Hi, this is Paul Zellazer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps more people learn how to have a positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today I'm thrilled to introduce you to Emily Kane Miller. And our topic is new Platform Alert impact measurement. Emily is the founder and CEO of Ethos Giving, which helps individuals, foundations, and companies determine their passion, maximize their social impact, and put the foundations in place to make it come true. Emily, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me, Paul.

I'm really excited to share with our listeners what you're doing. It's such good work. But before we get into the work you're doing today, Emily, if somebody was listening and they're like, I don't know who this Emily Kane Miller is, and I don't really know kind of anything about their backstory. What's the short version of your origin story before we get into Ethos Giving and all the good work you're doing now?

Great question. So I would say I've been somebody who has tried to be a force for good since I was a kid and then found a way to do that professionally. I'm a lawyer by training and have built a career around social impact, corporate social responsibility, and philanthropy.

Nice. And this idea of a platform, right. Our title is called new Platform Alert Impact Measurement. Like, this idea of leveraging a platform to help with impact and really being able to document how somebody or how an organization is moving the needle. Give us a little bit. Like, what was the thinking there? Why a platform?

Yeah. So I'm a regulatory lawyer by training, so I like data, I like rules, I like specificity. And coming into CSR, corporate social responsibility and philanthropy, there have obviously been technological tools available for decades. Those tools are really built for a model where there is a donor and a donor, there is a cash donation, and you're managing the logistics and timeline of that work. And while that's important today, as we think about social impact and leaders who are really looking to make change, those old systems and tools aren't going to cut it. And so I was really interested, and I kept saying for about 15 years, I need QuickBooks for social good. Like, anyone who's done any accounting, personally or in business knows that QuickBooks is a great tool because it allows you to run information and slice it and dice it by timeline or vendor or quarter or whatever it is. And I knew that this work was becoming more and more dynamic, that people were putting their thumb on the scale of good in all sorts of ways philanthropy, political giving, impact, investment, supply chain management. And as we say, I'm all about the and but we didn't have a tool or a technology ecosystem to host that work in a way that was really tied to the functions, right? What's happening, who's doing it? What are the outcomes, and also a way to tie work together that was maybe seemingly disparate but actually super connected. So a company or a philanthropist or a nonprofit may be doing ten different things in different ways, but they're all tracking toward hunger or they're all tracking toward literacy. And you want to be able to say through advocacy, through giving, through volunteerism, through communications and social media. We've moved the needle on this issue, and being able to actually pull reports that speak to that current reality was something that we were missing and that I was frustrated by and frustrated enough that I built a SaaS platform.