Nina Rauch is Social Impact Lead at insurance company Lemonade, a certified B Corporation available in the US, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Lemonade aims to change the way people think about insurance by focusing on strong values and charitable contributions instead of profit. Nina joins Christine today to talk about Lemonade’s groundbreaking business model, her journey to becoming Social Impact Lead, and the impressive amount of money the company has donated since 2017.
Nina explains the Lemonade Giveback, the charitable core of the company, which means Lemonade annually donates its leftover dollars to a range of nonprofit partners. She discusses how this process was built into Lemonade from the beginning and describes the huge impact the program has had on organizations working with such causes as climate issues, racial justice, support for veterans, and LGBTQ+ issues. Nina goes on to describe her journey from fundraising in high school to working for Lemonade and discusses a few of the organizations that have stuck with her over the years, as well as the challenges and inspirations she’s experienced along the way. To finish up, Nina shares what’s coming up for Lemonade, including their new venture into car insurance and how to balance its environmental impact, and her plans to increase the strength of Lemonade’s voice in the climate space and ensure the company stays transparent and authentic as it continues to grow.
For more information and other episodes on companies and entrepreneurs who give back, please visit TheGiveBackModel.com. That’s where you can also let Christine know about companies you’ve found that give back, and check out The Give Back Model merchandise, where $5 for every sale goes to charity. Thanks for listening!
Episode Highlights:
· Nina Rauch is Social Impact Lead at Lemonade.
· Lemonade is an insurance company that tries to connect its policyholders with nonprofits as a means of making charitable contributions rather than profit.
· Nina was featured in Forbes magazine this year, something that’s always been a goal of hers.
· Lemonade is trying to reshape how people think about insurance, primarily through an element of their product called the Lemonade GiveBack.
· Traditional insurance works through pooling small amounts of money by taking premiums from a large number of people to pay for those who need to make claims. This generally leaves money left over at the end of the year (because the amount needed can’t be predicted, so people are asked to pay higher premiums than what winds up being needed), which the insurer keeps as profit.
· Lemonade wanted to differentiate itself from this model, so it created the Lemonade Giveback, which means that, once a year, the company donates its leftover dollars to its nonprofit partners.
· The first Giveback in 2017 donated $53,000 to 14 different charities; in 2021, over $2.3 million went to 65 different organizations.
· The best way to use Lemonade is through their app (though you can use their website as well!).
· From the beginning, you choose the cause you want to Giveback to, and that cause will stay with you unless you want to make a change (which is really easy to facilitate).
· The Giveback was built into Lemonade’s product from the very beginning—without it, the product couldn’t exist. It was a B Corp before its first policy was sold.
· Lemonade wants to make the process of claiming insurance as simple and supportive as possible, from minimizing paperwork to making sure you can talk to a real person or get on their Slack channel when you need help.
· Lemonade works with a wide range of nonprofit organizations, and Nina ensures that their values align with those of Lemonade by considering what their employees and policyholders hold dear, from climate issues, to LGBTQ+ support, to standing up for racial justice.
· Only 3% of overall funding in the US goes to environmental concerns, whereas Lemonade donates 12%; similarly, only 3.4% of overall funding in the US goes to LGBTQ+ causes, while Lemonade donates 10%.
· Nina’s also in charge of regulatory matters, ensuring that all Lemonade’s nonprofits are transparent with their finances so their policyholders can trust their money is going to organizations that will genuinely use it for good causes.
· Many of Lemonade’s policyholders reach out to Nina to suggest causes they might want to support, which, for example, led to them adding Objective Zero (an organization that supports veterans with PTSD) to their partners.
· Nina had the opportunity to see first-hand what a difference Lemonade can make when she attended a dinner held by MEET (Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow), a Lemonade partner since 2017, supporting young Palestinian and Israeli entrepreneurs.
· When she was 16, Nina founded a breast cancer awareness organization called Pink Week in memory of her activist mother, who passed away from the disease. Pink Week started with Nina and her friends raising small amounts of money before she spent time at university spreading the cause to other campuses before it was adopted by a much larger breast cancer charity.
· This sparked Nina’s passion for giving back and the nonprofit world, so the first thing she did when she graduated was to go and work for a nonprofit before moving to Tel Aviv and finding Lemonade.
· Some of the organizations that have stuck with Nina include: 350.org, a grassroots movement aimed at solving the climate crisis, which has received over $100,000 in donations since partnering with Lemonade; and the ACLU Criminal Justice Project, which has received around $200,000 over the past two years.
· Nina also highlights New Story, a charity that supports families outside the US who don’t have sufficient funding. During the COVID-19 pandemic, New Story decided to shift their focus closer to home to sponsor rent for those who lost their jobs because of COVID. Lemonade donated around $300,000 to sponsor three months of rent for 100-plus families.
· Nina’s biggest challenge at Lemonade has been working against the downward trends nonprofits have suffered through 2021. Over 40% experienced a double-digit drop in fundraising revenue, and overall giving sank by around 1.7%. So Lemonade increased its scope, with donations 104% higher than 2020 and around 4,000% higher than 2017.
· Nina is inspired by the people surrounding her, from her fellow employees at Lemonade to the people working at their nonprofit partners.
· Recently Lemonade introduced a platform called Deed, a fundraising platform for employees, to unite their employees who are working from home.
· Lemonade recently introduced car insurance, which presented a dilemma—how do you cover something that’s bad for the environment when your values are pro-environment? Lemonade’s answer was to try to build the most environmentally friendly car insurance around by partnering with nonprofit One Tree Planted and offsetting their drive as a mission.
· Nina’s focus right now is on establishing Lemonade as a voice in the climate space by pushing forward its climate-positive message. She’s also looking into creating a climate-positive workforce by offsetting the emissions of Lemonade’s employees.
· What keeps Nina up at night is thinking about how Lemonade can stay transparent and authentic as the company grows.
Quotes:
“When you hear insurance, you think, ‘Hey, what is lemonade doing differently?’ But more likely, you’re thinking, ‘Insurance, I hate my insurance company.’”
“We want it to be transparent. We want it to be likable. We want you to not dread opening your Lemonade app.”
“We’ve really created a new relationship. We have our policyholder, we have us as the insurance company, and we have the nonprofit, and we’re managing to connect them through this really exciting and kind of new relationship that doesn’t exist in any other insurance company.”
“I think too often we see companies saying, ‘Okay, now I’ve grown, and I’m substantial. Here’s the time to give back.’ But what we try to do is really build it in from the very start.”
“I like to think of the Giveback as if you could look at Lemonade and see our inner value system, that’s what the Giveback would be. It’s our spine, so it’s everything we stand for.”
“I think the Giveback really represented for me something that was missing, which was that perfect fusion of the for-profit world and the nonprofit world in a way that wasn’t fake and was actually really authentic.”
“Anyone who comes to work for the product is aware of the Giveback and has an impact-focused mind.”
“We support Women in Need, which is a homelessness charity based out of New York City and supports women who have recently lost their jobs. And this year, I sent them an email announcing their Giveback amount. And I said, ‘You’ve received $112,000’, and the CEO replied, ‘Do you mean $112?’ For me, that was just one of the best emails to receive.”
“We’re building something new. How can we make sure that impact remains at the core? How can we make sure that Giveback is not something that just happens once a year?”
“In the climate space, we were the first insurance company to divest from fossil fuels, which is a little-known fact about us. We’re very cool.”
“Check us out, check out our Giveback, and stay posted for Giveback 2022. I’m already thinking about it. We’re already carving out how it should look and the nonprofits that we hope to support.”
Links:
The Give Back Model website TheGiveBackModel.com
Follow The Give Back Model on Instagram @thegivebackmodel
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