One of our new ideas at Encast is a concept we call Giving as a Service, or GaaS. Giving as a Service is a pretty interesting notion that we’ve been exploring as we built our platform. We believe we’re on to something GaaS. It’s really actually rooted in something a little bit deeper, and that’s giving as a lifestyle. Lifestyle starts when we are kids. We talk about what our motivations are with what we do and why we do it and stories about when we’re children always come up. It’s absolutely important to be able to create the opportunity, the tools that we need, to be able to support our kids wanting to give. And it’s equally important for us to create tools to support our college kids wanting to give. When you graduate from college, Encast will also be there with a platform for young people launching their careers and their longer-term business lives of charitable giving.
It is a new day in the world of giving. We’re not so much hearing any more, I’ll make mine and give it later, which still happens, but not as much. There’s some generational gap in giving habits. My generation sometimes says, I’ll make my money now and I’ll give back later. We don’t hear that from millennial’s. We don’t hear that from young people. We don’t hear that from the kids. We hear something new, which is what do I need to be doing to support the causes that I care about right now. Sometimes we hear young people ask what causes should I care about, now? Encast is creating all the tools for a young giver to be able to explore causes that fit with their interest and generate passion but also the technology to very simply give to what matters the most to them.
The Encast brand really stands for having the opportunity to live a philanthropic lifestyle in just about every component of your life. If I’m spending money with a credit card, I have the opportunity to give. If I’m taking a paycheck from a company, I have the opportunity to give. If I’m volunteering hours, I have the opportunity to log them in my online dashboard or on my phone app. If I’m serving on an advisory board, I have the opportunity to track that time commitment. If I’m giving three sweaters away, I have the technology through Encast to track those donations.
We’ve discovered at Encast, and this is why we launched our company, that it really is a new day for literally embracing a philanthropic lifestyle. So if I said that Encast stood for a better, more fulfilling lifestyle, I think I’d probably hitting it on head. And that’s also what Giving as a Service is all about.
