TSHIRTIFY: BUILDING A GIVING NETWORK
The purpose-driven business series features a different Business for Good to showcase their unique giving stories. We hope these stories inspire you with interesting, new and joyful ideas on how to integrate giving into your business.
Imagine running a business where your accountant gives goats, your virtual assistant gives education, your suppliers give bricks to build schools, and even your customers give to different causes when they purchase from you! This endless giving network in business isn’t just a utopian fantasy. It’s a reality for many B1G1 Businesses. Today’s business shows us how they created their own giving network.
INTRODUCING…TSHIRTIFY!
WHO: Kerry and Richard Flanagan from Tshirtify
WHERE: Midlands, UK
WHAT:Tshirtify works with Entrepreneurs to build their branded product lines. The Tshirtify team supports Artists, Musicians, Sportspeople and Social Media Influencers by printing and dispatching their branded T-shirts (and other branded products). This removes the hassle of buying in bulk, carrying stock and heading to the Post Office to dispatch and allows the Entrepreneurs to get on with what they love the most!
CAN YOU GIVE US A SENSE OF WHY YOU DECIDED TO START GIVING?
We previously worked on our own project ‘T-shirt Afterlife’ where we collected unwanted t-shirts from the team, family, and friends. We gave out over 500 to asylum seekers and refugees at the Red Cross HQ in Birmingham UK. Although it was an invaluable experience for us to be actively involved and see the good use the t-shirts were being put to, it was an event we couldn’t repeat frequently because of the time and organization involved.
Paul Dunn was a mentor for one of the days at the iLab program in Bali and we signed up to B1G1 straight away. For us, it’s a sustainable way of being able to give to great projects that we wouldn’t otherwise have access to and time to organize ourselves. We can give back more in the world with B1G1 and it’s a great way of passing on our appreciation to our customers.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PROJECT(S) TO GIVE TO AND WHY?
We are passionate about education (heightened by the fact that we have 2 small children Dillon aged 6 and Esme aged 4) so in general, when we send ‘impacts’ from Tshirtify to B1G1, we focus on educational projects. However, this isn’t set in stone, the odd goat or two has sneaked into the giving basket!
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE IMPACT B1G1 HAS HAD ON YOUR COMPANY AND ITS CULTURE?
It’s been immense. Rather than seeing the end results as simply great t-shirts and happy customers, we are now helping to change people’s lives for the better. It gives us so much more motivation and a sense of positive achievement that we celebrate within the team each month when we total up the impacts.
WHAT’S THE BEST EXPERIENCE YOU’VE HAD THROUGH YOUR GIVING ACTIVITIES AND BEING A PART OF B1G1?
That fact that we can pass on the B1G1 gift to our clients and they get to share it with their customers. In fact one of our clients, a successful illustrator has just recently joined B1G1 himself.
This means that not only do we make B1G1 impacts for each product we print for him, he now makes an impact each time one of his customers buys too.
So together we make double the impacts!
DOES ANYBODY IN YOUR TEAM HAVE AN INTERESTING GIVING STORY TO SHARE?
This year we’ll be making impacts to celebrate each of our team member’s birthdays. They’ll choose their own project and we’ll feature it on a wall at work and get to post about it on our blog and social pages.