Hello, do you have a second to vote for  PocketChange?

Whether in the dining hall, the library or Driscoll Green, this refrain echoed ceaselessly throughout campus during finals week of winter quarter, as the team behind the Daniels-based charity startup tried to garner votes for their entry in the National Geographic Chasing Genius competition.

While they ultimately finished fourth in the nation-wide competition, the startup is still making strides: they’ve just released the first beta phase of their product for public use.

Now equipped with a team of student employees and potential investors on the horizon, the four founders, three of whom are sophomores in the Daniels College of Business, are hoping to change the world through social media.

The Mission

“If everyone gives a little, the world would change a lot,” summarizes Christian Dooley, Head of Marketing at PocketChange and a sophomore management major.

It’s this mission statement that’s behind PocketChange’s product: a Google Chrome extension that installs a button in the user’s Facebook feed, right next to the familiar “Like,” “Comment” and “Share,” that analyzes shared articles about actionable social issues, then automatically assigns them to a certified influential charity to which the user can instantly donate between $0.25 and $2 through PayPal.

“Whenever you see something you care about—whether that’s poverty, climate change, homelessness, animal abuse,” explains Dooley, “you now basically have a ‘Like’ button that does something.”

The concept capitalizes on the concept of microtransactions, as well as an idea the founders call “point of emotion” — the user should be able to take a tangible action towards fixing the issue immediately upon learning about it, instead of being momentarily inspired and then forgetting about it.

“Most people spend a ridiculous amount of time on social media, but yet we all hate it,” elaborates Jon DuVarney, PC’s Head of Product and a sophomore marketing and emergent digital practices major. “All of the terrible issues we see shared on our feed are just weighing down on us as we scroll past them.”

Despite this cynicism, though, DuVarney believes everyone does have the desire to make change; they just need some help.

“90 percent of college students have a good heart and want to make change, but either don’t have the time, brainpower or initial spark to put in the effort to go online, track down the best charity, etc. So it’s mind-blowing to be able to remove these barriers to giving.”

The Process

The charities involved are vetted by PC’s team of 19 volunteer student employees, called “Charity Sleuths,” who work to narrow thousands of charities for each cause down to a single best one, using a five-point philosophy to quantify their scope and impact.

“We have to know for a fact that when you click this button, your money is going to actually solve the problem in its entirety, not just a band-aid solution,” says Dooley.

It’s an involved process, according to employee and sophomore international studies major Reese Arthur, who was just promoted to a team leader position— one of three “Super Sleuths.” Each student worker puts in five hours per week.

“I’ll come to the meetings stressed or tired,” says Arthur, who balances her job with classwork and an internship, “but each week I know that I can come in to the meeting and do what I’m passionate about for two hours – I always feel better afterwards.”

The Story

PocketChange’s genesis was in the Fall of 2016, as founder and CEO Reyn Aubrey, a sophomore international business major, was sensing   a shift.

“The idea first came to me where all good ideas do: in the shower,” says Aubrey, “but I really got excited about it in the aftermath of the presidential election. I realized that the role of the state is changing in its ability to accomplish things, and that ordinary people are much more so becoming agents of change.”

Though he had previously worked for a successful startup, Aubrey had never had any experience with charity work or the non-profit sector, but he didn’t let this stop him. He researched around until February, when he made what he calls a “terrible” first website.

He received a small initial investment from DU’s Madden Challenge to get started, but as he began pitching the idea, he realized he wouldn’t be able to do it alone. That April, his “Writing and Activism” classmate Dooley joined. DuVarney initially made a logo and website, but was eventually convinced to officially join the team in September 2017 along with “Robot Linguist” Apoorva Bapat, a coder with a Master’s in Natural Language Processing from CU Boulder.

Fastforward to spring of this year, and the National Geographic competition more or less fell into the founders’ lap.

“We first made a video for Chasing Genius last year, but nothing came of it,” recounts Dooley.

“But then this year, I saw an ad for Chasing Genius on Facebook five days before the deadline, and without even thinking I submitted the video again.”

With about 4,000 entries, Dooley wasn’t expecting anything, until he woke up to an email notifying him that PC was a finalist.

So began the notorious voting rush, which was even memorialized by a student in meme form. Due to the timing of the competition, the founders had to embark on a mad dash to gather votes around campus, as they also had to launch an early version of the product and prepare for a pitch in a few days — not to mention finishing their finals.

DuVarney laments the timing of the competition (“If everyone hadn’t left after finals, we would have been in every classroom getting votes”) but remains optimistic about the visibility the voting drive gained for them, as voters “wanted to use the product immediately.”

The Future

“[The PC team] has an extremely high chance of success,” says Dr. Stephen Haag, Director of Entrepreneurship in Daniels and advisor to PC.

“They have the one key thing it takes to be successful – passion, and not about making money, but about making change. They’re an embodiment of the university’s Vision Statement, and I’m a better person because of my work with them.”

Haag says the next step for the team is to gather users. They’ve realized that “a big number times a little number makes a big number,” so finding a user base is crucial to making the change they want.

The product’s nature as a Chrome extension gives it a unique potential for expansion to other platforms, as well.

“It’s basically an invisible sheet over your browser,” Dooley explains, “so the button can hypothetically be added to anything. Our next step is Twitter, but then we could move to YouTube, newspaper articles, anything on the internet.”

As of press time, Aubrey is currently in talks with an outside investor and working to secure internship credit for his employees over the summer.

The founders repeatedly expressed their optimism and hope to continue doing what Haag calls “bending the business world.”

The Beta version of PocketChange extension can be downloaded for the Chrome browser here.