Josh Felser has founded and sold a number of companies and started VC firm Freestyle, and today, he’s adding a nonprofit to the list of his entrepreneurial endeavors. Felser and the Sandler Foundation have funded and founded #climate, which aims to connect influencers to amplify the most impactful climate change actions from leading nonprofit organizations.
Via an invite-only iPhone app, #climate will make it simple for leading influencers to share the climate change actions they care about most. #climate does the heavy lifting around sourcing the nonprofits and acts as a filter to match the best climate actions with an influencer’s interests. The nonprofit is already launching with an impressive group of influencers, including the NBA, Dick Costolo, Al Gore and others. In fact, Felser says his influencer reach is around 80 million strong across Twitter and Facebook.
On the nonprofit side, the orgs can see how tweets and Facebook posts perform (thanks to social analytics company awe.sm, says Felser). “This isn’t about money. We want influencers to spread the word. And there’s a social currency that we can make actionable,” says Felser.
He adds that the goal is to potentially expand this influencer model to other nonprofit verticals beyond climate.