Bringing transparency to charity donations 🥫
How Robert Harfouche managed to reconciliate tech entrepreneurship and helping those in needs…
Many startup founders become entrepreneurs to find greater meaning in their lives, but creating impact sustainably is always a tricky challenge. Robert is the founder of Efiester and Just Help and is well experienced in bridging the two propositions.
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Thank you Robert for taking the time to share your experience with us. First of all, could you tell us how you first became an entrepreneur?
I am originally from Baabda, a city located a dozen kilometers from Beirut in Lebanon. I come from a middle-class family of entrepreneurial parents who were always self-employed. I received the best education at Notre-Dame College of Jamhour and Saint Joseph University in Beirut. Once I got my Master's in telecom, I left Lebanon to continue my engineering studies at Telecom Bretagne in France. Two years later, I graduated and was quickly hired by a banking software company. I was then hired by Orange as a telecom project manager for the next 5 years.Â
Although my job was interesting, I needed more challenges. I worked 7 days a week, sometimes 15 hours a day, and led a double life: an employee by day and entrepreneur by night. On my 30 birthday, I decided to launch an entrepreneurial project and leave Orange. I was maybe going through an early mid-life crisis!Â
I started by launching Efiester, an online shopping solution destined for students. For the first time, they could order groceries without minimum order and delivery fees. How could this work? Only because they all accepted to be delivered the same day.
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I led a double life: an employee by day and entrepreneur by night.
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However, before you became an entrepreneur, you were already involved in the world of charity and NGOs. Why are those topics so important to you?
Every summer, my parents would send me to summer camp for three weeks. It was the only opportunity for me to meet young people my age. I lived with children who came from the same background as me but also with others from more disadvantaged ones. The vast majority were Iraqi or Palestinian children whose parents had fled their country of origin and sought refuge in Lebanon penniless. The culture shock was great. The stay allowed us - privileged children - to realize that we had a privileged situation facing these young people in distress who, for once, enjoyed a few days of comfort during which they were well housed and fed, far from their harsh reality. What was remarkable was their extraordinary zest for life and the fact that they were not complaining about anything. We had everything a kid our age could dream of (and more) but we always complained and grumbled when something did not go our way.Â
My awareness grew over time, and a few summers later I became an instructor and had to take care of a group of 10 children from different social backgrounds. I had an 11-year-old child in my group who kept asking for his Strawberry Nesquik for breakfast and did not want to eat the same as everyone else. So I had to secretly satisfy his spoiled childish whim. But as the days went by, he began to observe how poor children were throwing themselves at the breakfast he did not want, and he ended up asking me to have the same as them.Â
The camp was run by my aunt, a religious nun, but it was out of the question for all these years to have any privileges or to have a more comfortable vacation than the others. (Well maybe a little…)
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It seems like your experience in that world was rather disconnected from the world of digital solutions and startups, how did you manage to reconcile the two?
As mentioned before, my first startup was Efiester - the online grocery shop for students. At some point, I noticed that with the same technology I had used to create Efiester, I would be able to launch another project that was growing more and more inside me.Â
In 2016, when parking in a parking lot with a friend, we came across volunteers from the Red Cross, and we started talking about donations. My friend admitted to me that he prefers to give help to the ones in need directly because by donating to an association, 30% to 50% of his money would go to operational costs, while, if he buys the food himself, 100% of his donation would go to the recipient.Â
I made several observations following this discussion:Â
• Many people prefer to donate in-kind and directly to the needy.Â
• When giving online, you can only give money.Â
• When we shop online, we can already buy food for ourselves, why could we not buy it for someone else in need as an in-kind donation?
• Since charities already exist and collect needs, why could we not buy directly the items they need for their collections?
And that is how Just Help was born!
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We bet on transparency and it worked.
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Lebanese people have lived through very tough times recently. Since those events must have hit close to home for you, could you share with us how that impacted Just Help?
On August the 4th 2020, two explosions in Beirut left more than 200 dead and 6,500 injured. The capital has been ravaged in a country already devastated by an unprecedented economic crisis.Â
At the start of the adventure, it was my sister Aline who encouraged me to set up the project in Lebanon. Not being in the country myself, she took charge of the commercial and administrative development of the platform in Lebanon.Â
A year later, when the crisis was in full swing, I met, around a coffee in Paris, Sandra, a Franco-Lebanese. Captivated by the project, she offered me her help for free. Her only wish was to help her home country already plunged into crisis. Sandra took charge of business development and communication with charities.Â
Nohade, my second sister, joined the team after losing her managerial job at Bristol, one of Lebanon's iconic golden age hotels that closed due to the crisis. Not wanting to sit idly by, just like Sandra, Nohade offered to help for free. She takes care of the merchandising part, negotiating the best prices with suppliers for the benefit of charities.Â
Stimulated by our strong desire to help our country, we found ourselves, without realizing it, setting up a project. It was very helpful for Lebanese charities at the time of the crisis which was intensifying day after day. More and more charities wanted to launch online food drives day after day and donors around the world were answering their calls despite the tense political climate.Â
We bet on transparency and it worked.
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For someone who is not familiar with it, it seems that plenty of associations are pretty active at collecting donations nowadays. What is the problem with the current donation system then, and why would a service such as Just Help be necessary?
Since August 4, we have realized that donors are above all looking for transparency. They want to give, to help as much as they can, but they want to be sure that their money is getting to the right place. The government and governmental organizations have totally lost the confidence of the people. Even the Lebanese who want to help personally are afraid that the funds sent will be misappropriated.Â
The discussions with donors are more and more numerous as the days go by and we are doing our best to clarify that Just Help is not a fundraising platform. Therefore, the collected funds will never be transferred to the association or to the person who is at the initiative of the collection but released only to pay, in the name of the association and on the basis of an official invoice, the products that have been purchased.Â
Only then does the association receive the products and sends them to families in need.
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In the end, the charities are missing a lot of the different products they need.
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Since every association is free to list all their needs on Just Help, what are the limits of the system? Is it only limited to food needs?
The main idea of Just Help is to help charities by asking donors to buy them the products they really need. Usually, a charity always receives the same products from food waste actions and food drives in front of supermarkets.Â
In the end, the charities are missing a lot of the different products they need. For example, hygiene products. A digital drive could be a solution in order to help donors know what to buy for the charity.
After our pilot with food drives, the charities expressed their need to organize even more diverse collections, such as Christmas gifts for children or school supplies for education.
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So you are bringing Good Samaritans closer to those who need help and their true needs. What was the response from associations and donors?
Very quickly, we were able to gain the trust of donors thanks to our business model that does not include any product margins and is entirely based on optional contributions by the donors. Over the course of two months, the mobilization of hundreds of Lebanese from all over the world was so strong that we succeeded in collecting 1 billion Lebanese pounds in food articles intended for thousands of needy families.
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To help us, you can connect us with charities.
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Although your mission seems to speak to many, what do you feel will be the main challenges to solve to reach the next level, and how could anyone support Just Help in spreading its impact to more people in need?
After the success of the launch of the platform, our challenge today is to grow our partnerships with suppliers and with charities.
We are a very young startup and few people know us. To help us, you can connect us with charities and tell them about our solution.
Meanwhile, we are currently raising funds to support our growth, if you want to know more, you can contact us directly by mail.Â
And for anyone who wishes to help a family in need, you can explore the charities on our platform and pick the one you wish to support.