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We've held onto this episode for a little while. We even considered not releasing it as there has been a big change since recording but I think it is one that needs to be shared.
I've followed Rohan McCloskey's journey from restaurateur to founder of GoGenerosity for a few years now, and he's recently made the tough call to hand it over to a new operator, after years of getting the model working with retailers like Harris Farm, TradeMutt and Active Truth.
GoGenerosity turns small customer donations at checkout into gift cards for people in need, with 100% of every donation reaching the charity. It’s a pay-it-forward model with a commercial incentive for the brands that offer it. Win-win.
Unfortunately, in the end, GoGenerosity (and Rohan) was the one that took the hit, and it was recently acquired by Virtue. Still, Rohan should be celebrated for bringing fresh ideas to the ecommerce industry and linking social giving to commercial outcomes. If you are considering adding a charitable offering to your store, this is the ep for you.
Cheers
Bushy
EPISODE CHEAT SHEET
⏭️ SKIP TO THE GOOD BITS
From three restaurants to a Shopify app (05:39)
What pay-it-forward actually means at checkout (07:30)
The facial that changed how Rohan saw generosity (09:49)
Why 100% of every donation reaches the charity (12:35)
The mystery shopping result: 98% more likely to return (16:09)
One in six customers, every single order (20:59)
Why no one gives a toss about your dashboards (32:16)
Raising too early, and the crash that followed (47:18)
💬 QUOTE OF THE DAY
"It doesn't actually cost you anything to do good."
🧠 THE BIG LESSON
Three things to weigh up before adding a charity element to your store
More retailers want to build giving into their stores, and, done right, it lifts loyalty without touching margins. Rohan has watched hundreds of merchants do it well and badly. If you're thinking about it, here are the three things to get right.
Consideration 1: Make the commercials work for everyone
The giving has to stack up for you and stay sustainable for the cause and the platform running it, or the whole thing comes unstuck. GoGenerosity is built so that 100% of donations reach the charity, while the gift-card mechanic returns the full retail value to the merchant, so nobody's margin takes the hit.
"We're not taking away from your margin. If anything, we're helping increase it."
Consideration 2: Protect the checkout
The biggest fear is that anything extra at the checkout slows the sale or scares off the buyer. Rohan's mystery shopping through Humii found the opposite: every shopper reported no added friction, and some said it made them want to buy more.
"100% of mystery shoppers were like, no friction whatsoever. If anything, it made me want to buy the product more.”
Consideration 3: Let the customer and the cause be the hero
Keep your logo out of the spotlight and put the shopper and the charity in it, because that is what earns trust and repeat giving. Pick a charity your customers actually connect with, too, since, for smaller brands, the cause alone can swing donation rates by 3 to 5%.
"We're not the hero story here. The hero is actually the consumer and the brand and the charity.”
The commercial proof is in the repeat behaviour. One in fifteen shoppers donate on any given order across the platform, and at Rohan's best-performing brand it's one in six, sustained every single order for two years. Get these three right and giving becomes a loyalty lever that funds itself. Get them wrong, and it's a cost centre with a fuzzy feeling.
✏️ ECOMMERCE ACTION TIPS
Design giving into the checkout flow rather than bolting on a prompt, so it lifts the experience instead of impeding it. (~07:30)
Run your own mystery shopping before assuming a checkout change hurts conversion, because the data often says the opposite. (~16:09)
Pick a charity your customers trust, since smaller brands see donation rates swing by 3 to 5% based on that choice alone. (~22:18)
Kill the dashboard nobody opens and put the value where your customer (or team) already looks - in their results. (~32:16)
Raise capital to fuel traction, not to find it, because chasing enterprise deals before product-market fit can drain the tank. (~49:32)
💾 TECH MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
humii. An online mystery shopping and CX benchmarking platform, which Rohan commissioned to stress-test the checkout, with every shopper reporting no added friction and 98% saying they were more likely to return.
Shopify. GoGenerosity is built natively on Shopify, and Rohan made a deliberate call to stay entirely inside the Shopify ecosystem rather than branch out early.
Shopify App Store. The app's distribution channel, where Rohan learned the review process is strict and that "build and they will come" is a myth for B2B.
Shopify Gift Cards. The core mechanic is that the merchant creates a full-value gift card that the charity redeems in-store, keeping 100% of the donation in play.
🎧 OTHER EPS YOU MIGHT LIKE
Giving is the New Selling: The i=Change Story | EP044
If the idea that giving can lift sales rather than dent them landed for you, this is a great example from a few years ago. Includes split tests where the giving message doubled conversions and paid for the donations several times over.
Clothing Connections: The Thread Together Story | EP074
The dignity thread runs deep in this one too. Excess retail clothing redirected to people doing it tough, and a case for why clothing is a forgotten basic right.
Don't Apologise for Profit: The Thankyou Story | EP130
The commercial-and-charitable tension gets real here. One of Australia's original social enterprises on why profit is what makes the impact last, with a raw few minutes on the founder toll of getting there.
💬 CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Would you add a charity giving option to your checkout or does anything extra in that flow make you nervous?
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