50+ Inspiring Social Start-ups That Are Making The World Better

Altruisto

Altruisto.com is a browser extension that allows users to collect money for extremely effective charities while shopping online. It works with 1000+ shops including Aliexpress, Barnes & Noble, Booking.com, eBay, Etsy and Microsoft. For every $4.59 raised for Against Malaria Foundation two people are protected from malaria (via bed nets) and for every $0.99 raised for Schistosomiasis Control Initiative one child gets a year supply of antiparasitic medicine.

Daniel Wyrzykowski

Andela

Recruits and manages African tech talent (developers) and integrates them into world leading tech companies. Backed by Chan Zuckerberg Iniative.

Christina Saas
Jeremy Johnson

Art Lifting

Connects socially conscious businesses with artists that are disabled or experiencing homelessness. Either for artwork in building spaces or work with licensing partners to develop co-branded merch.

Liz Powers
Spencer Powers

Barefoot College

Barefoot College, aka The Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) is a not-for-profit social enterprise working towards financial sustainability, in huge part through the delivery of its community based solar programs and its artisan industries. They provide classes to the women in 80+ countries worldwide(at the time of writing).Their efforts impact self-sustainability, education, skill development, health, accessible drinking water, women empowerment. The impact of the provided direct training reaches ~2 million people, giving them access to clean water and reliable energy.

Bunker Roy

Barefoot Power

Provides affordable, reliable solar products to underserved energy communities. For profit social enterprise that provides families and small businesses access to power in Africa, India, Asia, and the Americas

Stewart Craine
Harry Andrews

Bayes Impact

Bayes Impact is a Y Combinator-backed non-profit that builds operational solutions to the world's biggest challenges using data science. Uses data to create interventions for underserved people across the world

Paul Duan

Bogo Brush

Bogobrush toothbrushes are beautifully modern, eco friendly, and made in the USA. With each toothbrush sold, one is donated to a person in need.

Heather Mcdougall
John Mcdougall

Be my Eyes

Free app that connects blind and low vision people with sighted volunteers and company representatives for visual assistance through a live video call.

Hans Jørgen Wiberg
Christian Erfurt

Change.org

World's largest online petitioning platform that provides grassroots level empowerment for social change.

Ben Rattray

Defy Ventures

This organization tackles mass incarceration and the related high recidivism rates by providing educational training to individuals with criminal histories.

Catherine Hoke

DrinkWell Systems

Developed a reusable arsenic adsorbent to reduce the risk of arsenic poisoning and provide clean, safe drinking water worldwide.

Minhaj Chowdhury

Ecosia

Ecosia is the search engine that plants trees with its ad revenue. Since it is based on Microsoft's Bing, the results for most searches are as accurate as Google's (it may be slightly worse for more niche searches or for languages other than English). It has been a certified B Corp since 2014.

Christian Kroll

Elephant Parade

Open-air exhibitions of artist created elephants are placed in the streets of host cities to increase public awareness of the plights of elephants to support elephant conservation. At the end of the festival, the elephants are auctioned off with the proceeds going to NGO, Elephant Family

Marc Spits
Mike Spits

Elvis & Kresse

Creates stylish luggage and handbags from raw waste materials like fire hoses and donates 50% of profits to the Fire Fighters Charity.

Kresse Wesling
James Henrit

Enevo

Waste management company that uses sensor tech that allows business partners to know how much waste they're producing and how to optimize waste pick-ups to only exactly when they need the thus reducing costs and increasing sustainability over time.

Fredrik Kekalainen
Johan Engstrom

Everly

Natural drink mixes - 1 for 1 - distributes a life-saving rehydration salt treatment for each pouch sold.

Kyle McCollom
Chris Cole

Free Code Camp

Free Code Camp teaches students to code in several languages for free, then partners them with nonprofit organizations to provide mutually beneficial web development. freeCodeCamp has donated US$ 1,400,000 worth of development work to nonprofits as of January 2017.

Quincy Larson

Finnegans

Finnegans provides food to food banks through their Good Beer arm which donates 100% of its profits to supplying food to underserved individuals. They also engineered the "reverse food truck" which picks up food from donors instead of selling food for cash.

Jacquie Berglund

Global Giving

GlobalGiving is a nonprofit that provides a global crowdfunding platform for grassroots projects around the world. Donate to charity and see your impact with regular updates.

Mari Kuraishi
Dennis Whittle

Grassroots Business Fund

Actively supports high-impact enterprises that provide sustainable economic opportunities to the poor in developing areas throughout Latin America, Africa, India, and Asia.

Harold Rosen

Hand in Hand Soap

1 for 1 soap brand - for every product purchased they donate a month of drinking water and a bar of soap to a child in need

Bill Glaab
Courtney Apple

Handup

A platform for donors to give directly to people who are experiencing homelessness

Rose Broome

Impossible Foods

This company creates meat and dairy products without the use of any animal parts. They're the creators of the "Impossible Burger" a meatless burger that bleeds just like the real thing without any of the cruelty.

Patrick Brown

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan with a goal of creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lectures in the form of YouTube videos. Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators.

Salman Khan

Kiva

Kiva is a non-profit that allows people to lend money via the Internet to low-income entrepreneurs and students in over 80 countries. Kiva's mission is "to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty."

Premal Shah
Chelsa Bocci

LifeStraw

Water filter company. LifeStraw has been generally praised for its effective and instant method of bacteria and protozoa removal and consumer acceptability. For every LifeStraw product you purchase, a child in need receives safe water for an entire school year.

Me to We

For profit social enterprise that sells socially responsible products & services. They also donate half of their net profits to non-profit partner WE Charity.

Craig Kielburger
Marc Kielburger

Newman's Own

CPG company that donates 100% of profits to charity. They have a variety of items from salad dressings to bottled wine.

Paul Newman
A.E. Hotchner

Pennies

A platform that offers customers the chance for a microdonation when you pay by card in shops, online and in apps. It's your choice every time, with no pressure, and no follow up.

Pipeline Angels

Network to match femme investors to entrepreneurs. They provide trainings to both new investors as well as entrepreneurs. The key insight is that investors provide funding largely to people like them. As white, male investors invest in white, males women and non-binary femmes provide funding to female social entrepreneurs.

Natalia Oberti Noguera

Pulse Point

Alerts CPR and AED trained individuals when someone nearby is going through cardiac arrest.

Richard Price

Raise Me

Provides microscholarships from colleges to high school students. For each achievement (like an A in a core class, or holding a leadership position in a sport), students can receive money towards a scholarship, redeemable once they attend that college

Preston Silverman

Revivn

Revivn collects excess hardware from businesses, secures the data & repurposes unused tech for communities in need, provide a detailed hardware inventory & certify data destruction and ethical recycling.

Round It Up America

Restaurant partners provide customers the opportunity to round up their purchase to the nearest dollar. Donations are given out quarterly to various nonprofits

Harald Hermann
Jennifer Weerhelm

Samasource

Provides management and data services from a work source that uses "impact sourcing" which means they give work to people living in poverty. Thus far helped over 50k out of poverty. Has teams in US, Kenya, Uganda, and India

Leila Janah

Sevamob

Aims to close the healthcare gap with a subscription based healthcare pop-ups in underserved communities. It provides comprehensive care including dental, vision, and nutrition education. The company's tech platform also provides infrastructure for tele-health, healthcare IT, and point-of-care diagnostics to third-party clinics. The company currently facilitates 20,000 patient consultations per month in eight states of India and in South Africa, while about 500 third-party organizations are using the tech platform.

Shelley Saxena

Sevenly

Sevenly is an apparel e-commerce website. Portion of the money from each purchase is donated to charitable causes.

Dale Partridge
Aaron Chavez

Sirum

Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine (SIRUM), as titled is a social enterprise to decrease medical waste in the US by distributing unused and unexpired drugs to clinics. Using a tech platform, SIRUM allows manufacturers, wholesalers, and pharmacies to easily donate rather than destroy meds.

Adam Kircher
George Wang
Kiah Williams

Tab for a Cause

Donates money to charity every time a user opens a new tab. Through their sponsors, they have raised over $800k for charities.

Kevin Jennison
Alex Groth

Teach For America

Their mission statement is to "enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation's most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence." They essentially recruit highly educated individuals from top universities to teach at underprivileged schools. The organization serves more than 50 low income communities.

Wendy Kopp

TerraCycle

TerraCycle takes non-recyclable pre-consumer and post-consumer waste and turns it into a raw material to be used in new products.

Tom Szaky
Jon Beyer

The Soap Co

Luxury, sustainable, and ethical soap company that commits all of their profits to disadvantaged individuals (those with disability, visually impaired etc.)

Toms Shoes

The company designs and sells shoes based on the Argentine alpargata design, eyewear, coffee, apparel, and handbags. When Toms sells a pair of shoes, a new pair of shoes is given to an impoverished child, when Toms sells eyewear, part of the profit is used to save or restore eyesight for people in developing countries.

Blake Mycoskie
Alejo Nitti

United by Blue

For every product sold they remove one pound of trash from oceans and waterways.

Brian Linton
Mike Cangi

WakaWaka

One for One solar social enterprise. For every solar array sold, they donate a solar light to a family previously living without access to electricity.

Maurits Groen
Camille Van Gestel

Watsi

Builds technology to finance healthcare costs like surgeries through crowdfunding.

Chase Adam
Jesse Cooke

Wello

Designed a water wheel at affordable prices that increases access to water. Allows users to get twice as much water in half the time vs headloading

Cynthia Koenig

WildHearts Office

Donates a portion of office supply sales to the WildHearts Foundation. They provide price competitive office goods to major companies like Deloitte and Johnson & Johnson.

Mick Jackson

Vision Spring

Sells cheap eye glasses to people in the developing world. Also for every $5 donated to them, they can provide someone access to glasses.

Jordan Kassalow

Zidisha

The first online microlending community that directly connects lenders and borrowers — no matter the distance or disparity between them. Allows users to fund people in developing nations capital for projects. For example, you could give $25 for a grocery stand or give $100 to a beauty salon.

Julia Kurnia