Entrepreneur Simon Griffiths Took a Novel Idea and Turned It Into National Success – Donating Millions to Charity Along the Way
Simon Griffiths Going from novel concept to necessity at warp speed allowed one Australian startup to donate millions to sanitation projects in developing countries.
The pandemic taught us the impact of exponential growth but for subscription-based toilet paper social enterprise Who Gives A Crap (whogivesacrap.org), rapidly rising numbers weren’t relegated to press conferences. “On 1 March 2020, we were doing twice our regular day of sales, 2 March it was four or five times, 3 March it was 12,” recalls Simon Griffiths, CEO and co-founder. “By 4 March, we were at 30 to 40 times a regular day of sales – more than a month of sales in a day.”
It didn’t stop there. At one point the B-Corp certified company, which donates 50 per cent of its profits to sanitation projects in developing countries, was slinging 28 rolls of toilet paper a second. While bewildered shoppers stared at empty supermarket shelves, the firm’s waiting list swelled to more than 500,000 people.
Griffiths baulks at suggestions that the company he founded with Danny Alexander and Jehan Ratnatunga was a “winner” in the COVID carnage. He says that supply chain issues and staff burnout risks tempered its stratospheric sales increases. Still, the $5.85 million the outfit was able to donate at the end of June 2020 made for a decent cherry. And in its first-ever funding round last year, a host of local and international investors wanted a bite. Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, Canva’s Cameron Adams and Adore Beauty founders Kate Morris and James Height are just a few notable high-profile contributors who added to the $41.5 million capital raised.
It’s money earmarked for expansion – the ultimate goal being to help the two billion people currently without access to basic sanitation. “If we’re going to put a serious dent in that problem, we have to take our donations from millions of dollars to billions of dollars a year,” says Griffiths.
It’s an ambitious plan. But if anyone can pull it off, it might be the company that answers the question its name poses.