Building a Platform to Discover Charities with Stephen Johnson

[00:00:00] Sean Pritzkau: All right. Hey, and welcome to episode 20 ofWe Can Do This. That's right. Two zero. This is the 20th episode of the podcast, and I can't believe we've hit 20 so far. This has been a real joy to host this podcast and we're just getting started. This week, I'm excited to talk to Stephen Johnson. Stephen is the founder of Chive, a platform to discover charities and ways to give in New Zealand.

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[00:00:37] Sean Pritzkau: So on this episode, we talk about what motivated him to start. How he co-founded this enterprise with his wife and what it's like to run an organization together. And we talk about the stack of tools that has enabled him to build out this platform, utilizing no-code tools. So we have a really great time talking.

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[00:01:00] Sean Pritzkau: So let's jump into this conversation with Stephen Johnson.

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[00:01:18] Sean Pritzkau: Hey, welcome to the podcast today. I'm here with Stephen Johnson. Stephen is the founder of Chive, a platform to find charities in New Zealand, built entirely on no-code. Stephen is a no-code builder, interested in exploring how these tools can be used for philanthropy and social impact. Prior to Chive, Stephen worked international development for Oxfam and the British council based in the UK.

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[00:01:43] Sean Pritzkau: Stephen, welcome to the podcast. 

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[00:01:46] Stephen Johnson: I show him thanks for having us and grateful for the community. You bring it together with this poem. 

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[00:01:51] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. I'm excited to talk with you. I discovered you on the internet. Um, I believe originally in the video with Connor Finlayson, who's a good friend of yours and I know he's involved with.

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[00:02:03] Sean Pritzkau: And heard about what you're doing so that you were building a no-code tools and visual development platforms and was really excited to see what. Doing it. So I'm excited. You're here. Yeah. Let's jump right in. I'm really curious to hear, like prior to launching Chive, what were you up to? I know you are connected right in New Zealand, but I believe you're pretty close to me right in New 

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[00:02:27] Stephen Johnson: York city.

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[00:02:28] Stephen Johnson: Yeah. So I'm actually currently based in Brooklyn. So you might get. Um, sirens and background noise. Oh yeah. Prior to that. Yeah, we, we only, my wife and I are less, we only recently moved here two months ago. So prior to I was based in the UK, as he said, I was working in international development, I study politics.

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[00:02:48] Stephen Johnson: So all my work has been in or at least past now I've thought, how can I do the most good with the time I have through my work? And so that took me into, yeah. Working for Oxfam. I wrote proposals for them and tap them when funding. With the British council. I worked with social enterprises all across the world and that took me some great places and actually met my wife through that work as well.

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[00:03:08] Stephen Johnson: So yeah, that was my background before going into child, but I had no experience of no code. I've worked with social entrepreneurs and impactful businesses, but never seen these tools in action in that space. 

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[00:03:22] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. What was it that originally kind of turned you on to Norco? 

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[00:03:25] Stephen Johnson: Yeah. When we were first ideated child, I think an important value for us was that we were able to bootstrap it.

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[00:03:32] Stephen Johnson: We knew the dynamic and especially my background in funding, sometimes that can be dynamics between funders and creators. And we wanted to have full ownership for our project to be able to steer that direction. And so, yeah, bootstrapping affords you that, but with that, you need an option that's affordable and manageable over the longterm.

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[00:03:51] Stephen Johnson: And so. Yeah, no code really stood out as an option where we could build and test and MVP and have full ownership over the tool and understanding of how to build new features, update content, and inform our users and manage our whole system without having to bring on a team of developers, um, and keep it relatively low costs.

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[00:04:13] Stephen Johnson: So yeah, I think that's what appealed at the start. Yeah. Oh, 

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[00:04:16] Sean Pritzkau: that's awesome. And I think there's probably a lot more people like you who are. You know, when they're starting something, they want to retain this ownership. And also if they're aspiring to do something that is conscious, ethical, really being able to make those decisions without the outside capital or investment is really desirable for people.

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[00:04:34] Sean Pritzkau: So that's really cool to hear. That's kind of how you stumbled into it is how do I make this my own? So tell us about how you and your wife Alice, correct? Yep. How did this idea of Chive originally? Stirrup between the two. 

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[00:04:48] Stephen Johnson: Yeah. I have to give full credit to Alice because she initiated this idea and she's a great initiative.

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[00:04:54] Stephen Johnson: Maybe three or four years ago, Alice said, seen that they're in, in New Zealand visiting that's one of the highest apportion of charities to people in any country in the world. So it's 5 million people and there's just under 28,000 charities for those people. And a lot of them are very difficult to find online.

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[00:05:11] Stephen Johnson: A lot of them have limited digital presence and that's due to a variety of reasons from lack of funding to skills that are available. Yeah, there's a whole pool of reasons why it's difficult to increase your presence. And when you've got 28,000 charities competing for space, Yeah, it's challenging for them to be found online.

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[00:05:31] Stephen Johnson: And at the moment digital giving is increasing, but the diversity, those charities is decreasing. So if you type in environmental charity or poverty, charity, or any of the things that you care about, you will often find the same results coming up. If you use Google, for example. So that was the opportunity.

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[00:05:48] Stephen Johnson: And yeah, Alice initiated this with a project called the good portal and it basically took an open API. All the charities and New Zealand and converted it to make it a bit more accessible. And that was a great start. And yeah, then COVID a few years later. Unfortunately, the COVID happened. We were both in the UK and I decided to pack up my life and move to New Zealand with Alice.

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[00:06:13] Stephen Johnson: That you cannot quite a pretty crazy experience at the time. And we both found ourselves in our Toronto New Zealand and Alex said, I've got this project. I'd quit my job. So I had some time and she was like, I'd like you to have a look at it and see where we can go with it. And that's how it started to develop from just a simple landing page to a more advanced.

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[00:06:34] Stephen Johnson: Product and experience. So, yeah, that was the, that was the initiator. And I think just another thing is that there's, there's two sides of the. Platform right. That on the one hand we have charities looking to boost their presence. But I think more importantly now it's thrust more about empowering people to feel ownership over their giving strategy and how they want to create an impact in the world.

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[00:06:57] Stephen Johnson: You know, we live in a time. We have a climate crisis going on, and there are many different areas of life where social justice is needed and people want to support. And that's amazing. And it can be confusing to know where it's best to support or where best to put your money or time or resources or skills.

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[00:07:15] Stephen Johnson: So, yeah, I think Chive is existing to empower people, to feel responsible and engaged with the social change they want. And that's a really long-term thing, so that Spock's still 

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[00:07:28] there. 

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[00:07:28] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah, that's so good. I, I love that you're helping empower people to make good decisions when it comes to their own generosity.

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[00:07:38] Sean Pritzkau: Because a lot of times when we try to be generous or we try to help, sometimes we either aren't helping in the best way, or we might be doing some harm, right? So this education piece and helping really guide people is really, really. Tell us a little bit, as you were building out this idea, and you had made this decision that we're going to bootstrap this platform, what were some of the functionality or features that we were looking to implement?

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[00:08:04] Sean Pritzkau: And could you share with us a little bit about maybe the stack of tools that allowed you to. Build the platform. 

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[00:08:10] Stephen Johnson: Yeah, sure. I think what was important for right, as you said, you know, Khan is a good friend of ours and he helped us build it in the star. And we went in wanting every feature under the sun, you know, and I think a lot of people, you start platforms, MVPs want that.

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[00:08:24] Stephen Johnson: And then hindsight. What we ended up with was actually perfect. Cause it had half of what we needed or wanted. Sorry. So I think what was important for us is that we had a searchable platform so that you could go in and search and that we had a way in which we could profile charities that didn't discriminate between big or small charities so that you would have a standardized profile.

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[00:08:48] Stephen Johnson: And that that profile would give each charity. A means of accessibility. So whether it's to be able to donate to them, whether it's to be able to follow them on Twitter or Facebook or the way in which they tell that story. So that was really important. And with that, the CMS management comes in to be crucial to that.

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[00:09:06] Stephen Johnson: One of the things that we were concerned with was there's different charity types and the language that we use can create the charity in a certain way. Right? So one person's education, charity is another person's youth charity. So we wanted a way in which charities. Self identify what types of charity they are so that they could show up for people.

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[00:09:26] Stephen Johnson: Who've got different interpretations of who that charity is. So yeah, I CMS that somewhat dynamic. And then on that as a backend, an easy way to manage and create. So that was the kind of, and the last thing was a membership portal so that any charity can access child for free and we weren't running paid plans and were they planning to face those out over the next period?

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[00:09:50] Stephen Johnson: But at the time it was important that we had a membership stack as well. So we built the platform. With air table was the backend. And then we use Zapier and Zapier as people call it here and parabola as the kind of threat and we have flow is the front end. And then member stack is our memberships and for the.

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[00:10:13] Stephen Johnson: I think the two on boats always rave about his jet boost for such filtering. So, yeah. And that's our stack. Awesome. I'll, 

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[00:10:22] Sean Pritzkau: I'll include some of those links in the show notes for if anyone's curious about some of those tools that as you're talking about the, what you're able to deal with them. Very cool.

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[00:10:30] Sean Pritzkau: You're kind of sharing this stack of tools. Many of which are really fundamental to this kind of two-sided marketplace idea that you've really built out where, um, you're serving your audience, but you also have. The organizations that are featured in your platform, able to also access the platform.

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[00:10:47] Sean Pritzkau: Really, really cool. Thanks for sharing that with us, as you've built out this platform, and you can go into the platform if you want, or just the general running the startup that you're running with your wife, what were some of the challenges that you faced? You know, since you. Started working on this. And as you've been building it out, I 

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[00:11:05] Stephen Johnson: would say the first challenge.

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[00:11:07] Stephen Johnson: I think now it's a bit different, but at the start it's it's how do you get the ball rolling? You can build a, I think the advantage of these no-code tools that you can build awesome swift products in a very short period of time, but they don't actually like sell themselves and enroll people. And yeah, it's great.

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[00:11:24] Stephen Johnson: As they are designed, they will not get on calls for you. They won't sell products to, and you can't have all these amazing workflows. Actually it's easier to just have a basic MVP and listen to what for us, what the charities are most struggling with and how we can support them. And at first, that was quite intimidating.

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[00:11:42] Stephen Johnson: I think the idea of jumping on calls with charity CEOs and trying to sell them something and especially, you know, within the context of the space. You feel like a imposter syndrome and B these are charities. I don't know why they should be giving me money, you know, when they could be putting it towards the impacts their cause, but that's just the story.

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[00:12:03] Stephen Johnson: And actually we do support them in an incredible way, and they're all wonderful people. And so that was a real challenge. And we did a lot of work on our mindset to get over that. And I found that the biggest shift for us in terms of a platform that, you know, in the last year I've spoken to. Maybe 150 or so charities CEOs, and asking them all the same things, you know, you know, what's your story, what's your biggest problem.

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[00:12:28] Stephen Johnson: And how can we support you to solve that big problem? And that's been a game changer. So that's been a challenge. I think I should also add that the no-code tools themselves best that's somewhat understandable, but I feel there is a steep learning curve in some respect, if you want those more advanced features.

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[00:12:43] Stephen Johnson: And if you want to have full ownership of it, there is a need for, and that's why I'm really grateful for Connor because he helped us kind of. They would it teach us and then now we just kind of run with our own thing. And so I think there's a really interesting space there in terms of mentorship and learning of these tools to create social change.

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[00:13:01] Stephen Johnson: So we're a year in now and I feel it's probably the only point weapon, like fully comfortable. It was, you know, sometimes I've been in parabola like, oh, if I touch this part and I'm going to. So that's been another big learning it's just, and with that being patient, just being patient with it. So that's been another 

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[00:13:21] Sean Pritzkau: big learning.

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[00:13:22] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. That's super interesting. Because as a founder who has their hands really involved in the product, some great advantages of that in some ways, right? Because like you said, you're able to take control of what you're building and. Having your hands in the toolset, you really understand what's possible.

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[00:13:42] Sean Pritzkau: What's not possible. Right. And there's a lot of things that come along with that. But yeah, I mean, I imagine if you were not building the product yourself and you had a team of people out doing it, then of course you'd have time. Right. You have more time to spend in front of peoples. I definitely see how it sounds like you you're managing, Hey, w we have to build this thing, grow it, make sure it's running every day.

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[00:14:08] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. As well as how do I jump on the phone this year with 150 charity CEOs and really get to understand them? So there's a huge challenge, but also I see a lot of benefits to that too. 

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[00:14:18] Stephen Johnson: Yeah. And I'll just add to that, that you've got to be a Swiss army knife, right. And that actually, I think it's easy to think that you can grow your platform by just building more features and that's not true.

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[00:14:30] Stephen Johnson: You can build your platform by enrolling more people and understanding their problems. Yeah. That's a challenge that I still deal with. Like sometimes they go, yeah. If we just had this nice automation then platform and it's just not true. Yeah. 

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[00:14:43] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. I love it. The idea that if you build it, they will come.

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[00:14:47] Sean Pritzkau: They're not, in some ways. I see it all the time where people. You know, and that's a lot of time and energy into building something and then are discouraged when they don't see it immediately take off. And just because you have something really beautiful and functional doesn't mean people are going to come in droves and start flocking to it.

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[00:15:06] Sean Pritzkau: It doesn't really require. Well, the, of that, Swhack where he worked to, to get in front of people and then you get to understand what their problems are and make sure these things are really aligned. Right? I love it. So you've shared that, you know, prior to building out the platform, you were kind of in this ideation stage with your wife, deciding on what is this idea?

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[00:15:25] Sean Pritzkau: What is this platform that we're going to build? How are we going to build out really our business structure with. For listeners who may be in that stage right now, what are some of the kinds of things that they should be doing or thinking about as it pertains to building out their platform? 

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[00:15:42] Stephen Johnson: Yeah, this is, this is key, I think.

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[00:15:45] Stephen Johnson: And we actually, I almost forget it, but we spent three months ideated on this and by dating, I mean, doing research to understand what the problem is and how we can solve it. And. We used research methods. Again, I've done a background research, but my understanding was if I just asked the people who were trying to serve what it is that they're struggling with or need, and we find a commonality, then we can build a solution.

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[00:16:11] Stephen Johnson: So the next one we do. Yeah. So what we did, we actually, we ran a survey for. And we said, we'd donate a dollar or a couple of dollars to a charity if they did the survey. And when you got 125 people respond to that, which was awesome. And that gave us great feedback. And the clear thing was, was the people were very generous and that they aren't sure where to put their money best.

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[00:16:38] Stephen Johnson: And so that was clear for us. And then the other thing we did was we spoke to 26. And we just asked them we're, you know, again, not telling them what it is that we're building, but asking their problems first and getting a sense of what's on top of their minds and thinking, how is it that we can build something that response to that.

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[00:16:54] Stephen Johnson: And I think there's a temptation there when your ideal. To tell people about your solution before hearing what people's problems are and how you addressing those. Yeah. So yeah, we spent a lot of time doing that and we actually lacked on a fair bit of talking my hands because we were in lockdown. And so like I wrote a report as well, covering primary and secondary research in the sector that we were working in in terms of fundraising trends, the future fundraising, what people were saying about digital.

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[00:17:23] Stephen Johnson: And yeah, I've got like a fully fledged report. It's just like in Google drive. I thought maybe I should put it somewhere, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that spend your time working out what the problem is, you know, doing quantitative research, qualitative research interviews, that's like where the kind of gold dust is.

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[00:17:43] Stephen Johnson: And actually when we talked about, you know, the, the decision to bootstrap and invest in this ourselves, We were only able to do that because we have that three months of research and clear, solid understanding of what it is that we're working on. When you don't have that, you come from like a scarcity mindset where you just think that, oh, if I get somebody to give me hundreds of thousands of dollars, then I can go away and work this out.

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[00:18:08] Stephen Johnson: And that may be true. In some cases, I appreciate the way in which we did it and that there are things that we could have done better, but yeah, that's my advice. Just take the time to do your research before rushing in and building something. And I still buy with that stay. I still want to just build stuff now.

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[00:18:26] Stephen Johnson: I know the tools even more. I'm just like, it's just built another thing. Yeah. 

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[00:18:29] Sean Pritzkau: Dude research. Yeah. That's so important. I know probably all of us listening to that. It sounds like a really good in theory. Is there any tips maybe you can give us to when you were in that research phase? Like how did you find the a hundred people that were willing to talk to you?

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[00:18:44] Sean Pritzkau: Or however, I think you said 20 nonprofit leaders and you had a certain amount of people of your primary audience. Where did you kind of find those people and know what to ask 

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[00:18:54] Stephen Johnson: them? I think for the questionnaire, we were quite lucky because. Alex's I mean, new, Zealand's got like two degrees of separation, right?

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[00:19:02] Stephen Johnson: It's 5 million people. So you just ask a friend of a friend and then they've set it out. So it might be a bit of a different context for you. Global listeners. I think one tool I found really useful for reaching out the emails, this tool called hunter. And you can basically just go on somebody's website and find their email.

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[00:19:17] Stephen Johnson: Okay. What we did was we just set up an email flow of being like, hi, we've got this idea for this platform. We would love to chat to you as a leader in the space book, a call here. And yeah, again, huge failed. Like rejection comes up. You don't know what they're going to say. You aren't going to fit. You're stupid.

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[00:19:37] Stephen Johnson: And people put coals, just click the link. And then next thing you know, you're speaking to them. And I think my advice in that as well, I have set questions. You want to ask, have set things that you're wanting to find out, figure it out what it is you want to find out and then yeah. Just start emailing people.

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[00:19:55] Stephen Johnson: And there's a correlation between how many people you email and how many people speak to you. So, yeah. And I guess that, you know, it sounds, I understand why that. Yeah, I was definitely that and like that it was frightening. I really don't know how to go about staking these people. Yeah. I bet 

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[00:20:11] Sean Pritzkau: that's really helpful, especially I know on the outset, right.

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[00:20:14] Sean Pritzkau: You probably have this level of imposter syndrome too, where you're like, who is going to jump on the phone with me, things, questions that they actually care about. And I think to maybe our surprise people like talking about themselves and they like trying to come up with ideas that might be solutions to those problems.

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[00:20:32] Sean Pritzkau: I like you said, there's a correlation between the amount of people you reach out and the amount of people that will respond. And you'll probably be surprised right. With the amount that do awesome. Very, very helpful. Personally, I'm curious. I think probably a lot of the people in the audience and people who are listening are going to be curious about too, is you're building out Chive with your wife.

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[00:20:50] Sean Pritzkau: Right. And so I imagine that. There's probably some challenges and advantages to that as well too. I, I know personally, you know, I've thought about working on projects with just friends and close family. And when you're working with family, there's a dynamic, right. And we're only working with friends that you have a strong, a personal connection to prior to getting started.

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[00:21:11] Sean Pritzkau: And then a working relationship might shake that up a little bit. I'm curious, how has that experience been for you and Alice and, uh, is there any thing that you would. I don't know any suggestions for when looking for maybe a co-founder or someone to work on a team or project with what are some things to think about?

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[00:21:31] Stephen Johnson: Yeah. It's a great question. And yeah, it's my watch. She's epic. It's obviously not all sunshine and roses. Yeah. I think one thing we found really important is being very honest with how we're feeling about business and how it feeling. I think we put a big emphasis on. Bang completely vulnerable with each other and saying, this is how we're feeling about business, or this is my experience with, so yeah, we do like emotional check-ins like at the start and the day before we talk about or work on Chive and actually the times that we've struggled the most on charges is when we haven't spoke to each other about how it's making us feel.

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[00:22:10] Stephen Johnson: And then what happens is it plays out in the rest of your day. So like when you're cooking the dinner or loading the dishwasher, you know, it plays out into those other areas. I think that's a value in creating space for talking about how you feel about what you're working on. And I do see that in a lot of, a lot of business places, and especially startups that vulnerability isn't valued or created or modeled in the design process.

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[00:22:38] Stephen Johnson: It's just about how are we going to deliver solutions? Who's going to do it when it's Postlight, how are the people who are actually working on this feeling? And so, yeah, my advice is. Well, yeah, my experience is that doing that with somebody that you love that is paramount before anything else? I think the second thing of that as well is that Alice and I completely, and this has taken some mindset work as the Alice and I completely detached from child, but we don't put our value on how a child does and we're not, we don't see it as our, like, life's work that this will be the thing that like makes us, you know, like the next sucker Berg or Larry, Pedro, whoever it is, you know?

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[00:23:15] Stephen Johnson: Something that we're contributing and that if somebody else took this over, it would be just as wonderful. And I think when you work in a family or relationship, your identity can come quite tightly bound to it, especially if it's like a simple example, be a family restaurant, and it's got your family's name on it, or you started something like that.

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[00:23:34] Stephen Johnson: That's when it does become your identity. Yeah. So yeah, having that separation, I think if you're working. In a relationship I have found really, really empowering. Um, so yeah, that's my advice. Probably the last thing is that you need to know what you're not great at. You know, you've got to work in that's again, when you'll you found something, I think this might be specific or even more nuanced in the no-code space that you can actually do things like.

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[00:24:02] Stephen Johnson: And that has this as volunteers and it's, um, disadvantages. And sometimes I'm like, yeah, I'll do the marketing. I'll do the social media features. I'll prospect clients, yada yada. And when you're in a relationship, I'm running a business with someone that doesn't work, you need to have open and honest communication about who's good at what and how are you going to do it?

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[00:24:22] Stephen Johnson: And if you're not enrolling your partner or your family in what they're good at and how they can contribute, it will come to the detriment of your business. So. Yeah. That's, that's another Keela and enough hype from running this bananas. 

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[00:24:36] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. Awesome. Very, very cool. Yeah. It sounds like when you have that open dialogue, healthy conversation, really, including each other in every aspect as appropriate, it sounds like there's a lot, a lot of power in that.

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[00:24:49] Sean Pritzkau: Well, cool. Well, this has been really fun. I really appreciate you joining me on the podcast and joining us for the conversation. Is there anything else you want to share before we close up? And if people want to find you learn about Chive connect with you and Alice, what can 

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[00:25:03] Stephen Johnson: they do that? Yeah, sure. I think, I think one thing I'm interested in building at the moment is this space of no code.

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[00:25:11] Stephen Johnson: Socially impactful businesses and entrepreneurship. So yeah, on keen to build and develop that. And that's something I'm curious about. And if anybody's working on a project of that mind where their business has got. That's social orientation and they're ideating then. Yeah. Do you reach out to me? I'm on Twitter, Stephen, George.

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[00:25:29] Stephen Johnson: Jay's my app. I was too late to getting a decent tag. So that's where you'll find me, or just jump onto Chive charities and set all of our contact details there. And we're always, always aware, always happy to chat to people. The changes are making and how we can support them. And yeah, if you don't want to talk to me and talk to Alice, do talk to her as well.

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[00:25:49] Stephen Johnson: She's equally probably more interested. Yeah. Yeah. Do you reach out to her? That's fine. You can find her on child as well. Just go on about section. 

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[00:25:58] Sean Pritzkau: Awesome. I love it. I'll definitely include all the links that you just shared so people can tell me. Uh, follow you, look at Chive, especially if you're in the sphere of, especially as two-sided marketplace concept or building out a web platform with no code tools.

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[00:26:14] Sean Pritzkau: Just definitely check out times websites be really beautiful. Website would definitely be inspiring if you're looking at need some inspiration. So. Awesome. Well, Hey, thank you so much for joining us for the podcast.

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[00:26:41] Sean Pritzkau: All right. Great episode with Stephen. That was a really fun time talking with him. And I just love kind of the heart. He has to connect people with organizations that matter, and not only to connect them in a way to give and support, but I love that he's really conscious that there are ways that we can help and there's ways that we can feel like we're helping.

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[00:27:07] Sean Pritzkau: That isn't being very helpful. So I'm just really grateful for the work that he's doing. And I love talking about the tool set. That's really enabled him to build out Chive built out this platform, utilizing no-code tools. So thanks for listening to this episode. And before you exit out of your podcast app, Really great.

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[00:27:30] Sean Pritzkau: If you would hop on to iTunes or apple podcasts and leave a review, I'd love to hear about, I'd love to hear who out there is listening and finding value in these episodes because we want to continue creating more value and growing this podcast. So definitely, definitely encourage you to leave a review and.

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[00:27:49] Sean Pritzkau: Thanks again for listening to this podcast and I will see you. .

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