campaign page. So then they can ingest a card, a, you know, a giver donor can give the card through the app and then that goes directly into that campaign, but we're taking it in digital form. And then we also have a URL feature that gives a splash page campaign page the same way. So when the card is ingested, we know where it, you know, where it came from, who gave it. The intended target, where it's going. And then once we process those cards, you know, monthly the organization gets a reconciliation report shows the card shows the person shows the value shows the next results and then we their ACH or our cinema check cover they want. So I love that you mentioned and we're not going to go there quite yet is how do we get donors to participate but for your church and for your church example I could totally see you know I grew up Southern Baptist sitting past the plate right and in goes all of these you know gift cards it's like $1.25 here or 75 cents there. I can visualize that collection of it. Well the first time we did this, again pre COVID right. We, it was a, it was the youth group. So it was, you know, there's your Gen Z's, you know, they don't have really a lot of discretionary dollars but they really want to step in and help. It was like magic, because they took it on youth group took it on and said hey, we want to we want to help this mission group, and they went out and, you know, a couple of people stepped up sort of took charge. They collected collected the cards dropped them in the basket. We process those cards and in a week later, you know they got a check for $7,000. It was a sort of a gas, you know, when when everybody in the congregation heard that number was like, are you kidding me. Yeah, really that that much and that's that's really, you know what sparked this and what really certainly got me to dedicate all my, all my time to it so you know as it exists, like in one church one school, you get that impact but you know as you know, you know, we're seeing larger orgs like Compassion International, they put it on their own page is another way to give. So it's a, it's, you know, it sits there in perpetuity, they're not necessarily running a campaign. It's just another way for someone to donate. Oh my gosh this gets me so excited there's so much opportunity, you know really for this when it comes to that conversion of the gift cards into cash and I'm still stuck on 40 billion because that was the number you shared $40 billion. Imagine if we can just, I don't know, recoup 10% you know and drive that to charity that would make such an impactful different. And that number grows by 35 billion a year so it's not, it's not stagnant, you know, and if you if we talk about, you know, disrupting anything what we do want to disrupt is breakage the waste. That's what we really were trying to hammer home is to say there's so much waste out there and it's not healthy for anyone. The government's going to start getting more and more involved as soon as they see a billion dollars of Starbucks cards. Everyone's going to try to get their mitts on it so our goal is to get it off the sidelines and and put it to good use. So how do we do that. What are the ideas that you share with the nonprofits you work with Russ. What are these ideas to get the donors to participate you shared, you know having this youth group participate you shared putting it on your website. What is working how are you getting these nonprofits to not only go from raising their hands to say hey I want innovation to taking action to doing it. Well, it's different at all levels. So, you know, if we're talking about a youth baseball team that's trying to go to Cooperstown, you know you've got, you know, 1012 kids there. They go collect cards and you know $1500 is a huge deal for them. You know that's that's meaningful to buy uniforms or travel so they they'll knock doors they just go door to door hey this is what we're doing. Open that junk drawer would you yeah yeah and and the one thing that when we did you know the one thing that help for trust right is that once we got will onboard everyone into the app. We treat everyone the same no matter if you're the 10th largest nonprofit in the world like compassion, or your, you know, eight guys that are on a soccer team. It's equal, equal fair so but but through the app when they go and say they're trying to collect a card through a neighbor, they can pull up their campaign on the app and say, you can either give me the card physically or if you'd like to you can just donate it through this app so that was really, you know that was a game changer for us, you know, just this fourth third and fourth quarter, but you know as you as you as you go up the as you go up the line, you know, we see, you know, a little larger groups, youth groups and churches they may say okay, somebody owns it really someone's really passionate about it a real purpose. This is going to a very specific thing. You know that's where people can really get behind it. And then you see a little competition here and there might be boys girls might be grade versus grade you know we see that with schools where you know this grade versus this grade whoever collects the most cards, you know gets pizza party. You know some we're working with one elementary school is giving away a PlayStation five, you know they're thinking big. So they're like we want this to go viral. You're definitely talking to their audience. Right, we you know donate a card and it's that's you're getting an entry into winning a PS five so they're they're looking beyond their little community, and saying, we want this to go nationwide so that's that's really clever and I, you know as an old retailer, you know I think we really look and watch carefully and we pull in what we're seeing is best practices, and we repurpose and reshare those because at the end of the day, we can sit here and, you know, articulate what we think are the best methods but, but you know boots on the ground people that are really out there hurting or have a need or trying to do something really great. You know they own the process where the process or and where does here to support them. So disruption is like just brewing inside of me right now Russ and I would be remiss. I know if I didn't mention the Amazon smile closure right yeah, so how are you seeing card funder step into that gap. Well if you send me a list an email list of all of those million people and we certainly will reach out. That's a challenge we're on it, we're trying to figure that out but you know some messaging we put out there we've already seen people come into our platform and sign up that you know felt like we could stand in and fill a gap. And I think we can. You know, if not all of it. Some of it and hopefully more of it who knows but now again, you know, going back to eight ways millennials and Gen Z shop and spent eight ways you got to think about, you know, it's hard to think about eight ways to buy something. But, you know, the same, same thing for forgiving. We see them, you know, we see, we see that group really embracing different alternative ways to to give. And, and, you know, you and I spoke about it we, we have to have the nonprofits open their eyes and say this isn't your grandma tidying 10% anymore. You know what to do how are you going to engage and speak to that audience and through this, it truly is a fun exercise there's not a lot of friction here, you're not, you're not investing in a product and having to resell it. It really is fun. And, and because it's so unknown. It's, it's really meaningful when you when you get through the end of the exercise and say, Wow, I can't believe we just collected that much money. We did look how many look how many you know safe houses are you know evenings for the people we've provided look how many animals we've taken off the street you know like there's so so much of an impact. I'm so curious and I'm sure our viewers and listeners are the same rest. What does the process look like so we're interested we heard today's episode and we're like okay my hands up for innovation I'm ready to take action. Let's go to the next step and walk us through, like the final product because I can't wait to see. Yeah, great. All right, so as an org would go to our website. Card funder.com. There's a little form fill there, which is just collecting your name and basic contact information to let us know hey you're interested. And then we will receive that form and then we send back. If you would like to sign up here's some of here's some of the elements of what a campaign would look like or what your results will be you complete the form fill on the website. And it's pretty, it's pretty easy. What you're really doing is just your basic information. So we're going to have one C so we need to know that. If you're going to participate in the app you need to have you need to be registered to Benevity. So that's, you know, that's a fact, you know that's a, that's what Apple requires. You give us your branding color, you give us your logo, you're uploading this. What do you want. What is this campaign about in two sentences. What I want to say is thank you when someone gives in two sentences, and a little bit a little blur, your sharing blur because if you use the app, you can hit a button and share it out on social media so what, what do you what is your message. So once we get that that information, we onboard you in about 48 hours we send you back a package that says here's your URL sharing link, here's your QR code sharing link, and here's what your donation page looks like. Go for it. And, you know, and we support you, you know, we'll help with press releases, you know, obviously we, you know, we come behind our orgs and do everything we can on social media to support them. So that's pretty easy. Sounds like a win win. Yeah, it sounds like a win win and and there's nothing to lose in this I, you know, I love it and one of the things we have heard. You know, for the last three years and honestly Russ dating myself I've heard this for the last 20 years being in the sector is our donors are dying right our donors are aging and literally dying and moving, you know, so how do we get a new constituency How do we engage with a younger audience how do we touch more people to give more money and I believe in the power of, you know, not only recurring donors but smaller donations make a really big impact and so I feel and I've seen you know this too often that too many times and I've been guilty of it just as well as I'm guilty of the gift card so that are, you know, stuck in a junk drawer of going for that major donor and not going for you know the multitude of donors that we could begin to engage. This sounds like an opportunity that just fits that like a glove. Yeah, I mean if you're, you know, if you're a school you're a church you're a nonprofit, you know you get to speak to you get to speak to this generation in terms that they understand. And you, this is an introduction into giving right and it's a non friction easy way to say let's step in do this and then they get the spirit of giving. They get the benefit of the, you know the great deed that they did and then they can see it, see something change, you know, in a material way with something so simple, right, and so I think that's the beauty of what what we're doing it's not so much narrow and deep it's it's really, it's really wide and shallow. But again, when you when you get people working together. It, you know, it can, it can really provide some meaningful results. So with people working together I'm curious, you know, I mentioned I have a 12 year old son so his school does a lot of these dine out evenings and I find that those are very successful for places like faith based or schools you know education based. I'm kind of seeing that same audience for card funder is that the larger of the, you know, kind of supporters advocates, you know, because his school is is K through 12 so there's a lot of kids a lot of families to engage in something like Chipotle or something you know that is being the most successful as well for card funder. Yeah, I think that, you know, we're seeing, you know, we're seeing we're cutting across a lot of different, you know, sectors here right so we see with schools. And they're, they're creative. You know I think that one school that we're on boarding now is going to, instead of doing a penny war, they're going to do a cardboard. So, absolutely, you know, instead of dropping pennies in there now you're dropping $10 bills in there. So they see it is okay wow I already know how to do this. This is successful. So let me, let me take it in a different different place so I'm, I'm going to be fascinated on that one because we haven't seen that that happened yet right so. Certainly, certainly schools certainly sports teams. But you know where we see the greatest results is someone has a passion for something they really want to make a difference that you someone's championing it, and really getting kind it, and they're setting a goal. You know, you know one one church that is having a campaign in a few weeks said okay, you know, they know exactly what they're going to use the funds for. And they put a stake in the ground and said, we're going to collect 500 cards. That's it. We're not stopping until we get 500. That's where you see the magic happen. Oh gosh. Okay, I have to ask about digital cards. How do the digital gift cards play a role in card funder. I'm sure there's a way to do that as well. Yeah, yeah, so every card physical or digital has, you know, two sets of numbers right one is the card number, and one is the pen. As long as you have those digits. When you, when you're donating through our app or online, you're just inputting those, those numbers, the card number in the, in the pen, and then we can detect the balance, which on cards a lot of times, people have no idea what's on the card So part of our process is we have to identify balance. And once we identified the balance, then we can conduct the transaction. Okay, well you thought of it all I love these ideas to get our donors active to participate. I'm certainly going to bring this up to my, my own child school to see what we could do for them because you know whether it's athletics or arts we're always looking to increase those dollars for support so this sounds just, you know, like the perfect opportunity. Again, Russ Howard, it's been such a joy to talk to you little did I know we're going to have some southern roots and connections as well that we we found out earlier. But again for our viewers and listeners Russ Howard CEO and founder at card funder, and the web address for that is card funder.com. Please check this out and hey, if you are an organization that moves forward with Russ and card funder. Let us know because I would love to have you back on the show. Talk to us about your process how it's working how it's being successful for your organization and the impact it's making because I mean literally you've blown my mind Russ there's so much and it's almost like. Why wasn't this thought of earlier. You know, and that will stump me again next year with some other innovative idea I'm sure. That's right. That's right. So, well thank you for being here Russ it's been such a pleasure, a nod to Julia Patrick for creating the opportunity for these conversations and I'm Jarrett ransom. You're nonprofit nerd. Thank you again to our presenting sponsors that allow these mind blowing conversations like the one that I just really enjoyed with Russ so thank you to blooming American nonprofit Academy, your part time controller nonprofit nerd staffing boutique fundraising Academy at National University, and thanks also to nonprofit thought leader. Please check these companies out they are here to support you in your mission to do more good. And again, Russ, thank you for helping all of us do more good through card funder and the gift card exchange. I'm just fascinated I mean I really am there's not there's not much I think that has come by and I'm like oh I haven't heard of this yet but this is something that's really got my goat so I'm excited to see where it goes. Thank you for having me on. Yeah. And for all of you that joined us today. Thank you. I encourage you to share this episode with your board, your fundraising team, your fundraising committee. Let's see how we can recoup that $40 billion and not help it go up each year by two or four billion dollars because it needs to go to charity not to the landfill. But thank you for being here. I appreciate each and every one of you as we end all of our episodes we'd like to remind you to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone and thanks so much Russ.