What everyone ought to know about New Story Charity

131 Homes Built in Just 8 months

Since the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Red Cross has rebuilt as many homes as you can count on two hands. In just 8 months, New Story, a YC-backed non-profit, has built 131 homes!

Brett Hagler, the CEO and co-founder of this amazing organization, was kind enough to chat with us at CampusKudos, about where the inspiration for New Story came from, what it was like to be in YC as a non-profit and more.

You can tune in HERE to listen to our full conversation.

—

Below are some highlights of our conversation, edited and paraphrased for brevity and clarity.

Where and what did you study?

I went to Florida State and studied finance and marketing. By my Junior year, I got way less into finance and super interested in startups and entrepreneurship.

What you got onto an entrepreneurial path?

I was inspired by a lot of young founders that I read about and was excited to not go down the conventional route that colleges often cater towards. Instead, you could create something on your own.

What books would you suggest are must-reads?

I’m big fan of Seth Godin, who has a great blog at sethgodin.com. Another great book about creating things is “Poke the box” as well as “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuk.

These are all good from a motivational standpoint and inspire a belief that you could realistically do something that is different from 95% of your classmates.

It looks like this isn’t your first startup. Can you tell us more about Huxley?

It was an online e-commerce marketplace with a social-good element. Think of Zappos mixed with Tom’s or Warby Parker. I started it about a year after school.

We wanted to create a large e-commerce store, where every purchase consumers made also involved doing good and giving back.

I had just visited Haiti. So, this was my first swing at trying to tackle this problem. We raised $100K, which was a lot, for us, as young entrepreneurs.

After 9 months, I learned that it was not a sustainable business model. We were in a very crowded space. We did not have anything proprietary at the end of the day. We shut down the company even gave back 80% of our funding to our investors.

This is something I’m very proud of.

Through the experience, I learned a tremendous amount: legal, accounting, financials, hiring, partnerships, go-to market strategy, and a marketing funnel.

The other big takeaway was the network formed from the experience. When you are a founder of a startup, you are given a new level of respect. This allows you to meet more people than ever before. So, I met awesome people.

Without this first experience, there is no change that NewStory would be where it is today.

Any tips for others in the fundraising process?

First, build an mvp that proves out people want whatever idea you have. Next, get some type of traction — users, donations, revenue, subscribers, etc.

The net goal is to prove that you’ve made something people want.

Once you’ve done that, you get leverage and can go to an angel for money to grow.

It looks like you also wrote a book. What inspired you do that?

I wrote a book called “The Not (So) Popular Way.” It is all about going down the road less traveled. Growing up in high school and most of college, I was somewhat brainwashed into chasing after everything the world told me was cool.

It turns out that that is not the way to be happy or feel fulfilled.

Another road, that not people go down, is lead by generosity and selflessness, with a purpose greater than yourself. I was trying to sell students, that at an early age, there is another way.

What was the inspiration for New Story?

I got down to Haiti to serve in the developing world. Once I got down there, it hit me how fortunate I had been. I’d been given so many opportunities that frankly I had only been using for myself.

When I saw how people were living in Haiti, I had a conviction to do something about it.

NewStory as a concept came about by looking at existing charitable models (like the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity). I thought they’ve been doing the same thing, same model for hundreds of years.

What if we created a charity that was innovative and used the same principles as AirBnb, Uber and newer startups? Non-profits with a startup mentality.

I wanted to create something that I’d be excited to be part of.

We could create a disruptive model that is better than the existing options, the best donor solution.

How does NewStork work?

My frustrations, when giving to charity, were that I did not know who I was helping or where my money was going. It was really hard to see what percent of my money were going into the hands of people who needed it versus overhead.

We created New Story to flip those problems on its head.

You can come online and literally see the exact family that needs help, who are living in a tent slum in Haiti. We then show the exact $6,000 cost breakdown to build a home, every penny.

When a donor gives, it goes directly to family and 100% of the donation goes to fund the home. When the home is built after ~2 months, we take a video of the family going into home, and we send it back to every single person that donates.

We created an experience that is as transparent as possible.

You can see the lives of the people you changed. Over the past 8 months, we’ve been able to fund 131 homes.

What was it like to be in YC as non-profit?

YC is starting to take nonprofits, because, at its score, YC is investing in they think will change the world. Nonprofits fit into that category.

The coolest part about the experience was that we got treated no differently that any of the for-profit companies. We similarly set growth goals.

This is how it should be. At the end of day, you are trying to bring in as much revenue as possible. The main difference is that you are giving it away to families in need instead of shareholders.

It was cool that YC didn’t throw us into a corner and label us a nonprofit team.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a non-profit, make an impact, but also be able to provide for himself or herself?

My advice would be to first go either work in a nonprofit or really good tech startup. You can begin by starting a non-profit on the side.

With NewStory, I was doing it on the side for 5 months.

Once you have traction to show from your work on the side, you can then more easily fundraise to support your nonprofit.

What’s next for NewStory?

NewStory will have different sustainable communities, comprised of a 100 homes, a school, clean water, sanitation and a health clinic. We’ll have more and more of those all around the developing world.

Our vision is to create small cities that will be sustainable and that will be built to last for generations to come.

Check out CampusKudos.com to meet amazing professionals and check out other podcasts with Niko Bonatsos (YikYak Investor), Hiten Shah (3x successful entrepreneur) and more more to come.

Follow us on Twitter to keep up with our podcasts and please kindly share if you enjoy!