Maximizing Impact and Transparency in Charitable Giving With Chase Harmer of Wishes.Inc

Chase Harmer is the Founder of Wishes Inc., a fintech platform aiming to bring unparalleled transparency and impact to every contribution made. He is a seasoned entrepreneur who has built and scaled successful businesses, including his last fintech venture, which was acquired for over $100 million. Chase is now dedicated to disrupting the charitable space by transforming donations into retail credit cards, ensuring donors can see the direct impact of their contributions. His innovative approach to fintech and charitable giving is setting new standards for accountability and efficiency.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:32] Chase Harmer discusses how Wishes.Inc is changing the charitable giving landscape
• [8:24] The challenges of starting a new fintech startup
• [15:38] Chase discusses the importance of creating internal champions for navigating bank bureaucracies
• [18:37] The key lessons from ProfitPay that apply to Wishes.Inc
• [21:28] Why starting conversations with potential buyers early is crucial for acquisition
• [25:27] How proper processes are vital for scaling a startup effectively
• [37:11] The innovative approach Wishes.Inc uses to generate demand and grow a waitlist before launch
• [40:57] How Wishes.Inc elevates the roles of wishers, nonprofits, and donors
• [42:32] The unique rewards system for donors that sets Wishes.Inc apart from other platforms

In this episode…

In the charity world, many people often wonder where their donations go. They donate hoping for impact but are left without clear answers. What if there was a way to track every dollar and be assured you’ve made a real impact?

Successful entrepreneur Chase Harmer faced this very challenge and decided to make a change. He takes us through his journey building ProfitPay, a highly successful fintech business, before selling it and beginning his new venture Wishes.Inc. He shares the struggles and triumphs, emphasizing the importance of transparency in donations and the need for accountability in charitable giving. Chase explains how Wishes Inc. leverages fintech to reward donors while ensuring their contributions make a tangible impact.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Chase Harmer, Founder of Wishes.Inc, about creating a transparent donation platform. Chase explains how Wishes.Inc is changing the charitable giving landscape, the challenges of starting a new fintech platform, the genesis of ProfitPay to its acquisition, and how Wishes.Inc elevates the roles of wishers, nonprofits, and donors.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Chase Harmer Website | LinkedIn
• Wishes.Inc

Special Mention(s):

• GoFundMe

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Chicago Business Series] GiveForward: This story gave everyone goosebumps – with Ethan Austin [Inspiration and Overcome Challenges]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Combining Religion, Business, and Philanthropy with Steve Sarowitz, Founder of Paylocity and Blue Marble Payroll” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “I never doubted myself for one minute in any circumstance. I always believed I could solve that problem.”
• “When you have someone else working there, advocating for you, it’s like having a secret weapon on the inside.”
• “You can’t scale a company of any size and build a massive company without process. Process is literally everything.”
• “Going through the gauntlet once allows you to go through the gauntlet much easier the second time.”
• “Donors want to understand what goes to admin, what goes to impact, and when they don’t understand, donors just don’t want to contribute.”

Action Steps:

1. Develop and utilize innovative fintech solutions to bring transparency to donations: This approach revolutionizes charitable giving by allowing donors to trace the direct impact of their contributions.
2. Form strategic relationships and internal champions within banking institutions to navigate compliance and regulatory landscapes: Having advocates simplifies the complex process of approval and compliance, ensuring business operations run smoothly.
3. Invest time in understanding the technological aspects of your business, even if you’re a non-tech founder: A deeper comprehension of tech enables more effective leadership and accountability within the company.
4. Implement strong, scalable processes within your business early on: Proper processes are essential for supporting rapid growth and ensuring the longevity and profitability of the enterprise.
5. Begin conversations with potential buyers early to pave the way for future acquisitions: Positioning your company as an attractive acquisition target early on opens doors for lucrative exit opportunities.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Chase Harmer of Wishes.inc. Chase, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes. People should check out other podcasts. We were just chatting about the mission and amazing thing Wishes.Inc is doing, which reminds me of an interview I did with Ethan Austin of GiveForward. GiveForward helps people fundraise in, you know, to support a loved one. And I did the interview eight years ago, I think, and so it was just interesting for his journey, also, because this is kind of in the fintech space, Steve Harowitz, founder of Paylocity I had on and Blue Marble Payroll started in a 600 square foot office and went public, I believe.

And it’s a billion dollar company. So it was pretty amazing, the humble beginnings to what he created, and just some other SaaS ones, because I had the co-founder of Zapier on, so that was an interesting one. And the co-founder of Pipedrive on, and when I interviewed them, I think they had 10,000 customers. Now they have, I think, over 100,000 customers. So they’ve grown pretty tremendously, and just amazing journey, ups and downs. So check those out. More on inspiredinsider.com and this episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that?

We do that by helping you run your podcast. And we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, and we do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. Chase, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host and the company, so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I’ve found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you definitely should, if you have questions, go to rise25.com to learn more, or email us at [email protected].

I’m excited to introduce Chase Harmer. He built a $40 million per year business by the time he was 32 and his last fintech was acquired for over $100 million and now he decided to disrupt the charitable space. And basically, you can make an impact. Your dollars can make an impact for every contribution that you make. And that’s what he is set out to actually disrupt. They turn donations into credit cards, retail credit cards for you, and really create a transparency among what you’re donating. So I’m excited to talk today. Chase, thanks for joining me.

Chase Harmer 3:14 

Hey man, thanks for having me. Jeremy, I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Jeremy Weisz 3:18 

Just start off. We’ll talk about ProfitPay, building a team. We’ll talk about acquisition, but let’s just tell people a little bit about Wishes.Inc, and what you do? Yeah.

Chase Harmer 3:32 

Yeah, after I exited my last fintech, I started giving back to charities more often, and what I realized was that I was never able to understand the impact that my dollars were making. And that’s because most charities, they never are able to show you your dollars return on impact dollars to dollar. And most stories, if you look like a GoFundMe, you once you dollars go into the bank account, that black box is never to be heard or seen from again. So, what we wanted to do is create accountability and then also not change user behavior.

I think there’s been platforms in the past that have tried to create transparency, but it was around the blockchain, and blockchain, unfortunately, is not really used in the mainstream, and you can’t go to a safe way and try to make a purchase at the grocery store. So we’ve actually created it ledgers on both sides of the transaction by becoming a card issuer. So we have a relationship with MasterCard, and we can issue cards directly to the Google and Apple Wallet. So anybody that has a phone that is creating a story on Wishes can essentially receive these virtual MasterCards and make purchases inside of our store.

And the store is connected to 1000s of the big box retailers that you see out in the world today, so anywhere that you could possibly buy anything, groceries, rideshare, hotels, airfare, anything that you need, and you’re asking for money for health related things, hospital bills, things like this, you can actually receive those funds and start instantly purchase what you need, and is fully transparent to the donors. And donors can earn rewards, tax deductibility and transparency and all the purchases that are made in real time. And so you kind of solved a lot of the problems that exist in charitable giving. And we’re stoked to be able to launch it this March.

Jeremy Weisz 3:32 

So we’ll walk through a scenario Chase. But I want to know why create this. Because I could see you go, great. There’s not transparency. I’m just gonna pick the charities that are transparent, and you decide to build a whole company around it, right? So, like, I’m just gonna go with charity water. I can see where things are going, but you decide to build this thing. So why?

Chase Harmer 5:54 

Well, I think that’s a one off and random example, because the like, 99.9% of charities can’t actually do that. So if you think about, well, there was a survey done by candid this last year in 2023 and 81% of donors surveyed said that they’d give more if they understood what happened to the money. And unfortunately, every single charity out there, 76% of the charities that were interviewed realized that showing impact was the most important thing that they had to do as a charity. However, less than 26% of those 76 that were surveyed had a way to do that. It’s almost impossible to show dollar for dollar impact when everything goes into a big bucket, and in that bucket is making decisions on where that money is being spent.

So when Jeremy puts in $20 they can’t show you where that $20 went. It’s impossible. It goes into a big pot that they’re stewing, and then they’re allocating dollars as they see fit. So they can’t actually show you what happened to their money. And if they have any way to do that is happening, they’re sending some sort of report 12 to 18 months later. So, but in the meantime, they’re calling Jeremy back and they’re saying, hey, Jeremy, thanks for your contribution. We really need to help on this other thing, right? But they can’t actually show you what happened to the money in the meantime, so it’s a much different conversation with the charity. Can go back and say, hey, Jeremy, we appreciate your contribution. Look at the impact that you made. By the way, we have this other thing that’s happening. We’d love you to be participating in this as well.

So I think it helps charities raise money, but it helps donors to fully understand where their dollars are going. And every donor wants to understand what goes to admin, what goes to impact, and when they don’t understand donors just don’t want to contribute. Every grocery store is asking you for $1 to help the kids, but what kids are actually being helped? Nobody actually knows.

Jeremy Weisz 7:49 

What stems you to create this because you could have done anything. You sold the company, right? Was there a moment in time, you’re like, I need to because, again, we’ll talk about what you had to do to get to this point, which is, sounds super stressful, just from a compliance perspective, like I would have been like, I give up. Like I would have learned about the compliance, like, forget it. So why did you tackle this in the first place?

Chase Harmer 8:17 

Yeah, because it’s unfixable.

Jeremy Weisz 8:20 

I’m trying to get in the crazy mind of an entrepreneur here.

Chase Harmer 8:24 

Well, first of all, to be a founder, there’s got to be some screws loose. And I think we endure the pain that naturally comes when trying to tackle a problem that nobody’s been able to solve for 100 years. There’s dinosaurs that exist inside of the charitable giving space, dinosaurs companies that buy up other companies that are trying to innovate, but they’re so old that that innovative infrastructure doesn’t actually get adapted the same way to the market. So I feel like the only space that really hasn’t seen any innovation since 2010 is the charitable giving space. It’s been a black box forever, and nobody’s really been able to crack the code the 2000 and when I say it since 2010 the only innovation that happened was really when GoFundMe came to market.

However, GoFundMe had problems then that still exist today. They’re the same problems that exist today. So they haven’t really solve the main problems that they had in the market at that point, which is really, the stories broad, because when sick goes into the black box of the bank account, you lose all side of what happens to the money. And unfortunately, people are good manipulators. There are legit stories on there that really need the help, like, Hey, Tommy broke his arm. But, you know, maybe Nancy didn’t really have cancer. And it’s difficult to prove that sometimes. And so when the money comes in and they raise $600,000 for this cancer that really never was cancer.

They find out a year later, that Nancy just went to the Bahamas, and took everyone for a ride. That’s the problem that I was trying to fix. I mean, I had been spending the last 11 years before this being the whole economy of a business supply chain when a consumer purchases, then actually utilizing that purchase to create a card to pay the supplier. And I was like, Well, I’ve been doing this for 11 years. I was innovating this technology since 2013 I’m like, What’s the difference between what we were doing in the business supply chain, then a donation chain, nothing. It’s the same thing. So we actually just created the whole economy of a donation cycle. Hey, donations in create a card, push it to the what’s the supplier? The supplier is the person telling the story.

And once that wisher gets that card, they have to spend money and everybody wants to understand. I want to understand what that is. And I thought it was pretty simple for me to fix, obviously, not super simple. Very complicated. Yeah, exactly. I was like, well, this will be easy. Part of the issue was, there was obviously, when you, if you watch the news, the Sam bankman thing, all these banks were involved in a lot of this crypto, blockchain technology. So the compliance, back when I did this, initially, back in 2013 14, the compliance was a lot easier, because there hadn’t been these huge problems that the sand bankments of the world created, right? But because there was no compliance that was done in big companies like that, and there was a huge downfall of all these money, these investors, that came down on the compliance for new people that tried to set up a platform.

It’s like you set up a platform now, and you have a new, innovative model, it’s a rigorous amount of work and compliance effort that you have to go to get it done. And that was pretty much pulling my hair out. And I think this is why my receding hairline, say gone. It’s gone back.

Jeremy Weisz 12:06 

I could see Chase now with, you started ProfitPay, and so you saw that you could apply this model in a different industry that had a real need to it, that maybe was antiquated, and so kind of the roots, and we’ll talk about ProfitPay. But now I can see, like, innovation often comes from outside industry. So you were taking something and just applying it to the charitable space. Talk a little bit about what it’s taken to get to this point. I know from a compliance standpoint, from a sponsor, from a conversation standpoint, I think this is instructive for any business really, leading up to it, what were some of the things you had to go through and put in place?

Chase Harmer 12:53 

Well, so from my last experience of building a fintech, what I realized was, hey, listen, I didn’t want to spend a bazillion dollars trying to build this what I wanted to do. And I had contractor engineers at my last company, I had a lot of them. We had, like, 100 at some point. But the problem with contractors is the job’s never done, because when the job’s done, the payments stop, right? So, there’s always something that needs to happen or it needs to continue, so they don’t have a vested interest in you actually getting done with any project. And so I really learned that hard lesson the last time. And so when I started this company, I didn’t have an engineering team to start with, because we were starting from scratch. So what I did was I created a partnership with an engineering team, and we essentially had a vested interest in the outcome.

So they have 20% ownership in the company. We still pay them a stipend on a monthly basis for the team. But we got very, very elite engineers, senior engineers that had already the whole infrastructure. Because when you’re building a product, there’s a lot of things that you need. You need front end engineers, you need back end engineers. You need DevOps engineers. You need UI guys. You need designers, but finding each one of those guys and then having them work together, and then having that all understandable code, and that actually is a difficult process, and it’s really hard to hire all these people individually. So I got an ingrained team. We made an agreement, and we started a partnership, and that partnership allowed me to build the product much faster. And they have a vested interest in the outcome, just like I do. So, the vested outcome is that one day we acquired or we’ll sell go IPO, something like this. And we can’t do that unless the job is done and the products and market and people are actively using it, doing transactions.

And so that was number one. Then number two, I had already gone through compliance before. So. I had a head start. I knew exactly what they wanted to see. I knew exactly how to go through the system, which people to get on my side and start rooting for me so that you can get those guys internally. Because when you’re dealing with a bank, what happens, typically is, you always have a new person or somebody new looking at the deal, right? That’s the issue. So you need somebody in there advocating for you at all times. Because typically the compliance guy comes in and this random auditor comes in and they’re like, hey, what about this? And they screw up the whole deal. It’s like, dude, like, so you need to be prepared for all those things.

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