About Giving Madness

Mission

Our mission is to create a new moment of giving in March—one focused on corporate giving and the impact companies can have when they include their people. Our hope is twofold: employees feel more connected to their teams, and nonprofits fill the gap in funding that has existed for too long. 

What is it?

Giving Madness is a bracket-style giving tournament. Structured like the most famous college basketball tournament, your company starts with 16 nonprofits in the giving bracket. Companies contribute to a donation pool and employees vote to advance their favorite nonprofits through four rounds of “games" over the course of one week or month. After the championship game, the pool gets divided up and donated proportionately.

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About Millie

Millie is a social impact platform designed to make charitable giving fun, accessible and impactful. We’re big believers that change comes from everyone and we’re on a mission to empower businesses of all sizes to start and grow social impact programs. We offer a personalized experience that helps companies build a culture of giving and amplify the impact of their employees, customers and bottom line.
Learn more about Millie
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What is Giving Madness?

Watch a 90-second video of the vision and how it works
And here’s a wild version of what it’s all about

The story behind Giving Madness

☕️  Two charity nerds grab a coffee

In March of 2019, Rachel Klausner—the founder of Millie— grabbed a coffee with Tim Smith, a philanthropy + impact guru in the Boston area.  It was the early days of building Millie. Tim talked about his love for March Madness, saying (don’t quote us on this!) “It’d be cool if there could be some sort of giving around March Madness.” 

✍️  Details, brackets, & dreams

Rachel could not stop thinking about this concept. She had spent her life creating things that somehow tied back to sports, and even brackets: like a sports camp for kids and the National Hillel Basketball Tournament. Rachel knew that brackets were a fun way to gamify anything, and so it all began.  She started designing prototypes, mulling over every detail. Throughout the years, the Millie team refined Giving Madness into what it would become. After lots of dreaming, the time was finally here to make it a reality.

💜  Companies wanted to use it, Gates wanted to back it

With the support and enthusiasm of Millie customers, the team was ready to make this happen. Two things became clear: companies needed a way to engage teams in corporate giving beyond the usual, and the nonprofits needed a way to close their funding gaps outside of the last 6 weeks of the year. 
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Between a fortuitous competition and an amazing collaborative sprint by IDEO, Better Giving Studio and The Gates Foundation, the Millie team got pretty lucky: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation saw the potential and wanted to bring the dream to life. 
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March 2022 would officially be the beginning of Giving Madness.
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A huge thank you to our partner:
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Bring your employees together. And give back.
(It’s a win-win 😅)
Start a Giving Bracket