With a natural philanthropic spirit, Randy Paynter founded the online advocacy website, Care2, in 1998 with the hope of making the world a kinder, more inclusive, and sustainable space. The business works by focusing on two aspects in which to generate support for social and environmental causes around the world. First, they empower individuals to take collective action through the petition of their own campaigns. Second, they work directly with non-profits to craft campaigns in an effort to generate/ recruit more donor prospects. Their scale and expertise allows them to effectively navigate shifts in the online market to maximize connections between activists and individuals, organizations, and responsible businesses trying to make positive impacts. Since it’s creation, Care2 has recruited over 90 million donor prospects for non-profits making them a leader in online advocacy.

In this interview, Randy outlines the initial challenges he faced while raising money to start Care2, and his sincere belief in creating an “engine for good” business model where good actions generate revenues that will help fuel more good actions. He discusses the concept that positive feedback through donation helps drive personal motivations to do more, and offers some examples of the types of hyper local or hyper specific campaigns that work well. Randy describes how big changes with the internet, primarily through the growth of Facebook and Google, has shifted the way we engage with various causes and non-profits by generating “interruptions” on social media. This may play an important role in the general increase seen in activism. As the spotlight grows on the transparency and accountability of businesses and governments, Randy mentions how these organizations will need to embrace more socially and environmentally sustainable practices.