Young people have been at the forefront of every significant social change movement for the past 150 years, from workers’ rights to the Arab Spring. Trailblazers like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg have demonstrated how powerful youth-led change can be. Still, they represent only a sliver of the millions of talented, visionary young people across the globe who simply lack the resources to turn their ideas into action. This lack of access to small start-up grants for young social innovators is a systemic issue.
At the same time, Gen Z controls over $3 trillion in annual spending, and they are a completely different kind of consumer. 84% of teens screen products based on social impact before they buy, and 62% want brands to have social change initiatives they can participate in.
And this is why RIVET was created. It’s aligning existing value chains – including brand and consumer power – to rally resources behind young changemakers. RIVET addresses this crucial market gap between consumers and changemakers. Young people trigger corporate donations when they shop with a RIVET brand partner. RIVET turns those funds into micro-grants placed directly into the hands of young innovators through a network of vetted NGO partners.
RIVET’s CEO, Eric Dawson, and Chief Marketing & Growth Officer, Christina Rose, explained how this non-profit venture enables young people to fund their generation’s social impact ideas through everyday purchases.
“We act as a connector, leveraging the existing infrastructure of brands and NGOs to create a flywheel of sustainable funding and scalable impact. Think of us as a mash-up between Bono’s (RED) campaign and a microfinance platform like Kiva. We bring together two time-tested models – cause-related marketing and micro-finance – in partnership with a generation that is hungry to act and behind a unique and resonant brand message,” Eric Dawson shared.
Just as micro-finance revolutionized access to start-up capital for the world’s most needy, this “micro-philanthropy” model will drive upwards of half a billion dollars into a million new youth-led social innovations over the next decade, created by the most diverse group of young leaders ever.
Since its inception, RIVET has been co-designed and co-led by young people who sit in leadership, strategic, and advisory roles both internally and externally. When discussing the long-term potential further, Christina Rose added, “By creating a trusted brand with, by, and for young people, we ignite Gen Z’s purchasing power to fuel their collective will to change the world. This youth-to-youth model is infinitely scalable, turnkey for brand partners, and financially self-sustaining. It’s also deeply empowering. Whether you are a young consumer shopping your values or a young changemaker improving your community, everyone gets to be a powerful agent for change in the RIVET model.”
Prominent brands have joined RIVET as youth allies. Last year RIVET launched a successful pilot partnership with Funko around three Pops! with Purpose collectibles that sold across e-commerce and retail channels. Each figurine was inspired by the story of a RIVET changemaker and featured popular characters, including Super Woman, Spock, and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Funko will return with a new changemaker-inspired Pops! with Purpose this year, launching in November. Also joining RIVET in youth allyship is a group of founding brand partners including eos, Fossil Group, and Yoti. Between now and the year’s end, RIVET will announce new partnerships exclusively to its online communities and direct shoppers to real-time retail and product opportunities where their purchases help support their generation’s social impact goals.
We picked up on the scope of impact that RIVET has created. To date, RIVET has funded more than 1,000 youth-led projects in 66 countries worldwide, tackling everything from clean drinking water in Egypt to job creation in rural Colombia. Those projects had an average of five youth leaders for a total of 5,000 youth participants and served an estimated 1,048,230 people in their communities with direct services to improve lives. “We expect to award 10,000 grants in 2024; assuming a similar trajectory, this will mean 50,000 youth leaders directly supported and just over 10 million lives impacted by the youth-led projects. This is powerful, scalable impact,” Dawson added.
Remarkably, nearly three-quarters of the young people leading these projects have lived experience with the issue they are trying to solve. Among these young people is Mariana, who founded Rede Autoestima-se to provide free mental health support to marginalized communities in her home country of Brazil after finding a severe lack of affordable psychological resources in her community. Or Walter, who watched the girls in his community in rural Uganda leave school and end their education as soon as they started menstruating. His own sister was married and had four children while she was still a teenager. Walter used his RIVET grant to purchase sewing machines that allow young men and women in the community to produce reusable menstrual pads, allowing girls to stay in school longer and delay marriage and childbearing.
Plans for the future involve potential partnerships with streaming and gaming platforms and payment systems to empower young consumers further to support impactful causes with their transactions. Rose conveyed, “Brand partners are co-identified by our community of youth advisors, ambassadors, and supporters based on the brands they would like to see offering more purchase options that support young people.“ Key criteria include alignment with RIVET’s mission, relevance to young people, and a deep commitment to transparency.
“Our youth community is excited about streaming platforms like Spotify and gaming brands including Epic, Blizzard, Nintendo and EA. Also of special interest are payment platforms that allow young people to turn any transaction into a RIVET purchase and act as a vehicle for recurring donations with each use,,“ she added.
As the young people of the world use their moral imagination to tackle the problems they see, it is heartening to know that platforms like Rivet have their back – and are helping Gen-Z put their money where their mission is.
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