For Good Causes was the first universal charity gift card, used by clients as a way to engage customers under the theme ‘we care about what you care about’. Despite strong growth during 2020 the business was a casualty of the pandemic, winding up early in 2021, having raised just under £500k for UK charities during its five years of operation.

For each of the founders, For Good Causes was our first start up adventure.  We learnt so much throughout the journey, some of which I’ve shared here.

Proposition

We started the business thinking that it was all about letting people donate the value of unused loyalty points to charity.  In truth, this element of the proposition proved slow to sell, and slower still to drive utilisation volumes.

Along the way we explored various proposition ‘extensions’ notably including a digital donation service, Donate by Thumb , which never achieved commercial traction.

It was two years before we crystallised the proposition to be ‘allowing people to donate to the charity of their choice without needing to put their hand in their pocket’.  Once we’d settled that, we went on to see much stronger performance from clients including Vodafone and Office of National Statistics.

The main learning being that it’s easy to waste a lot of time and resource on non-core product development unless there is complete clarity around core proposition – regularly re-validated by ongoing customer research and programme performance review.

Much is said about the benefit of “Fail Fast & Pivot” strategies.   And most of it is absolutely right!

Business cases

We spent significant time developing the business case early on – in fact more than one investor told us it was the most comprehensive business case they’d seen for a start-up, which we took as a great compliment.

However, in retrospect our business case was too intricate for the stage we were at, and its complexity hindered our ability to pivot quickly in the face of market experience.

This taught me a lot about doing the ‘appropriate’ level of planning, particularly in the early stages when market assumptions are not proven.

Team

With a leadership team comprised primarily of senior ex-corporate executives, we had an inverse pyramid.  When combined with a heavily democratic disposition, this restricted our nimbleness.

In any start up, I strongly believe that the number one activity must be sales.  There is no time for excessive focus on ‘strategy’ even though it’s tempting to default into the comfort of endless strategising.  As a general rule of thumb, if anyone on the leadership team is spending less than 20% of their time selling, plus a further 30% on client meeting preparation, that would be a red flag for me in any future venture.

Finally, the board.  In a start-up with a good chance of success, there will be many expressions of interest.  And yet, the relationship between directors is hugely important, and reshaping boards is not easy.  It’s absolutely vital that the founders retain sufficient control of the company to control direction in the early stages of growth.

Investment Raising

Takes much longer than you might expect.  It can be a full-time job for one principal during fund raise periods. It involves kissing a LOT of frogs and is an area where prior experience is worth its weight in gold.

I heard a friend recently describe the relationship between a business and a new investor being akin to the early stages of a love affair.  I think there’s a lot of truth in that, and I reflect on how many love affairs start based on lust versus true shared passion and understanding.

For a first-time founder, bringing on board investment can seem like a wonderful dream.   For the more seasoned, there is an understanding that any new relationship needs to be managed very carefully and with a great deal of focus on effective communication.

Steve Wilks

Founding Director & CEO
For Good Causes