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How Thankyou is using social media to help change the world, end extreme poverty

By Tobi Awodipe
29 September 2020   |   12:50 pm
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Thankyou co-founder Daniel Flynn holding “I’m in, are you?”

Australia-based social enterprise, Thankyou, has announced an invitation to P&G and Unilever, two of the world’s largest and most influential consumer goods companies to make and distribute Thankyou products globally to help end extreme poverty.

To convince these companies to take this bold move, Thankyou is asking people around the world to get involved and show the collective power of the many who believe in this change, through its campaign aptly named “No Small Plan.” Thankyou offers consumer products – personal care and baby product ranges – for the sole purpose of funding life-changing projects.

Thankyou was created to close the gap between the 736 million people living in extreme poverty around the world and the $63 trillion spent on consumer products each year. After all the costs in running a business to get great consumer products to people are taken care of, every last cent that Thankyou makes goes toward ending extreme poverty. With this model, Thankyou seeks to flip consumerism, for good.

“With $63 trillion spent on consumer goods each year while 736 million people are stuck in extreme poverty, we believe that business as usual is broken,” said Daniel Flynn, who founded Thankyou in 2008 along with Justine Flynn and Jarryd Burns. “But we also believe that we, together with people and a partnership with one of the two biggest companies in the world, can change this by funneling the dollars spent on consumer goods into helping end extreme poverty.”

Currently, Thankyou only sells its products in Australia and New Zealand, but with COVID-19 increasing both global poverty numbers and demand for personal care products such as hand sanitiser, the company feels that now is the time to expand, and quickly. If either P&G or Unilever choose to accept Thankyou’s invitation, together they could change the course of history and route millions of consumer dollars to ending extreme poverty.

Thankyou has set virtual meetings with both companies to take place at the end of the campaign. On November 5, Thankyou will announce which company is “in” on one of the largest digital billboards in the world, in New York City’s Times Square.

Thankyou’s launch campaign is titled “No Small Plan” because changing the course of history by redirecting millions of consumer dollars to go toward ending extreme poverty in this lifetime is, indeed, no small plan.

Founded in 2008, in just 12 years, Thankyou has grown into a movement of millions of people taking small steps to create big change and its highly engaged community successfully petitioned the two largest supermarkets in Australia to stock its products. Additionally, Thankyou’s supporters helped reach a $1.2 million fundraising target to fund her future growth into new categories and launch into New Zealand by rallying around “Chapter One,” Thankyou’s pay-what-you-want book.

To date, Thankyou has raised over AUD $17 million for impact partners serving the world’s poorest populations. In the first 11 years, Thankyou’s impact partners had helped over 857,000 people across 22 countries with access to basic human needs. Their partners, which span over 14 organisations, work with local leaders and communities to address water, health, sanitation, economic development programs, maternal and child health programs in low-income communities. The sectors that Thankyou’s impact partners work across differ from partner to partner, but they all focus on tackling extreme poverty.

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