Innovation

When donating to a registered charity in New Zealand you are eligible for a 33% rebate, but huge amounts of money go unclaimed each year for various reasons; the claim process requires effort through the Internal Revenue Department (IRD), or it takes time for your accountant, which in some cases costs more than what the rebate is worth, or, people simply don’t know that the rebate is available. Founder of Supergenerous Guillaume Dehan recognized that the unclaimed rebates have the potential to make a significant impact within our communities so set out to create an unobstructed pathway for donors to claim their rebates. Supergenerous is a simple online platform that does all the hard work for you – at no cost to the giver. As an approved tax agent, Supergenerous can claim rebates on behalf of individuals – all you need to do is sign up, and provide your details including your IRD (tax) number, and the online system handles the rest for you, indefinitely. The rebate can be paid to an individual, but Supergenerous’ core driver is to encourage re-donation back to the chosen charity. By doing so, another rebate is generated for the following tax year, creating a “gift that keeps on giving”. Thus, enables charities to forecast a portion of their donations, ultimately shifting some focus from continual investment in fundraising strategies to be redirected into goal-focused initiatives. Your personal donation and subsequent rebate may not seem like a lot, but that yearly unclaimed $250 million? Re-gifting that alone will generate an additional $118 million over just four years, without any new donations.

Guillaume, Franco, and their team are on a mission to make New Zealand the most generous country in the world, whilst tackling multiple SDGs.

Inspiration

Guillaume spent 15 years of his professional life working in the finance industry before relocating to New Zealand. On arrival, he took the time to reflect on his career and consider his next move. Value creation was at the core of his previous work, but he knew the shared value outcome wasn’t there. “I felt like my contribution to society was pretty slim – I have a skill set that can provide positive outcomes for communities”. He jokes that perhaps it was a mid-life crisis, but he joins a growing number of people who want to use their skills and experience to collectively work towards creating change, and re-focusing their efforts into “shifting the needle to positive”. He recognized that the simple act of claiming a rebate and directing that back to a charity had the opportunity to heavily impact the work that was being done by charities, and potentially lighten the load for those in the sector, many of whom work for free, for love, and for good. Many of us want to do more to help, and streamlining this small act has the potential to unlock so many opportunities.

Supergenerous has also physically positioned its offices in the middle of a group of purpose-driven organisations that work towards social impact, such as the Impact Lab, resulting in ongoing support and inspiration each day.

Overall impact

Although Supergenerous is still in its infancy, the awareness of the platform has grown substantially since its launch almost two years ago, processing $5 million worth of rebates for the 2021/22 financial year. They have 9000 donors registered, and 167 charities engaged including key partnerships with charities such as The Cancer Society and Oxfam. There is scope for Supergenerous to enter new markets in the future; the Supergenerous platform is easily transferable to any country that has a tax system, enabling the unlocking of the estimated half a trillion dollars’ worth of unclaimed rebates across the globe. But its current focus is on establishing itself as a viable and easy rebate solution in the New Zealand market. Spreading the word to donors is a key priority, and building relationships with more charities, the IRD, banks, and employers that support ‘payroll giving’ are all in the company’s outlook. Also of high importance is further supporting the mission towards ensuring that people are aware they can claim a rebate, and asking questions such as ‘where would you like your rebate to go?’, as this is not widely promoted either through the IRD claims system, or when dealing with an accountant

Business benefit

In the case of Supergenerous, innovation is the core of the business. Supergenerous take 10% plus GST of the rebate amount as payment on successful claims, which goes into delivering the service and ongoing improvements to the platform.

It was felt a percentage fee was a more palatable approach than a flat fee that an accountant might charge, especially for smaller donations. And accountants are seeing the benefit of Supergenerous too, with some beginning to outsource charity claims for their clients.

Supergenerous really got off the ground by being involved in a fintech kickstarter programme that provided $20,000 to put towards developing the platform. At the end of the programme they were voted people’s choice in the finance section, and with the help of the Ākina Foundation’s Impact Investment Readiness Programme, Supergenerous were able to close their seeding round led by former Prime Minister Bill English at $1.4 million. Investment from Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1 and other private investors and philanthropists showed confidence in the company's mission to ‘transform the impact of human generosity'. With this capital, they were able to employ staff to engage charities, create marketing materials, and further test and refine the platform.

The team see huge scope to increase the value of their offering. Through the processing of rebates, Supergenerous hopes to unlock additional data that will enable donors to better understand where their donations are going and what they have helped charities achieve, as well as provide visibility to charities of their donor pool and associated motivations and behaviours. Supergenerous also hopes to engage charities with the SDGs, creating transparency of the charity’s goals for donors.

Social and environmental benefit

Supergenerous sees itself as an impact investment company, providing a tool to create a lifelong legacy of giving. If all outstanding rebates were processed and regifted, a billion dollars would be injected into charities, bolstering the great work they are already doing and unlocking huge potential to continue addressing the issues within our communities in a sustainable way.

Supergenerous has also created all the assets a charity needs to share the platform with their donors – imagery, text, links, and additional information. They are very aware that many charities run on the goodwill of individuals, so are eager to ensure they remove the barriers for charities to promote the service, as well as donors to engage with the service.

“This new wave of impact investing is a great way for people to put their personal values into practice and back to the type of world they want to live in”.

Interview

Guillaume Dehan, Founder / CEO