Ep. 33: Emily Rasmussen, CEO & Founder, Grapevine

Hello Everyone! Summer is almost over (ahhh). School is almost starting (ahh!) But great conversations with leaders doing good while doing well never abate! First a word from our sponsor: The AI Marketers Guild (AIMG) is dedicated to empowering professionals to improve their skills in the rapidly evolving field of AI, specifically as it applies to marketers. We foster a collaborative community, offering targeted professional development and networking opportunities while enabling members to share their knowledge and experience. Sign up & receive 10% off your membership | Use code: Worthy at checkout For today’s conversation, I was connected to Grapevine CEO and Founder, Emily Rasmussen through show guest and supporter Aria Finger. The reason I reached out to Aria was that Grapevine was first brought to my attention through a cold email from a digital marketer giving circle that is hosted on the platform. Technology + marketing + doing good while doing well = a great future conversation. Grapevine’s mission is dedicated to hosting and facilitating giving circles. As Grapevine defines a giving circle is “a charitable model where people come together, pool their donations, and give back as a collective to amplify their impact.” Today, Emily and her team, announced their seed round funding of $1.85MM to further scale their mission. The goal by 2025 is to move $100MM+ from giving circles on the platform to nonprofits. As part of their mission, Grapevine, is disrupting the traditional philanthropic model and allowing diverse, smaller donors to pool their resources and amplify their impact. It’s super easy to either join an existing giving circle on the Grapevine platform or create one. You can create a giving circle based on a variety of factors and common interests and Grapevine provides you and your giving circle with the tools to recruit members to the giving circle, manage it, as well as recruiting nonprofits to nominate for the giving circle to donate money raised either once or recurring. I asked Emily during our conversation to break down or simplify the impact a giving circle can have beyond the dollars and cents. “Like if we talk about the model that I shared earlier, 100 people each pitch in $100, now you’re giving a $10,000 check. I mean, your $100 has now been turned into $10,000, right? And you still get to be part of deciding where that money goes. And so in that way, there’s a 100x multiplier on the impact you migh be able to have with that $100. And we also know through this model is that through this community based way of givign, you hear about organizations from other pepole who have their own experience with them and can surface what we see in the research is often much smaller, more local, more diverse organizations where your money goes further that typically have a harder time tapping into the more established fund.” — Emily Rasmussen, CEO & Founder, Grapevine It’ll be fascinating to watch Grapevine’s impact unfold and how it further democratizes charitable and nonprofit giving. What is super interesting for the folks focused on CSR (corporate social responsibility) is Grapevine’s new offering, Grapevine for Companies. According to today’s press release, “The goal is to create community and connections, while doing good with your company that can reverberate out through the community.” Watch our entire conversation on YouTube Find a Grapevine (Giving Circle) to Join This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit worthyforthirty.substack.com