Social Impact Tech: John McNeel of in/PACT On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
An Interview With Jilea Hemmings
…If you look at the billions of dollars flowing into nonprofits every year, a lot of it is still going to the usual suspects — the large nonprofits with the most significant resources at their disposal. At in/PACT, we believe in community giving. Not only manifesting that in everything we do, but enabling that and empowering that for the companies we work with. Again, back to ‘growing the world’s heart,’ if we successfully help more people give more often through more channels to more charities, it multiplies the opportunities to make giving a daily act. This creates a better flow through economies of scale.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing John McNeel.
Building brands with purpose has been John McNeel’s passion for more than 25 years, specifically developing award-winning campaigns that leveraged higher values to create growth and market success for some of the world’s greatest companies. As Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of in/PACT, McNeel has delivered on a vision of personalized, highly localized charitable giving experiences through unique technology platforms utilized by major Fortune 500s from the financial service industry to the nation’s leading retailers.
Thank you for joining us in this series, John. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
On the one hand, I am a product of growing up in American suburbia. On the other hand, I’m the product of an English mother from Birmingham, UK, and a father from the mountains of West Virginia. My parents happened to meet each other in the Australian Outback. What was a fairly ordinary childhood on its face was juxtaposed with the fact that I was a result of adventurous parents with unique life stories. A large part of my adolescent narrative growing up included my passion for writing. Initially, my energy centered around storytelling, including working as a journalist reasonably early in my career.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened since you began your career?
There is one brand story that is near and dear to my heart. I had the opportunity mid-career to help rebuild the Pedigree Dog Food brand around the platform of ‘love of dogs.’ I had an early interest in brand purpose, and this brand had essentially lost its way — producing stereotypical advertising like many various packaged goods.
I still remember asking a member of the Mars family — Mars, Inc. owned Pedigree — why his grandfather originally bought a small dog food business in the UK and turned it into the world’s largest dog food franchise. The move from chocolate bars to dog treats didn’t seem to fit their candy business well. His response was simple. “My grandfather loved dogs and thought they deserved good nutritious food.” My answer to him was, “Well, you’ve forgotten that institutionally because you’re not doing anything in terms of how the brand behaves or how it communicates this through its origin story.” This was a brave action on my part; however, I felt honesty was vital, and from that honesty came a shift in the work we began to do for the brand.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Can you share a story about a particular person who helped get you to where you are?
The person who was the greatest source of inspiration for me is Jim Stengel, the Chief Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble at the time, who had already started putting P&G on the path to brand purpose. One of the brands he started with, which I was fortunate to work on, was Pampers. Similar to the Pedigree story, there was a shift from how Pampers communicated its value to consumers, mainly around functional benefits, to emotional and more grounded in purpose.
Pampers crafted an alliance with UNICEF, focused on eradicating childhood illnesses in the developing world, which is still going strong 20 plus years later. It’s one of those perfect stories of finding a path in terms of brand equity by giving back in a meaningful way, hundreds of millions of dollars, which in turn has a real-world impact in terms of childhood illnesses to this day.
Jim not only inspired me in my previous career, but he also shaped my trajectory in that he introduced me to Ammar Charani, now my business partner at in/PACT. Together in 2015, we founded in/PACT, an organization that uses technology to drive customer engagement through charitable giving, with Jim joining our advisory board and as an early-stage investor.
Can you please share your favorite “Life Lesson,” and how it was relevant in your life?
It’s hard to settle on one. I’m a big believer in fate and embracing opportunity. Throughout my life and career, I’ve had moments of shift that have come through certain opportunities. Jim introducing me to my business partner was a moment of embracing serendipity. But, at the same time, I’m a big believer in staying the course, so a lot of my success has come through perseverance. You must set goals and work toward them, but you must always remain open to that moment where you can shift into new territory or help a company or organization discover a new frontier.
As a successful business leader, which character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
I started my career at a young age in journalism and did a lot of creative writing. So, creativity is a character trait that has been a common denominator throughout my career. Storytelling is how you capture people’s imaginations and interests in a compelling and inspiring way. Creativity also allows people to follow you, so storytelling can apply to starting a company. When we were founding in/PACT, to get the right company with us, particularly on our advisory board, we invited many talented women, in particular. We had a very diverse board made up of people who had bought into the vision for what we could do to drive purposeful connections for companies and brands through technology.
The second trait I would mention is a sense of adventure, which I inherited from my parents, who were willing to sail halfway around the world and intersect in a remote area in Australia. I think it’s challenging for an entrepreneur to succeed without having some sense of adventure because there’s risk involved. I’ve been very fortunate, and I’ve had many great life adventures, including this journey with in/PACT.
Now, let’s shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools you are helping to create to make a positive social impact on our society. What problems are you aiming to solve?
Let me start with the problems we began to solve under the PurposeTech platform umbrella. The intent, initially, was to help large Fortune 500s connect with their consumers through technology. Until now, brand purpose work tended to be an advertising or PR campaign, announcing to the world a CSR effort. Whereas our vision for in/PACT from the outset was to activate purpose to drive connection. One that is hyper-personalized and hyper-localized between that brand and its customers and the mechanism is around charitable giving.
As we got deeper into helping brands drive engagement around charitable giving, we realized there’s a more significant opportunity, which we call ‘Growing the World’s Heart.’ What drives our efforts today is democratizing giving — helping more people give more often to more charities. But, the digitization of giving, which is a key trend of the last five years, has made it a very fragmented experience. It is easier to give today; you can click on the PayPal button, you can go to a Facebook page; there are myriad ways to give using your phone or iPad. This very fragmented experience often leads to an unsatisfactory consumer experience.
How do you think your technology can address this?
There’s a need today to unify and create a more cohesive experience. Frictionless is the popular term for that. So, our technology is primarily focused now on connecting those acts of giving through one consolidated platform. A lot of what we’ve been doing with our FinTech platform, GoodCoin, allows people a one-stop-shop for their charitable gifting. Creating access through their bank or mobile banking app aids in pulling charitable giving into one unified place, making giving a convenient, more secure, and more meaningful experience.
There are several examples of how we are making this happen. It could be an interaction with a retailer, where they collect Good Coins and direct those to the charity of their choice. It could be in the video gaming environment, where people collect Good Coins. It could be in a roundup to charity when purchasing products online and having every transaction make a provision to the charity of their choice.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I’d go back to the Pedigree story because when we relaunched the brand, the product platform was around ‘love of dogs.’ From the beginning, we had a cause area, which was dog adoption. From the very beginning, Pedigree said, “We’re going to take this seriously. We’re going to send checks to dog shelters around the country.”
Looking back, I realized technology would allow us to accelerate that shift — away from a kind of one-size-fits-all gravitation toward national charities to better consumer involvement in a personal, fulfilling way. Much of what consumers are looking for today is to shape the brand experience according to their passions and priorities. In the age of participation, there needs to be a connection to creating impact in their communities. To this day, that brand alignment informs a lot of the work we do with retailers like Target, Walgreens and FIS.
How do you think in/PACT and its systems might change the world?
I mentioned before the notion of democratizing giving. If you look at the billions of dollars flowing into nonprofits every year, a lot of it is still going to the usual suspects — the large nonprofits with the most significant resources at their disposal. At in/PACT, we believe in community giving. Not only manifesting that in everything we do, but enabling that and empowering that for the companies we work with. Again, back to ‘growing the world’s heart,’ if we successfully help more people give more often through more channels to more charities, it multiplies the opportunities to make giving a daily act. This creates a better flow through economies of scale.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology?
There’s a lot of coverage today around cyber hacking. And unfortunately, there are a lot of bad actors in the world. Even in the nonprofit space, there are not legitimate players. There are stories about the misuse of GoFundMe and the rise of ‘bogus’ charities. People must be careful. Not only can their private information be compromised, but they could be doing what they think is a generous act, which is just aiding and abetting bad actors.
A lot of the work we do with our 501c3, The GoodCoin Foundation, involves very rigorous curating, vetting, and even “super vetting” of the nonprofit partners that will benefit from charitable giving on our platform. We are starting to do some forward-looking work on Blockchain. The critical advantage of cryptocurrencies is around the ledger-based transactions, which allows much more transparency, and we think that’s the way of the future. So, as we build out our PurposeTech platform — security, transparency, ease of use are critical aspects of what we want to deliver.
Based on your experience and success, can you please share keys to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact?
The first key would be data insights. While in/PACT is very much aligned to companies in the B2B space, we are very focused on the end-user regarding where, when, and why people give. We spend a lot of time thinking about the donor making the charitable gift from their bank account or monthly rewards. Understanding the consumer is critical, and we call that the “science of giving.” A lot of our efforts are focused on that insight, data-based approach to giving.
The second key is creating a user experience environment consistent with the mission you’ve set — curating an experience where people can go on a journey of discovery. Above all, you must have a robust company culture. Everyone who joins our organization not only subscribes to but embraces and enthusiastically pursues ‘growing the world’s heart.’ A lot of early-stage technology companies are culture anemic. They’ve got a product that they think is cool; they spend a lot of time on fundraising or flashy promotion to generate buzz. But it is a genuine company culture that carries the day.
If you could tell young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, what would you tell them?
I would tell them to choose because I believe there’s no lack of an appetite for changing the world or having a positive impact. I think generationally, whether it’s millennials, Gen Z’ers, or even the Boomer generation, many people have grown up in a world where they see a lot of problems. They see the government institutions or the economy aren’t making the world a better place, and there’s a big appetite to do that.
However, it’s easy to get lost. The advice I usually give to young people is what I call “choosing your X.” Choose the one thing that you genuinely believe in and where you can make the most significant impact. Many initial ‘make the world a better place’ efforts tend to be solving one big problem, like world hunger or climate change. But within each of those significant societal or environmental issues, specific issues can be solved. I am a big believer in specificity and focus.
Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?
Richard Branson is undoubtedly an entrepreneur for whom I have a lot of respect and who, like the team at in/PACT from early on, has a sense of adventure. He is purpose-driven in the sense that he has a strong belief system attached to his brand. Going back to the notion of shift, Branson always goes into sectors to make a difference, to disrupt. So there’s no BS; he’s always had a clear sense of what he brings to the table.
Branson recently explored outer space, and everyone knows there are risks involved in going up in a rocket. His boldness about business and life further illustrates how fearless he is. I believe courage is a source of inspiration. Additionally, I thought it was clever (when he landed) when he stated something to the effect of “Outer space is now Virgin territory.” So true to the brand. From the outset, he managed to brand outer space.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
Social Impact Tech: John McNeel of in/PACT On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.