Matt was invited to the Guadalupe Homeless Project in LA, where undocumented immigrants were trying to survive day to day. His early application of social entrepreneurship, which was a term that barely existed, was to create a language learning program for the immigrants at this facility.  

He also did a stint at a long-term care facility, which was difficult and not remotely enjoyable. But it taught him another valuable lesson: the value of treating your employees well. He left and wound up at the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), where he fell into a good rhythm with an empowering manager. 

It brought yet another important business lesson, but a much more personal one. Matt realized at NWEA that he was a builder and a doer. And at that moment, very serendipitously, he was introduced to Team Rubicon. It would change the trajectory of his entire life. 

Early in his time with Team Rubicon, the organization was doing $250,000 in revenue. And as he flew to Dreamforce one year, Matt remembers reading an article about Chewy.com, which had just come onto the scene. 

“What [Chewy] had achieved was personalization at scale…I remember thinking that if [Team Rubicon] could do what Chewy did and leverage technology to achieve personalization at scale, then we could do something special in this space.” 

This was top-of-mind for Matt because he had spent hours handwriting thank you cards in response to donors who supported Team Rubicon’s Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. He wrote cards to the same people, multiple times, because they had no CRM or tech to help. 

So, Matt got to work implementing Salesforce at Team Rubicon. Soon, Team Rubicon was doing $40 million in revenue.

"A couple years [after my first flight to Dreamforce], we were doing the keynote at Dreamforce, talking about how we implemented a system that scales personalized engagement to deploy thousands of people across the country and world to respond to disasters. That was the moment that changed everything.”

It was a symphonic crescendo. All the winding paths of his career finally came together in that one, glorious intersection of business and social good. But it was a bittersweet moment for Matt. 

Team Rubicon, with its major success, became more focused. The ability to have his hands in a lot of different parts of the organization was diminishing, and Matt felt it was time to build a company and define an innovative culture of his own. It was finally time for CauseMic.

“Team Rubicon is an important part of my story, and I’m an important part of theirs…But CauseMic is my company. It wasn’t hubris here. I felt ready to take this on. It was incredibly hard to leave, but when it’s time it’s time.” 

CauseMic is laser focused on helping nonprofits rapidly scale their revenue. They choose to work with organizations who want to 10x their revenue in 3 to 5 years. And within that mindset Matt has found a home for his desire to build, do, and make a social impact. 

“If you’re a half-a-billion dollar charity, or a $500,000 charity; if you’re trying to 10x your revenue in 3 to 5 years, you have to make bold calculated risks. You have to take to a whiteboard and think about, not how do we modify our current business model to have incremental year over year growth, but how do we think entirely differently. That’s what we’re really focused on.” 

They spend their time helping organizations identify their key audiences, understanding what motivates someone to donate, and focusing on what drives conversions. One of their notable clients is the Gary Sinise Foundation (GSF), which stands as a strong example of their work in action.

The CauseMic team identified that people support GSF because of two things. The first is service and sacrifice: donors want to support those who have served our country and sacrificed for them. Second is trust and transparency: donors trust GSF will deliver on their promises. And that trust is reinforced with a strategy that sees GSF answer every phone call, reply to every letter, and leave no donor touchpoint unanswered.

There are so many other examples you can learn from in this episode, and a long list of tips for organizations trying to disrupt their spaces. Make sure you listen to the full episode for more on how to hyper-focus your engagement, paying fair and equitable wages, where to invest time and money, and how to manage expectations.

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