BOAS is seeking €232k catalytic capital for municipal‑scale textile resale/recycling: permanent climate mitigation and ≥90%‑to‑charity funding stream >€1M+/yr (from 2029)
Quick take
€232k builds permanent circular textile hub: 19,500 tCO₂e/year avoided (€12/t Year-1, €0/t thereafter) + ~€1M+/year to EA causes from 2029 to forever. One grant → 200+ lives saved annually if directed to GiveWell + ongoing climate impact.
TL;DR
BOAS: a circular textile hub that resales overstock, returns and vintage clothing from municipalities and fashion brands with social workers coupled with robotics and AI. BOAS donates 90% of profit to effective charities, and its founder also co-founded the Profit for Good movement that now sits with Peter Singer and The School for Moral Ambition.
Model: Capture 3.4M+ kg/year textiles → AI‑assisted sort/grade/route → resell via B2B/marketplaces → donate ≥90% of distributable profits to EA‑aligned charities.
Why it works: Procurement partners pick mission‑locked operators when price/quality are comparable; that preference is our moat.
Impact: Year‑1 ~19,500 tCO₂e avoided at €12/t; Year‑2+ runs at €0/t to funders; 2029+ = €1M+/yr donated to effective charities (your choice).
Traction: Two contracts live; 14 LOIs; late‑stage municipal contract for 3.4M+ kg/year (2026 start; details shareable under NDA), profitable retail stores (funds go to working capital, overhead and capital expenditures).
Safeguards: Steward‑ownership mission‑lock (already in place), independent board oversight, pre‑registered measurement with public quarterly KPIs. BOAS is already funded by a bank foundation, investor foundations, crowdfunding, the Dutch government and a large municipality, so has passed some of the most difficult due diligence. 65% of funding is covered by other investors.
EA backing: Peter Singer, Marcus Daniell (founder HIA), Jochem Wieringa (founder 10% club), Sjir Hoeijmakers (CEO GWWC) have invested in/donated to BOAS. Rutger Bregman and Julia van Boven (founders The School for Moral Ambition) have endorsed BOAS publicly.
Ask: €232k catalytic capital (recoverable grant / PRI / equity / direct donation). Small contributions via Eyvestor (crowdfunding); larger tickets preferred via direct instruments. Contact [email protected].
Risk: BOAS is entering the scale-up phase, with lower risks and higher rewards to climate and effective charities, but this remains a risky investment for charity multiplication (profit for good). Funding can be contingent on the final signature of a large scale contract (NDA). With already profitable stores at 70% gross margin, and increased volume and lower buying prices, BOAS has made it likely to be break-even and achieve more scale with this investment. It’s worthy to note EAIF has just rejected this funding case (without written feedback), and people may ask EAIF in the comments to uncover the reason(s).
1) What BOAS does
Intervention. We contract for large textile streams (municipal collections; brand returns/overstock), then sort, grade, price, and route items with social workers, robotics and AI and standardized workflows. Product moves through B2B buyers, BOAS (franchise) stores and online channels. The result: textiles are kept in use, not burned or dumped.
Theory of change.
Resold items displace new production (64%, UK WRAP study) → CO₂e & water savings.
After ramping up, the hub generates operating surplus; ≥90% of distributable profits are donated annually to effective charities—targeting €1M+ per year by 2029.
Mission‑lock increases win‑rates with cities and brands (when price/quality equal), attracts talent, and earns coverage—advantages conventional for‑profit incumbents must pay for.
Not a perpetual‑grant shop. Donor capital builds the machine once; operations cover themselves after Year‑1.
2) Why Profit‑for‑Good matters here (business case + philanthropic multiplier)
Why partners choose us. When capabilities and pricing are comparable, public buyers and brands prefer mission‑locked operators:
Procurement advantage. Cities value transparent, mission‑aligned partners with verifiable impact (quarterly KPIs, audited donations).
Brand advantage. A returns partner funding, say, antimalarial nets is a stronger story than a logistics vendor.
Operating advantage. Mission pulls talent and earned media; conventional for‑profits buy the exposure we often get for free. BOAS has been covered by almost all Dutch Newspapers, Radio Stations and internationally at The Bangkok Post, TEDx, Peter Singer’s podcast and The School for Moral Ambition.
Crucially, these are structural advantages; they don't require operational trade‑offs.
Philanthropic multiplier.
Traditional grants: €232k → one‑off climate impact.
BOAS: €232k → Year‑1 climate impact plus a permanent operation that:
delivers ongoing CO₂e avoidance at €0/t to funders and
donates €1M+/yr from 2029 to the EA causes you select (global health/poverty, animal welfare, longtermism, or diversified).
If directed to GiveWell top charities (~$5k/life saved), €1M+/yr implies ~200+ lives saved annually—every year—alongside the climate benefits. One grant seeds durable climate infrastructure and a recurring EA funding stream that didn't previously exist. Funders can assign a risk % to this funding (e.g. there’s a 20% chance of achieving profitability and climate impact, so apply 80% discount percentage to numbers).
3) Why fund this vs. alternatives
Charity retail (Goodwill‑style): Important socially, but not designed for multi‑million‑kg municipal streams; typically lower throughput and limited climate measurement. BOAS targets 10×–20× throughput with standardized workflows and publishes climate accounting.
Conventional for‑profit resale platforms: Can scale, but profits accrue to shareholders; they lack mission‑lock, so they don't enjoy the same procurement/talent/media advantages. We compete on price/quality and win on mission transparency.
Direct climate interventions (e.g., refrigerants, cookstoves): Some achieve very low €/t—but require new funding every year. BOAS is one‑time catalytic; after Year‑1, it runs at €0/t to funders and generates charitable funding.
GiveWell top charities: Highest‑certainty impact per euro. BOAS is complementary, not a substitute—we create a recurring funding engine for GiveWell (or other EA causes) from redirected business profits.
We model Year‑1 climate cost‑effectiveness from the 3.4M‑kg/year municipal stream now in late‑stage contracting (we can share counterparty/terms under NDA). Inputs align with published research and regulation.
Resale percentage: 50% (aligned with Extended Producer Responsibility rules)
Displacement rate: 64% (from WRAP study on secondhand apparel displacing new production)
Emission factor (new textiles): ~20 kg CO₂e/kg (midpoint of apparel LCA ranges)
Catalytic funding need (Year‑1): €232k (one‑time)
Worked example (central case):
Intake: 3.4M kg → 1.7M kg resold @ 50%
Displacement: 64% → 1.088M kg new production avoided
Emissions averted: 1.088M × 20 kg CO₂e/kg = 21,760 tCO₂e
Conservatism/uncertainty buffer → ~19,500 tCO₂e
Year‑1 cost‑effectiveness: €232k ÷ 19,500 t = €12/tCO₂e
Year‑2+: operation self‑sustaining → €0/t to funders + donations ramp
2029+: €1M+/yr donated to EA causes (your choice)
Philanthropic ROI ladder:
€232k → one-time catalytic capital
Year-1: 19,500 tCO₂e avoided (€12/t)
Year-2+: 19,500 tCO₂e/year ongoing (€0/t to funders)
2029+: €1M+/year donated to EA causes (your choice)
10-year cumulative: €10M+ to EA causes + 195,000 tCO₂e avoided
From one €232k grant.
Sensitivity:
If displacement were 50% (vs. 64%), Year‑1 becomes ~€15/t.
If displacement were 70%, Year‑1 becomes ~€10/t.
Even pessimistic cases remain competitive today—then drop to €0/t to funders from Year‑2 onward while the donation stream grows.
(We'll share the full impact analysis spreadsheet—assumptions, sources, and sensitivity—on request.)
5) Traction (procurement‑compliant summary)
Live today: Two resale contracts operational (volumes underpin current throughput; terms shareable under NDA).
Pipeline: 14 LOIs across our hub region.
Late‑stage contracting: A municipal textile stream of 3.4M+ kg/year (anticipated 2026 start) that would increase revenue materially and establish the hub at scale. Procurement rules preclude naming the counterparty publicly; we'll share documents and volumes under NDA.
Unit economics (current ops):
Online and brick and mortar resale: ~70% gross margin (mix‑dependent), set to increase to 80%+ under new contract and launch of robotics and AI.
Piloted franchise stores: net‑profitable at store level; royalties accrue to the parent and fall under the ≥90% donation commitment.
6) How the hub operates (and why automation + mission‑lock matter)
Throughput is the bottleneck in textile resale. We combine automation (computer vision, assisted grading, routing) with standardized workstations and supported employment (on‑the‑job training for people facing barriers to work).
VNYX automation = zero direct cost to BOAS.
BOAS's founders also own VNYX (robotics/AI). That relationship creates a structural advantage: no cash outlay for automation that would otherwise cost rivals hundreds of thousands. BOAS captures faster throughput, higher accuracy, and better unit costs without capex drag. Related‑party arrangements follow a written policy with independent board oversight; we'll publish quarterly throughput/accuracy KPIs.
7) Measurement & public KPIs
Pre‑registered protocol at launch (we'll share the doc): displacement approach (WRAP baseline, plus ongoing buyer surveys, natural experiments, category cuts), resale percentage and throughput from system logs, standardized LCA factors with ranges.
Quarterly dashboard (public): intake (kg), resale %, displacement estimate, tCO₂e avoided, unit economics, and donations (post break‑even).
Annual audit summary and public donations ledger naming receiving charities and amounts.
8) Governance—the ≥90% promise is already locked
We use steward ownership to embed purpose in governance now:
≥90% of distributable profits committed annually to effective causes, encoded in shareholder agreements (available for investor review).
Independent board oversight with fiduciary duties to the mission.
Ongoing transparency: quarterly KPIs; annual financial/impact audit with public summary; donations ledger.
This isn't "marketing language"—it's how the company is set up today, and investors can verify it.
2029: €1M+ donated to effective charities; climate impact ongoing at €0/t to funders.
10) What success looks like (by 2029)
Operations: At a minimum: 3.4M+ kg/year processed; ≥50% resale; displacement validated near 64% (WRAP methodology). Aiming for 5X increase of resale/recycle KG’s by partnering with more municipalities and fashion brands.
Financial sustainability: No donor funds required after Year‑1; transparent KPIs.
Annual donations: €1M+ to effective charities (per financial forecast, available to funders)—repeatable and growing each year.
Directed to GiveWell: ~200+ lives saved per year (order‑of‑magnitude) while climate impact continues.
Replication: A public, auditable template for other cities to copy without reinventing the stack.
11) Key uncertainties & how we handle them
Displacement. We anchor on WRAP's 64%. We'll validate locally via buyer surveys (with bias notes), stockouts/natural experiments, and category segmentation. If realized displacement is lower (e.g., ~50%), Year‑1 shifts to ~€15/t; the €0/t dynamic and donation ramp still hold.
Operational execution. We stage ramp; publish throughput, resale %, and sell‑through. Zero‑cost automation substantially de‑risks throughput relative to manual‑only competitors.
Demand variability. We diversify channels (B2B, franchise stores, multiple marketplaces, DTC), adjust category mix, and lean on existing ~70% gross margins in online ops as buffer.
12) We're seeking €232k in catalytic capital
Preferred instruments: Recoverable grant or PRI (1–3% coupon). Equity is possible with clear treatment under the ≥90% donation rule. Small contributions via Eyvestor; larger tickets preferred via direct instruments.
What you get:
Quarterly KPI dashboard (public)
Pre‑registered measurement protocol
Annual audit summary & public donations ledger
NDA access to contract details, counterparty, governance docs, and financial model
Donation routing: We'll direct the ≥90% stream to the EA causes you prioritize— TLYCS, GWWC, GiveWell top charities, animal welfare funds, longtermist portfolios, or a diversified mix.
Larger contributions: Email [email protected] for full materials (financial model, impact analysis, NDA contract details, governance documents)
Questions welcome below—especially on displacement methodology, climate accounting, governance verification, or measurement approach. We'll incorporate improvements with attribution.
Appendix A — Impact analysis notes (sources & sensitivity)
Emission factor: Apparel/new textiles typically ~15–25 kg CO₂e/kg (fiber/energy mix dependent). We model 20 kg central; test 15/25 kg in sensitivity.
Displacement: 64% from WRAP's study on secondhand apparel displacing new purchases; we'll validate locally and publish estimates with error bars.
Resale %: 50% consistent with Extended Producer Responsibility regimes.
Intake volume: 3.4M kg/year reflects the late‑stage municipal stream, likely to increase with fashion brand and new municipal contracts.
Full spreadsheet: Available to prospective funders (assumptions, sources, toggles).
Appendix B — Why now?
EU textile disposal rules are tightening, but municipal‑scale resale infrastructure is scarce. That gap creates a window where one‑time catalytic capital can establish an operating hub that runs on its own cash thereafter—delivering climate mitigation at €0/t to funders and €1M+/yr in donations to effective charities from 2029 onward. Transparent KPIs and audits make it easy for cities to copy what works.
I want to be careful with the criticism here since I generally want to appreciate people working hard on things they believe in but I want to recommend against people donating to this on any kind of cost-effectiveness grounds. I've followed and received investor updates (though I have never given them any money) to BOAS for maybe ~2 years now seeing their operations ~4 years and have also read up on the Profit-For-Good stuff.
You shouldn't expect PfG companies to be great vs. alternatives.
If you want to make an investment that gives capital to philanthropic causes every year to, in the words of PfG, create a philanthropic multiple, you can simply invest in the stock market or in bonds and give the profits/dividends/appreciation to charity. If you do this, less money goes to the charities in year 1 but you get this "sustained over time". Similar things happen with endowments, certain trusts, etc. I don't see great evidence for any kind of special or magical
BOAS in particular doesn't seem like a great investment
BOAS has existed for several years now and, to put it bluntly, the numbers aren't great. Without the kind of philanthropic support it has received from seemingly non-economic actors, I think it would have died a while ago. This isn't to impune Vincent; most businesses fail and these types of consumer recycling marketplaces are just difficult and fail extremely frequently despite good intentions.
Any normal pitch for funding from a company this old would be showing a lot of metrics like monthly revenue, monthy net profit, etc. I think the fact that it isn't there is fairly telling.
Just donate directly or invest+donate
If BOAS isn't giving to your preferred cause areas, it obviously makes more sense to donate there directly. If Global Health is your preferred cause area, you should simply, donate there directly and/or invest money and give away returns.
I still think Brad and Vincent are fighting, with valour, for an idea they believe in and I commend them for this but I just don't think this idea is working. When this is the case, it's better that they get the sign "from the market" rather than continue to fund their project.
I appreciate your concern for the effective use of philanthropic funds. And I would be remiss if I did not take pause when the previous #1 trader on Manifold and a generally successful investor disagrees with me. But brilliant people have been fantastically wrong on some things historically, and I think you’ve missed the mark regarding your assessment of Profit for Good.
First, regarding your BOAS claims, I will leave Vin to address that, if he elects to do so.
Your comments regarding Profit for Good generally do not engage with the arguments we have made. As you’ve indicated, a perpetual stream of funds can be unlocked through an index fund or a sufficiently diversified set of assets. This is not what we mean by a philanthropic multiplier. We assert that, in expectation, a set of PFG equities should outperform an index fund.
According to our theory, the reason for this outperformance is because the stakeholders whose activities are relevant in business performance have a nonzero preference for the charitable cause. That is to say, if all else is equal (same price, same quality, same convenience and other relevant factors), people would rather money go toward saving a kid from malaria than enriching a random investor. This theory would apply not just to potential buyers of the product, but to other stakeholders such as potential employees, media, suppliers, and government. And unlike other forms of business, ownership of a business by a charity or charitable foundation does not necessarily negatively affect operations whatsoever. So while other forms of social enterprise often entail costs that make them less competitive (i.e., fair trade coffee costs increased supply costs to consumers), there is no inherent operational disadvantage to being owned by a foundation (indeed, in our current economy, most stock ownership of mid to large size businesses is passive).
So, the financial case for a PFG is that of operational parity (or no structural disadvantage) in conjunction with an advantage from stakeholder preference. I would emphasize that I have never contended that this stakeholder preference is large in all contexts. In fact, research shows that, by and large, people are not willing to pay significant premiums for ethical products (hence Fair Trade’s market cap). But where people do not have to pay premiums or otherwise sacrifice for ethical products, adoption happens quickly. Because PFGs method of doing good is through ownership rather than through operations, there is no structural reason they cannot offer relative parity of choice.
You might be interested to know that I have been working on a research compilation to support this thesis over the past several months. I have researched behavioral and reported preferences across a variety of stakeholder categories (consumers, employees, media, suppliers, procurers, governments, etc.). I have also researched PFG performance across the limited span of them that exist. I have researched product adoption patterns and the relationship between product adoption and price/quality parity, and other matters.
The research supports the common sense assertion that people prefer buying in an ethical way when it doesn’t cost them any more. That employees would rather their work have a purpose and are often willing to accept slightly lower pay to have a job full of meaning (also, much lower turnover). That media happily amplifies the stories of businesses that work for charitable rather than shareholder enrichment, enabling greater reach with lower advertising spend. That governments put socially beneficial businesses, of which Profit for Good businesses generally qualify, in privileged positions when considering contracts.
And these advantages compound. When Humanitix saves significant labor costs because of industry-leading labor retention, it can pass on savings and charge less. Similarly, it can save money on marketing spend when Sam Harris endorses them on his podcast. When you add the stakeholder advantages across the categories, it is the ingredient for capturing market share from competitors who cannot replicate it.
I hope to have the compilation complete in the next few weeks, though I can’t make any promises. I will be using it in the book I am drafting on Profit for Good as a promising tool philanthropists could use to better the world.
I don’t really know what our cruxes are, Marcus. I suspect that it has to do with the degree of stakeholder preference (I think you put it at zero, and I think it’s generally positive and the degree of which significantly differs depending on context). I anticipate you saying that it is drowned out by other factors and I would agree that other factors are more important. But there is no reason that the balance of other factors would incline toward non-PFGs rather than PFGs and it is smart to play with a coin that is even slightly weighted toward you. And further, I think that intelligent consideration of where stakeholder preferences could make the biggest difference will make the compound advantages much more compelling than a slightly weighted coin.
You say that we should get the “sign from the market”, but this is not a market that philanthropists have historically participated in. Historically, they’ve separated their business holdings from their philanthropic activity. Where there has been external investment in PFG, such as with Humanitix by the Atlassian Foundation, for instance, it has paid off magnificently. Thankyou, a PFG in Australia has been a category leader. When it tried to get capital to expand, it could have got it from private investors in exchange for significant equity in exchange, but philanthropists did not want to take advantage of this opportunity. The Profit for Good game is just one that philanthropists has not been playing and no one has been measuring stakeholder preferences and performance implications.
It isn’t that “this has been tried and the market has spoken”. It has, generally, not been tried. Which is a damn shame given what it could do if we are right and you are wrong.
Hi Brad, appreciate the praise though it's unnecessary :). I'll reply to your points here. If there are some others you particularly want me to address, feel free to let me know.
We assert that, in expectation, a set of PFG equities should outperform an index fund.
I don't think this has been shown. For example, the largest and most profitable companies in existence are normal for-profit companies.
That is to say, if all else is equal (same price, same quality, same convenience and other relevant factors), people would rather money go toward saving a kid from malaria than enriching a random investor.
Maybe, though I haven't seen much/any evidence for this and I think things are very rarely ever equal like this.
In the next bit, you give several anecdotes. I think those are very easy to give. You probably don't show the failures (most of which you probably don't know of!) and I could give you millions of anecdotes about the free advertising, preferential treatment, etc. of other businesses. I agree, people wish the world were more charitable, but they don't want to pay for that.
Actually, I think there is a real-world example where what you are hoping for didn't happen, Glo dollar. They've been around for a while with a current Mcap of ~3M circulating, which is basically nothing (they can't even cover operating costs). Stablecoins are as close as one gets to a commodity/undifferentiated good, where, according to my understanding of PfG theory, they should have been able to dominate the market. The best talent should have flocked to develop Glo dollar. Stablecoin holders should have been more than happy to hold Glo dollars instead of USDC/USDT, since it's just a change of who gets the interest from treasuries. There should have been several compounding advantages and such.
I suppose my overall point about PfG would be that we should basically invest in good companies insofar as our discount rate is less than our expected returns, and we should seek to invest in good companies that will maximize our (risk-adjusted) returns. Focusing on so-called PfG companies will cause us to deviate from good investment strategies because people are going to see imaginary gains.
As a thought, why do we need to "start new companies" with this strategy, why can't we just buy up the stock of a random public company and then tell people, "you will further our philanthropic goals if you choose company A over company B since philanthropic holders own company A stock"?
@Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 we should absolutely do what you say in your last paragraph, and we also call that PFG. We just have to make sure this is locked in governance (e.g. foundation owned, steward-ownership). I would love to buy existing businesses and turn them PFG, or invest more in existing PFG's (e.g. I think a philanthropist should give Humanitix dozens of millions to try and dominate the American ticketing market).
There's pretty good evidence on foundation-owned businesses outperforming their competitors (I don't want to seem like I will pick and choose evidence, so start by looking at peer-reviewed data on foundation owned businesses yourself). That's somewhat amazing considering PFG's are mostly not allowed to exist, so I didn't expect this evidence to even be able to exist. Philanthropists and investors have always deprived PFG's of necessary capital, sometimes intentional, but often unintentional. That Rolex, Bosch, Newman's Own, Carl Zeiss, Patagonia, AFAS, Rituals and Humanitix have all outperformed in their industries is a very encouraging sign. It's a shame it's so far missed by philanthropists. I invite everyone to find as much evidence against PFG's as possible, and I agree Glo hasn't been able to be successful.
I appreciate you taking the time to write out a critique. I had to clarify and rectify some of what you wrote below.
But first, I'm not going to go into your take on PFG's not having a disadvantage, because a lot has been written on it, and a lot of data has been referenced there. For that I refer to the research on foundation-owned businesses, the success of Rolex, Bosch, Patagonia, Humanitix, ThankYou and other PFG's, the talks of the PFG conference, and the reasoning for their success in the TEDx talks of Alex Amouyel, Brad West, myself and the writing of Peter Singer and The School for Moral Ambition on these subjects. You can also read my writing, as well as that of @Brad West🔸 on this forum about it. People can make up their own minds on benefits for PFG's existing or not. I can only anecdotally share that I have had many benefits of being a PFG (I have written on that already), and only one clear disadvantage (the one that might kill this business): the lack of access to funding. Your comment reinforces that system, although you do it with the best intentions (wanting people to donate directly or ETG, which I believe perpetuates suboptimal systems). What I can say with certainty is that we would have not gotten the contract that is likely to make our company much larger and profitable next year (the 3.4M/KG per year textile resale streams).
What is important is that the data and critique on my company is accurate. I'm sure it's unintentional, but there are some things that I need to clarify and rectify:
I do share monthly KPI's in our investor newsletter (the one you're getting), including the ones you mention. Any investor has full and transparent access to past performance and predicted performance. Anyone on here can request and get them immediately ([email protected]). Sharing monthly's here is going to be messy without tables. So sharing FY and estimate of this year here for 2023, 2024 and 2025 (expected). 2023 Revenue/Net Profit 30K/-47K. 2024 225K/-151K. 2025 450K/-170K. This post was written by Brad West, with my approval, and focuses on future performance. There was never any intention to hide past performance, nor do I think it's as bad as you say:
Granted to you, we still burn 1 euro for each 3 euro's we make, but this is quickly declining (we burnt 5 more euro's per revenue euro 2 years ago), and our revenue has doubled in a year where focus wasn't on revenue growth (see below). I can share current costs and new contract costs, which cuts our biggest cost center (resale fashion buying) in half, so I can substantiate revenue increases and cost decreases with contracts and data. Please note that in the last 6 months our company burnt less than 50K and I expect our Q4 to be close to or break-even, and our two store are net profitable, so the burn is mostly going to overhead and the building of the hub.
This year was a bridge year, we built robotics (in a separate company because BOAS didn't get the necessary investment for it because it's a PFG, but I did manage to pledge 90% of my shares to the BOAS foundation, currently valued by signed investors 1M, and most of that value is thanks to BOAS) and AI for faster and higher margin resale with BOAS, and we were securing large contracts (which we succeeded in). With the new contract (can be shared under NDA) we have access to 4-6x more clothing at half the price I'm currently paying. Considering our stores are net profitable (again, happy to share numbers with investors) at the current 2X higher price, we have made it somewhat credible that this company will be significantly bigger and break even at the end of next year. Again, all of this is modeled extensively in financial forecasts, which were made by me (economics degree) and checked with dozens of professionals, as well as passing due diligence by investors, including a bank.
Our pitch deck obviously includes past financials, but cannot be shared without NDA because it contains information I'm not allowed to share. I can share an anonymised version, but prefer to hop on a call with serious investors to show the actual contractors (since the contract is of demonstrably high value).
BOAS pivoted 2.5 years ago, and I do acknowledge I ran a sustainable marketplace before that (for 1.5 years, parttime next to a fulltime job with zero funding), which was a terribly bad idea. I think it's fair to say that BOAS should be judged on the past 2.5 years, and I don't think our numbers offset to the investment received are bad, but I do agree they are not great either. I argue that with the contract, they will be significantly better.
Our investors include economic ones, and they include a bank. Obviously you're going to get philanthropic/foundation funding if you donate 90% of profits, since you can't go to for profit investors, so the 'non-economic investors' isn't completely true.
Of course, BOAS would have surely died without investors, similar to our for-profit competition, who have raised and burnt (far) more money. We're trying to scale up fashion resale, which is very hard (I would argue impossible) to do without funding. Is there a problem to me asking for investment vs. my for-profit competition asking for investment?
We are not a recycling company. We are a clothing resale company. We agree recycling is a terrible business with high failure rates, although you should be aware of the EPR and ESPR regulations in the EU currently and quickly changing the recycling game for the better.
"If BOAS isn't giving to your preferred cause areas, it obviously makes more sense to donate there directly. If Global Health is your preferred cause area, you should simply, donate there directly and/or invest money and give away returns." Investors can invest X% in BOAS and we can return the multiple of that investment in future donations to preferred cause areas (e.g. X% of the profits), as the post clearly states. We disagree on investing to give being more effective than PFG (see top of this comment for people to make up their own minds).
Ill reply to a few points. If there is one you feel is very strong you want me to address, let me know. Again, I want to say that I think you clearly have great intentions with BOAS and PFG.
I do share monthly KPI's in our investor newsletter
Yes, I meant that usually a pitch like this would have this if numbers were great. I do have some of the investor updates you sent me and I wouldn't disclose them without permission but I had them in mind.
I think you should just post 2025 revenue/gross profit/net profit to date. I guess a thing I have seen somewhat persistently is some rather large "expectations of growth" that are called conservative but frankly, aren't at all. From the OP,
10-year cumulative: €10M+ to EA causes + 195,000 tCO₂e avoided
From one €232k grant.
This type of thing is often presented as "happening" when it's more like you hope it to happen.
People can make up their own minds on benefits for PFG's existing or not. I can only anecdotally share that I have had many benefits of being a PFG.
I worry that this is going to come off a bit too negative but, I agree. Many people who wouldn't invest in this under normal circumstances are going to because it feels like a good cause and aren't looking at it as rigorously.
I don't feel very strong about any of your points, I just want our business and numbers reflected accurately. To your points:
Brad wrote the post, he didn't have clear access to my numbers. Again, the pitch has the numbers, and happy to have Brad add them to the post (but don't think it matters since I posted them in the comments).
2025 actuals Jan-Sep: 324K/-177K. Important to note than in retail Q4 usually amounts to 30-45% of yearly revenue instead of 25%. I won't see such strong revenue growth because we lack funding, but the 450K quoted earlier is likely too conservative. Flat extrapolation would put us at 440K, and I have bigger stores, Q4 holiday season and some B2B deals just closed.
You are absolutely right that startups and non-profits present things as happening. I also agree it's put too optimistic. Our financial models use market standard discounted cash flows to account for risks, and this remains a high-EV case.
In our latest bridge round (estimated 2025 financials in 2024, but closed april 2025) we raised 100K instead of the required 200K and we're ending at 440-500K instead of the promised 580K revenue for 2025. I'm not sure how we would have performed with the actually needed capital, but currently we're making 4-5 euro's of revenue for each euro burned, so it seems realistic that my forecast was realistic.
I don't want people to invest in BOAS without looking at it rigurously, because even with very large discounts (higher than market discount rates), BOAS has a higher EV than donating to give (feel free to adjust the mistakes in Patrick Grubans EV model, discount even more, add continuing values (or not if you somehow argue that you shouldn't do that), and check for yourself). I'm still missing good economic points on why this couldn't be an interesting but risky investment for future donations.
I will park this discussion from my end, I've made my points (people can dismiss them, more than fine with that) and I have funding to raise for a PFG, which is hard enough with accurate data and portrayals of our company. I encourage everyone to request our actual numbers, contracts and letters of intent, and our different financial models (base, worst, minimum funding cases), and come and jump on a call with me. I wish you and EAIF had done the same before dismissing it.
Thanks for following BOAS, and I hope to prove you wrong in the future.
I agree and would encourage potential investors to take into consideration base rates of startups reaching €1M+ on profits yearly when comparing this to other forms of investments. I spent 5 min prompting Claude to come up with a BOTEC based on this post, which I haven't checked but could be an entry point to additional research.
Interestingly, Claude‘s numbers would actually suggest that BOAS is a higher EV decision (for some reason, it appears to double-count the risk; I.e., it took the EV which takes 60% failure into account and multiplied it again by 0.4).
Not that anyone here should (or would) make these decisions based on unchecked Claude BOTECs anyway; just found it to be an interesting flaw.
@Kevin Xia 🔸 thanks for pointing out the mistake too.
In addition to the previously mentioned mistakes, from an economist perspective it would be more accurate to use a 'continuing value' after using a 'discounted cash flow' for post 2029 profits, adding the lifetime of average foundation owned businesses. This would likely change results (possibly dramatically) while making them more accurate. Your BOTEC stops when BOAS reaches higher profitability in 2029, which is when most of the impact is just starting.
Again, this should be discounted for the risk, which your model has done (accidentally twice, which needs to be adjusted).
@Patrick Gruban 🔸 could you run the model with continuing values for stock market and BOAS, and remove double risk counting? I can check the BOTEC after to make sure it's actually accurate.
My short Claude prompt was only intended as a conversation starter, so I'm happy this worked. I'm not considering investing, but if potential investors would like to carry this on and share here, this might be useful.
There is a mistake in this analysis, but I'm happy that by removing the mistakes we come out as a clear winner. - Double accounts for risk (in expected value, and then it applies risk again on the expected value, which already included an 80-90% risk/failure rate) - Your analysis gives zero weight to the social cost of carbon and social return on investment, which in conservative scenarios return additional millions to society in our case, and in most stock market cases would have costs instead of benefits - We are not a consumer marketplace, and we are not in recycling
Hi Vince! Have you considered running BOAS as a for-profit company until you get enough volume to afford going non-profit? I suppose it could help you get more funding
The problem with doing this is that once BOAS takes off, the normal for-profit shareholders would have to be bought out for him to "go non-profit". And the cost to buy them out would far exceed the startup costs. This is why investors often like funding businesses at the ground floor rather than buying shares of businesses that have already captured immense market share.
I also don't like characterizing businesses like BOAS as "nonprofit". They are trying to make an obscene profit, like other businesses, but for charities rather than private investors.
A PFG is not a non-profit. PFG's are for profits that have charities or philanthropists as owners (and have that governance locked). This is a very important distinction to make.
I know from experience that my current fundraising ask would have been easily fulfilled by for-profit investors, so yes we would be able to grow and become profitable much easier if we were for-profit, but these investors wouldn't allow me to go back to my PFG model. I have seen multiple PFG's turn to for-profits and lose their model and impact forever.
Thanks for publicly posting the final stretch of our fundraising request! You can invest for as little as 20 euro's if you want to contribute to the BOAS and Profit for Good journey: https://platform.eyevestor.com/eyeventures/NL_BOA?lang=en
It's good for the public to know that EAIF just declined this same request (no feedback so not sure why).
Also, does anyone have a good intro to OpenPhil for this request? People tell me they are a good fit, but I can't reach out cold unfortunately.
I look forward to getting any questions regarding this funding option!
AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
I want to be careful with the criticism here since I generally want to appreciate people working hard on things they believe in but I want to recommend against people donating to this on any kind of cost-effectiveness grounds. I've followed and received investor updates (though I have never given them any money) to BOAS for maybe ~2 years now seeing their operations ~4 years and have also read up on the Profit-For-Good stuff.
You shouldn't expect PfG companies to be great vs. alternatives.
If you want to make an investment that gives capital to philanthropic causes every year to, in the words of PfG, create a philanthropic multiple, you can simply invest in the stock market or in bonds and give the profits/dividends/appreciation to charity. If you do this, less money goes to the charities in year 1 but you get this "sustained over time". Similar things happen with endowments, certain trusts, etc. I don't see great evidence for any kind of special or magical
BOAS in particular doesn't seem like a great investment
BOAS has existed for several years now and, to put it bluntly, the numbers aren't great. Without the kind of philanthropic support it has received from seemingly non-economic actors, I think it would have died a while ago. This isn't to impune Vincent; most businesses fail and these types of consumer recycling marketplaces are just difficult and fail extremely frequently despite good intentions.
Any normal pitch for funding from a company this old would be showing a lot of metrics like monthly revenue, monthy net profit, etc. I think the fact that it isn't there is fairly telling.
Just donate directly or invest+donate
If BOAS isn't giving to your preferred cause areas, it obviously makes more sense to donate there directly. If Global Health is your preferred cause area, you should simply, donate there directly and/or invest money and give away returns.
I still think Brad and Vincent are fighting, with valour, for an idea they believe in and I commend them for this but I just don't think this idea is working. When this is the case, it's better that they get the sign "from the market" rather than continue to fund their project.
Marcus,
I appreciate your concern for the effective use of philanthropic funds. And I would be remiss if I did not take pause when the previous #1 trader on Manifold and a generally successful investor disagrees with me. But brilliant people have been fantastically wrong on some things historically, and I think you’ve missed the mark regarding your assessment of Profit for Good.
First, regarding your BOAS claims, I will leave Vin to address that, if he elects to do so.
Your comments regarding Profit for Good generally do not engage with the arguments we have made. As you’ve indicated, a perpetual stream of funds can be unlocked through an index fund or a sufficiently diversified set of assets. This is not what we mean by a philanthropic multiplier. We assert that, in expectation, a set of PFG equities should outperform an index fund.
According to our theory, the reason for this outperformance is because the stakeholders whose activities are relevant in business performance have a nonzero preference for the charitable cause. That is to say, if all else is equal (same price, same quality, same convenience and other relevant factors), people would rather money go toward saving a kid from malaria than enriching a random investor. This theory would apply not just to potential buyers of the product, but to other stakeholders such as potential employees, media, suppliers, and government. And unlike other forms of business, ownership of a business by a charity or charitable foundation does not necessarily negatively affect operations whatsoever. So while other forms of social enterprise often entail costs that make them less competitive (i.e., fair trade coffee costs increased supply costs to consumers), there is no inherent operational disadvantage to being owned by a foundation (indeed, in our current economy, most stock ownership of mid to large size businesses is passive).
So, the financial case for a PFG is that of operational parity (or no structural disadvantage) in conjunction with an advantage from stakeholder preference. I would emphasize that I have never contended that this stakeholder preference is large in all contexts. In fact, research shows that, by and large, people are not willing to pay significant premiums for ethical products (hence Fair Trade’s market cap). But where people do not have to pay premiums or otherwise sacrifice for ethical products, adoption happens quickly. Because PFGs method of doing good is through ownership rather than through operations, there is no structural reason they cannot offer relative parity of choice.
You might be interested to know that I have been working on a research compilation to support this thesis over the past several months. I have researched behavioral and reported preferences across a variety of stakeholder categories (consumers, employees, media, suppliers, procurers, governments, etc.). I have also researched PFG performance across the limited span of them that exist. I have researched product adoption patterns and the relationship between product adoption and price/quality parity, and other matters.
The research supports the common sense assertion that people prefer buying in an ethical way when it doesn’t cost them any more. That employees would rather their work have a purpose and are often willing to accept slightly lower pay to have a job full of meaning (also, much lower turnover). That media happily amplifies the stories of businesses that work for charitable rather than shareholder enrichment, enabling greater reach with lower advertising spend. That governments put socially beneficial businesses, of which Profit for Good businesses generally qualify, in privileged positions when considering contracts.
And these advantages compound. When Humanitix saves significant labor costs because of industry-leading labor retention, it can pass on savings and charge less. Similarly, it can save money on marketing spend when Sam Harris endorses them on his podcast. When you add the stakeholder advantages across the categories, it is the ingredient for capturing market share from competitors who cannot replicate it.
I hope to have the compilation complete in the next few weeks, though I can’t make any promises. I will be using it in the book I am drafting on Profit for Good as a promising tool philanthropists could use to better the world.
I don’t really know what our cruxes are, Marcus. I suspect that it has to do with the degree of stakeholder preference (I think you put it at zero, and I think it’s generally positive and the degree of which significantly differs depending on context). I anticipate you saying that it is drowned out by other factors and I would agree that other factors are more important. But there is no reason that the balance of other factors would incline toward non-PFGs rather than PFGs and it is smart to play with a coin that is even slightly weighted toward you. And further, I think that intelligent consideration of where stakeholder preferences could make the biggest difference will make the compound advantages much more compelling than a slightly weighted coin.
You say that we should get the “sign from the market”, but this is not a market that philanthropists have historically participated in. Historically, they’ve separated their business holdings from their philanthropic activity. Where there has been external investment in PFG, such as with Humanitix by the Atlassian Foundation, for instance, it has paid off magnificently. Thankyou, a PFG in Australia has been a category leader. When it tried to get capital to expand, it could have got it from private investors in exchange for significant equity in exchange, but philanthropists did not want to take advantage of this opportunity. The Profit for Good game is just one that philanthropists has not been playing and no one has been measuring stakeholder preferences and performance implications.
It isn’t that “this has been tried and the market has spoken”. It has, generally, not been tried. Which is a damn shame given what it could do if we are right and you are wrong.
Hi Brad, appreciate the praise though it's unnecessary :). I'll reply to your points here. If there are some others you particularly want me to address, feel free to let me know.
I don't think this has been shown. For example, the largest and most profitable companies in existence are normal for-profit companies.
Maybe, though I haven't seen much/any evidence for this and I think things are very rarely ever equal like this.
In the next bit, you give several anecdotes. I think those are very easy to give. You probably don't show the failures (most of which you probably don't know of!) and I could give you millions of anecdotes about the free advertising, preferential treatment, etc. of other businesses. I agree, people wish the world were more charitable, but they don't want to pay for that.
Actually, I think there is a real-world example where what you are hoping for didn't happen, Glo dollar. They've been around for a while with a current Mcap of ~3M circulating, which is basically nothing (they can't even cover operating costs). Stablecoins are as close as one gets to a commodity/undifferentiated good, where, according to my understanding of PfG theory, they should have been able to dominate the market. The best talent should have flocked to develop Glo dollar. Stablecoin holders should have been more than happy to hold Glo dollars instead of USDC/USDT, since it's just a change of who gets the interest from treasuries. There should have been several compounding advantages and such.
I suppose my overall point about PfG would be that we should basically invest in good companies insofar as our discount rate is less than our expected returns, and we should seek to invest in good companies that will maximize our (risk-adjusted) returns. Focusing on so-called PfG companies will cause us to deviate from good investment strategies because people are going to see imaginary gains.
As a thought, why do we need to "start new companies" with this strategy, why can't we just buy up the stock of a random public company and then tell people, "you will further our philanthropic goals if you choose company A over company B since philanthropic holders own company A stock"?
@Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 we should absolutely do what you say in your last paragraph, and we also call that PFG. We just have to make sure this is locked in governance (e.g. foundation owned, steward-ownership). I would love to buy existing businesses and turn them PFG, or invest more in existing PFG's (e.g. I think a philanthropist should give Humanitix dozens of millions to try and dominate the American ticketing market).
There's pretty good evidence on foundation-owned businesses outperforming their competitors (I don't want to seem like I will pick and choose evidence, so start by looking at peer-reviewed data on foundation owned businesses yourself). That's somewhat amazing considering PFG's are mostly not allowed to exist, so I didn't expect this evidence to even be able to exist. Philanthropists and investors have always deprived PFG's of necessary capital, sometimes intentional, but often unintentional. That Rolex, Bosch, Newman's Own, Carl Zeiss, Patagonia, AFAS, Rituals and Humanitix have all outperformed in their industries is a very encouraging sign. It's a shame it's so far missed by philanthropists. I invite everyone to find as much evidence against PFG's as possible, and I agree Glo hasn't been able to be successful.
Hi Marcus,
I appreciate you taking the time to write out a critique. I had to clarify and rectify some of what you wrote below.
But first, I'm not going to go into your take on PFG's not having a disadvantage, because a lot has been written on it, and a lot of data has been referenced there. For that I refer to the research on foundation-owned businesses, the success of Rolex, Bosch, Patagonia, Humanitix, ThankYou and other PFG's, the talks of the PFG conference, and the reasoning for their success in the TEDx talks of Alex Amouyel, Brad West, myself and the writing of Peter Singer and The School for Moral Ambition on these subjects. You can also read my writing, as well as that of @Brad West🔸 on this forum about it. People can make up their own minds on benefits for PFG's existing or not. I can only anecdotally share that I have had many benefits of being a PFG (I have written on that already), and only one clear disadvantage (the one that might kill this business): the lack of access to funding. Your comment reinforces that system, although you do it with the best intentions (wanting people to donate directly or ETG, which I believe perpetuates suboptimal systems). What I can say with certainty is that we would have not gotten the contract that is likely to make our company much larger and profitable next year (the 3.4M/KG per year textile resale streams).
What is important is that the data and critique on my company is accurate. I'm sure it's unintentional, but there are some things that I need to clarify and rectify:
"If BOAS isn't giving to your preferred cause areas, it obviously makes more sense to donate there directly. If Global Health is your preferred cause area, you should simply, donate there directly and/or invest money and give away returns." Investors can invest X% in BOAS and we can return the multiple of that investment in future donations to preferred cause areas (e.g. X% of the profits), as the post clearly states. We disagree on investing to give being more effective than PFG (see top of this comment for people to make up their own minds).
Ill reply to a few points. If there is one you feel is very strong you want me to address, let me know. Again, I want to say that I think you clearly have great intentions with BOAS and PFG.
Yes, I meant that usually a pitch like this would have this if numbers were great. I do have some of the investor updates you sent me and I wouldn't disclose them without permission but I had them in mind.
I think you should just post 2025 revenue/gross profit/net profit to date. I guess a thing I have seen somewhat persistently is some rather large "expectations of growth" that are called conservative but frankly, aren't at all. From the OP,
This type of thing is often presented as "happening" when it's more like you hope it to happen.
I worry that this is going to come off a bit too negative but, I agree. Many people who wouldn't invest in this under normal circumstances are going to because it feels like a good cause and aren't looking at it as rigorously.
I don't feel very strong about any of your points, I just want our business and numbers reflected accurately. To your points:
I will park this discussion from my end, I've made my points (people can dismiss them, more than fine with that) and I have funding to raise for a PFG, which is hard enough with accurate data and portrayals of our company. I encourage everyone to request our actual numbers, contracts and letters of intent, and our different financial models (base, worst, minimum funding cases), and come and jump on a call with me. I wish you and EAIF had done the same before dismissing it.
Thanks for following BOAS, and I hope to prove you wrong in the future.
I agree and would encourage potential investors to take into consideration base rates of startups reaching €1M+ on profits yearly when comparing this to other forms of investments. I spent 5 min prompting Claude to come up with a BOTEC based on this post, which I haven't checked but could be an entry point to additional research.
Interestingly, Claude‘s numbers would actually suggest that BOAS is a higher EV decision (for some reason, it appears to double-count the risk; I.e., it took the EV which takes 60% failure into account and multiplied it again by 0.4).
Not that anyone here should (or would) make these decisions based on unchecked Claude BOTECs anyway; just found it to be an interesting flaw.
@Kevin Xia 🔸 thanks for pointing out the mistake too.
In addition to the previously mentioned mistakes, from an economist perspective it would be more accurate to use a 'continuing value' after using a 'discounted cash flow' for post 2029 profits, adding the lifetime of average foundation owned businesses. This would likely change results (possibly dramatically) while making them more accurate. Your BOTEC stops when BOAS reaches higher profitability in 2029, which is when most of the impact is just starting.
Again, this should be discounted for the risk, which your model has done (accidentally twice, which needs to be adjusted).
@Patrick Gruban 🔸 could you run the model with continuing values for stock market and BOAS, and remove double risk counting? I can check the BOTEC after to make sure it's actually accurate.
My short Claude prompt was only intended as a conversation starter, so I'm happy this worked. I'm not considering investing, but if potential investors would like to carry this on and share here, this might be useful.
There is a mistake in this analysis, but I'm happy that by removing the mistakes we come out as a clear winner.
- Double accounts for risk (in expected value, and then it applies risk again on the expected value, which already included an 80-90% risk/failure rate)
- Your analysis gives zero weight to the social cost of carbon and social return on investment, which in conservative scenarios return additional millions to society in our case, and in most stock market cases would have costs instead of benefits
- We are not a consumer marketplace, and we are not in recycling
Could you adjust for the mistake please?