Sold Out, Sold Out Sold Out
This time last year this is the common message found underneath every product on the Thankyou and Who Gives A Crap websites.
Who Gives A Crap, a Melbourne-based company that sells 100% recycled toilet paper, and Thankyou, who sell bottled water and a range of personal and baby care items, had completely sold out of every single one of their products amid panic buying caused by COVID.
More important than what these two companies sell, however, is what they do. Both have set out to help save the planet in their own unique ways, with their extremely forward-thinking management teams paving the way for a healthier, happier world in the future.
Thankyou commits 100 per cent of their profits to helping put an end to extreme global poverty while Who Gives A Crap makes all their products with environmentally friendly materials and donates half of their profits towards providing toilets, sanitation and clean water to communities that don’t have them.
Before reaching the position of strength and influence they find themselves in today, both businesses initially started out as ideas between friends who shared a common goal of wanting to make the world a better place.
2.3 billion people (roughly 40% of the world’s population) don’t have access to a toilet, while around 289,000 children under the age of five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. This is what drives Who Gives A Crap.
For Thankyou, they want to do something about the fact that one in ten humans (767 million people) currently live in extreme poverty surviving on less than $1.90 a day.
Both companies’ passion to help improve the quality of life for millions of people is clear, and everyday Australians donated generous amounts of money to help the businesses get off the ground.
$50k for Sitting on the Toilet
Despite having plans to raise money for an extremely worthy cause, Who Gives A Crap co-founder Simon Griffiths acknowledged they were selling “the most boring product in the whole world” and didn’t have enough of a following for a successful crowdfunding campaign.
The idea they decided would change this was genius; Griffiths would sit on a toilet and not get off until they’d hit their minimum financial target. 50 hours of sitting on the throne later and Griffiths finally got up, taking with him $50,000 in raised donations and a much-desired cult following.
That was six years ago. Since then, Who Gives A Crap has donated over $2.6 million to five global organisations in countries such as Cambodia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea, all while saving trees, water and energy in the process.
A Petition + Helicopters = Success!
Thankyou’s story of how they came to be is equally as adventurous. Major supermarkets had been turning co-founder Daniel Flynn down for five years, but after releasing a video outlining the company’s plans which soon went viral, people started petitioning to the supermarkets to stock their shelves with Thankyou products.
Two helicopter pilots then donated their time to fly signs above Coles and Woolworths headquarters thanking the retailers for “changing the world (if you say yes).” Before Flynn knew it, both supermarkets agreed and Thankyou products started hitting the shelves.
Thankyou have since given over $6.2 million to fund water access, sanitation and hygiene, funded 19.1 million days’ worth of food aid across 17 countries and empowered over 857,000 people around the world.
“Every decision that we make is ultimately about maximising the impact that we can have by funding life-changing projects around the world,” says Flynn.
While there’s no doubting the incredible success and progress these two companies have achieved in their goal of helping others, they’ve come to learn along the way that saving the world can at times get quite tricky.
“Doing good isn’t always easy,” says Griffiths.
“I think that doing good is the future of the business, but it’s important to note that businesses that do good are held to a higher standard. That’s usually a good thing, but it can also be challenging.
“Who Gives A Crap could be questioned for paying our staff too little, but we could also be questioned for paying our staff too much because it would eat into our donations,” Griffiths explains.
Both Thankyou and Who Gives A Crap restocked their products and were able to deal with the unprecedented rise in demand, one thing’s for sure: no health crises will ever stop their passion and dedication to making the world a better place.
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