The EcoSend Podcast

Season 3 Episode 1
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[00:00:00] James Gill:

[00:00:53] Hi there. Welcome to another episode of the EcoSend Podcast. I'm your host, James Gill, and I'm thrilled to be introducing you to another wonderful guest today. I have the pleasure of speaking to many, many entrepreneurs. Leaders, people in the charitable sector.

[00:01:07] And today my guest spans several of those. My guest today is Raoul and he runs a business called Tyve, which is a free to use payroll giving platform that makes it simple for employees to donate to charity from their pre-tax earnings before joining Tyve at the beginning of 2023, Raoul was an executive at fast-growing tech companies, including 'Eve Sleep' and Iwoca, where he led the product management teams.

[00:01:35] Now, Raoul, you are covering a lot of bases here, which I'm very, very excited talk to you about from the business sector to charitable giving to how to be an effective charitable giver and all of these topics. I can't wait to dive in. So, Goog to be speaking with you. How are you doing today?

[00:01:56] Raoul Bostrum: I'm excellent. Thanks for, thanks for having me on the podcast, James.

[00:01:59] James Gill: It's, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. So Raoul, tell me more about yourself. What are you up to? I'd love to hear it in your own words. Take it from the top and I'm sure our listeners are very keen to hear too.

[00:02:11] Raoul Bostrum: Yeah, absolutely. So Tyve is, like you said it's a way to donate to charity from pre-tax earnings through your company's payroll. What we're trying to do, what our mission is, is to get more people donating even small amounts regularly to charity in a really thoughtful way. So less of a reactive way of just giving when someone asks you or someone stops you on the street, but giving to charities, which really match the kind of values that you hold as a person.

[00:02:42] So we really wanna normalize giving just for like every person. So that's not really, thinking about giving more deeply isn't just something that is left to, you know, kind of millionaires and billionaires. So the way we do it is, is, is through by donating through your payroll, which means it can go pre-tax.

[00:03:00] But we also try to simplify the experience. So there have been payroll giving tools out there, platforms out there for quite a long time. We try to really improve it, give a really modern UX so myself and, and the founders of Tyve all come from tech backgrounds and we wanna make this feel intuitive and, something like a consumer app that you would want to use.

[00:03:19] We do, we add great customer service into that. We also add a couple of other ways to really make giving simpler for people. So one is doing charity recommendations. So we have six recommended charities within different cause areas. We have one within tech and climate change, one within saving lives, one within creating economic opportunity.

[00:03:38] And we use third party research from organizations like GiveWell and Founders Pledge and Animal Charity Evaluators. So narrow down on the most effective charities within each of those causes. So the ones where for each pound, you're probably gonna get like the highest, the highest impact. I think there's been really exciting work done by those organizations in the last 10 years to really narrow down an impact in a way that didn't really exist with charities charities before that.

[00:04:04] So this is capitalizing a little bit on some of this kind of some of this recent trend on the resource side. So really excited to be able to recommend those charities and for people who, you know like yourself, maybe really, really believe in, tackling climate change but aren't sure about... you know, out of those like many, many, many different places you could put your money, which are the most effective. This this, I think really helps. And then the third bit of like, simplifying it or maybe making it more motivating and rewarding. This, this part of it is I. Giving kind of reports back to the people who are donating and the companies as a whole so they can kind of see their impact.

[00:04:38] And again, because the research allows us to quantify, you know, for each pound spent, you know, how many, how many tons of carbon dioxide would you expect to be averted or, you know, in the case of like in the, in the case of saving lives, how many people you might protect against against malaria, which is kind of like a chosen charity kind of works in that area.

[00:04:57] So you can see kind of over the course of, you know, a month, but then also a year and, and, and across the years, like the impact that you are having, the cumulative impact and the way that, you know, kind of even relatively small donations really make a difference over time.

[00:05:09] James Gill: Awesome. That is such a good summary. And I, I must admit, like obviously for us, as soon as you got in touch about this I was so excited to try it out and everything you said there about it being simpler and easier to sort of just get started about the transparency, about the education and then the help in, in finding where, how, what are good places to donate.

[00:05:34] All of those things are absolutely, absolutely the case. And as a team; EcoSend, I think we just all, were immediately like, this sounds exactly like the sort of thing we should be doing. How have we not been doing this before? So yeah, I am a big fan on my end and it is so easy to just to just get started.

[00:05:51] So yeah, no, that's a, such a great, a great summary. I am actually really keen to dig into that a lot more and, and, and the, the detailed aspect of, of how Tyve works. So what the goals are ultimately of, of Tyve? But I guess before we dive into that, it'd be great to hear how you got to this point, Raoul, because like, you know, did you just wake up one day and think, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and do payroll giving and make it easier for people.

[00:06:20] I doubt that happened. So how did you get there?

[00:06:24] Raoul Bostrum: There's, there's a little bit of that. Look, I think, I think with all of us, right, we have values that we hold often for a long time, and sometimes we put more of our time and effort into kind of like, upholding them. And sometimes, you know, we have a lot of other things on our mind, right? So this is always this trade off throughout our lives.

[00:06:45] And I started my career working in working in investments in in Australia and then in the UK. And at the time I was working mostly in the utility sector, which was mostly you know, what you'd call dirty energy, right? So in Australia it was like heavily coal, fire, power plants a little bit of natural gas, but there was the kind of like move towards clean energy and it started being like the, probably the exciting, the exciting investment opportunities within that sector. So anyone kind of, you know, I was working with, like that was the area we were really like looking at like with as having a huge amount of potential for the future. But also I think, you know, for a lot of people, again, like early twenties, it's about the excitement of doing something that might have a positive impact for the world.

[00:07:25] So I spent a few years doing that. Moving over to the UK, I was working for a, a Cleantech investor here. But then kind of like I, I left that world behind a little bit. I went to business school, started working in you know, growth stage tech companies. Quite different businesses. I kinda like always had this interest in, you know, sustainability and, and clean energy investing or just thinking about like what solutions are out there to really help with, with tackling climate change.

[00:07:51] So, you know, again, I think it comes down to like, you, you've got these values, they stay with you. And then I think often for people, you know, in their careers, they see an opportunity to do something that, you know, is both maybe something that feels like the right thing to do at that point in their career, but also something that really kind of like aligns really strongly with our values.

[00:08:10] And last year, I had that opportunity when I met one of the founders of Tyve who, who was looking for someone to take it on and take it over and kinda like, you know, drive a, a second stage of growth for the business. We operate as a nonprofit.

[00:08:24] So we, you know, kind of like try to operate like really lean. But we're a small team and we have the excitement of kind of like that, that very early stage of a startup. So, you know, kind of having this opportunity to work, you know, at this point in my career, on something that's kind of like a startup, but also doing potential to do something like really great in the world just seemed like, seemed like an obvious thing to go for.

[00:08:44] James Gill: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I wouldn't I, I wonder how different it is actually considering yourself a nonprofit versus the average startup, which I, you don't hear the word profit banded around very often in any startup. Do.

[00:08:58] Raoul Bostrum: No, I mean, it's a great question. I guess the motive becomes a little bit different, right? So, For us, you know, the longer term goal is very much focused on the impact rather than kind of like, you know, getting that, getting that huge exit, getting to profitability, and then getting that huge exit, which I think a lot of people a lot of people are looking for with a startup.

[00:09:19] So I think the, like the day-to-day. Feels pretty similar, right? Like we're thinking about growth, right? We're thinking about how do we manage our operations? We're thinking about product market fit a lot of the time, right? Like, how do we improve that, the product that we have so that it kind of attracts more people.

[00:09:33] I mean, that's obviously the key, key to growth. So, You know, we take the feedback and we iterate quickly just like we would at a startup. So I think, you know, bringing that startup experience and that startup mentality to a nonprofit is hugely valuable. I guess it's just like kind of what we're chasing in the long term is slightly, is slightly different.

[00:09:52] James Gill: Yeah, absolutely. It's a really, really good way of putting it. And from what I understand, you've got some amazing background in the, I guess the for-profit sector or the, the businesses not doing entirely or purely altruistic things, which is bringing some incredible expertise to the table on, on the profit side, right?

[00:10:13] Raoul Bostrum: Yeah, I mean it's, I call it the commercial sector, right? So at least the goal always. Yeah. It's not, it's not always there, like you say, especially in the early stages of business. But that's, that's definitely the goal. Yeah. I think bringing, I think bringing that expertise over is, is really helpful. But I think it's, you know, it's also just about like... the, the approach to the work, the discipline of like running experiments and making sure that you're getting the kind of like you're able to get data and read results and, and learn from that quickly, which you would never, in a, in a commercial business, you'd never really be able to work in any other way.

[00:10:50] I think, you know, with nonprofits, there's various ways people work and ours is just kind of like, you know, our approach is just to do it in by learning kind of probably the, be the better aspects from the commercial world with, well hopefully not bringing some of the maybe less great aspects with us.

[00:11:06] James Gill: Yeah. Yeah. Only the good stuff. Only the good stuff.

[00:11:08] Raoul Bostrum: Yeah.

[00:11:10] James Gill: The, that's, yeah. No, it's absolutely fascinating. I, I feel like there's a, you know, may I, I feel like there's so many tangents we could go on here on this discussion, but like, the opportunity for more people with this extremely valuable skillset coming into the world of, of, of nonprofits and, and purpose driven businesses.

[00:11:31] Just, and, and having that kind of mindset, but towards other goals that are not purely about growth of revenue and growth of profit exclusively. I, I think it's just exciting seeing that, that take shape and how that could transform charity and charitable giving and just overall making the world a better place.

[00:11:51] Which is yeah, I just find that so uplifting, positive, exciting. Yeah, it's, it's cool. It in, in terms of Tyve itself then like you, you've, you've got a quite a clear mission with Tyve, I believe, which is which would be just great to, to hear more about in your own words. 'cause yeah, it's guiding everything you're doing

[00:12:15] Raoul Bostrum: I mean, I think. More than anything. It's really about kind of just normalizing charitable giving. So making it something that, you know, just feels like something you do, right. Something everyone thinks about at least a little bit of the time, right? Is never gonna be necessarily for a lot of people, it's never gonna be like the thing they spend a huge amount of time on.

[00:12:36] Everyone has a lot of things in their lives, right? You get really busy with your lives, especially as you kind of like get into your like twenties and you do start having a job and you do start having the money maybe to start supporting charities, but you also get a lot of other responsibilities at that point in time.

[00:12:49] So charitable giving or just more broadly like thinking about the problems in the world and thinking about how to solve them often kind of takes a little bit of a backseat.

[00:12:58] James Gill: You've got your problems to solve, let alone the rest of the world!

[00:13:02] Raoul Bostrum: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. So just kinda like getting it back on people's radar a little bit. So they think about it, you know, every month. Like there are things that I can do to help, you know, maybe people who are less well off than myself or like, you know, help the world, you know, in terms, in terms of like things like climate change, like big problems that, that are going on out there.

[00:13:22] Going on out there. I would love to see, you know, a scenario where, you know, of the people especially as they go into the workplace, right? You know, there's, there's hundreds of thousands of people going into the workplace every year. It just becomes part of their like, you know, kind of things they think about as part of their work, you know, kind of part of their working life is; I've got this paycheck, you know, I've got my some benefits as well, maybe every month. But like, what am I doing to give back as well? And, and how do I do that? What are the choices i, I make? And then hopefully that's something that continues throughout people's careers.

[00:13:56] James Gill: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It is just so easy to try and get behind that. I guess, I guess maybe a question I'd have is, is that, are you finding that tougher in today's like climate economy where, you know, you only need to listen to the news on any given day of how everyone's finding it?

[00:14:16] Tougher prices for whatever it is, houses, food, rent is through the roof. Like are you finding it tougher to persuade people of that cause or has that not changed for the businesses you talk to or I, I'm intrigued. Has that changed at all?

[00:14:33] Raoul Bostrum: Yeah, I look, I definitely think for a lot of people things are tougher than they were. Maybe pre covid, maybe back to like 2019. I mean, it's been a rough few years for a lot of people. Both from an economic perspective, but also, you know, a health perspective or a mental health perspective going through the pandemic.

[00:14:50] And so asking people, asking people then to, you know, support, support charities which maybe are doing work, kind of to try to solve problems that may be either quite remote. I'm in place, or you know, also a bit more abstract, like how do we really solve like a giant problem, like climate change?

[00:15:08] I do think sometimes feels like it can be a big ask for people. I think again, it goes back to encouraging people. Even if you start at a relatively small amount, an amount that you can afford. I think the companies we are dealing with, the people who are working there, a lot of them feel like they can afford, you know, at least something every month.

[00:15:25] So we get kind of, The last three companies we've launched you know, we've had employees, more than 40% of employees at those companies choosing to donate each month through Tyve, which I think is incredible. And it shows the generosity of a lot of people when you really talk to them about the problems and when they get little bit of time to kind of think about it.

[00:15:43] And they have a simple way, simple way to like execute on these kinda like good intentions that they have. Would it be, would it be a bit different? Like maybe could it be an even higher in like, booming economic time? I think so a little bit. I think it would also be easier to get companies to kinda like sign up for Tyve at the moment.

[00:16:00] Some companies are a bit hesitant for, for, for reasons I can understand. They're not, you know, some companies aren't doing that well themselves and they feel like this isn't the right time to kind of launch something where they're asking their employees to give. Maybe they're matching donations, maybe they're not, but they're really kind of like asking their employees to do something for the Collective Good.

[00:16:18] And, you know, hopefully that's gonna change in the next few years. Hopefully we get back to kind of an economic situation where more people feel comfortable, more people feel a bit more secure. Even right now, I think there's just, there is a huge amount of generosity in the human spirit in general and in a lot of the people that we, we go out and talk to.

[00:16:39] So it hasn't, hasn't, you know, really I don't think it's really dampened it as much as, as you might think,

[00:16:46] James Gill: Yeah, that's absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Fascinating actually. 'cause I, in some ways, I don't know, I don't have data to back this up, but just a general sense I find is that post pandemic, there's this sort of sense that no matter who you are, no matter what income you're on, what job you do, where you are in the world, like everyone was affected by Covid in some way, and that, that's quite eye-opening.

[00:17:15] I think it, you know, it shows that actually some of these charitable causes that one could give to. They're relevant for everyone. It's not, you know, that, that could come back to help me someday. And, and I, I, I would like to think that if there's anything good that came from Covid, there's maybe a greater appreciation that we're still humans, we're still people walking around on this rock, floating in the universe.

[00:17:40] We're not above, you know, no matter what job you do or who you are, like you're not above certain things and, and that need to connect with our fellow well not even just humans, but with, with the world and the planet we're on, is yeah. Worth, worth bearing in mind? And, and does that lead more people to just make some decisions that are not so totally self interested?

[00:18:02] Going forward maybe it does. I don't know.

[00:18:05] Raoul Bostrum: I definitely think there's, I think there's something true true in that you definitely get a number of people who just feel really fortunate to have got through Covid and they feel fortunate. Sometimes they feel fortunate when they're in a position, like in a difficult economic environment.

[00:18:20] When they're in a position where they're still, they're still earning well or their company's doing well and they feel like, okay, maybe it's, maybe I. In this scenario, I should be doing more to help other people who need it a bit more. So I think maybe an element of, you know, the last few years have just made some people just appreciate how lucky a lot of us are the ones who, you know, are fortunate enough to, to, to still be, to still be feeling relatively economically secure.

[00:18:46] James Gill: Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a very good point indeed. In, in, in terms of charity and it being relevant and. Actually mattering in the grander scheme of things today. Like obviously going back to one of your earlier points, like people have a lot on their plates.

[00:19:04] Given times are tougher. Well, why? Like, why does charity matter as much as as you, or does charity matter as much as you'd like us all to think it does at the moment? Like, is charity the best place to be putting our money? I'm keen to get your thoughts on that, Raoul.

[00:19:20] Raoul Bostrum: That's a great question. I do look, I think every, I don't know if there's a best place for people to put their money, right? Like everyone has different needs and different financial circumstances. And, and, and for some people it's just, you know, they have things that they have to do right now with their money and, and that like, you know, again, it's, it's really an individual choice.

[00:19:41] I think the role charity plays is, is still a very important one. And I think over the past couple of decades there's been a rise in, you know, in an adjacent area, which is like social entrepreneurship, where you have a business that's trying to do good has like has impact as like one of its core goals, but it's also, you know, often selling a service or charging for a service or, or a product.

[00:20:04] And, you know, the whole model is based on something that kind of like marries kind of commercial objectives and and, and, and impact objectives. think that's really awesome. Like a lot of these businesses are really great businesses and they are doing a lot of good, and I think, you know, from a business model perspective, it's actually, if you can manage that as a business model, it's amazing, right?

[00:20:24] Because you are kind of like much more likely to be long-term self-sustaining doing that.

[00:20:30] James Gill: Sure, sure.

[00:20:30] Raoul Bostrum: But, but I think there's still a big role for charity to play in areas where there are kind of market failures, right? Where there's not necessarily a product that. Is going to product or a service that anyone is going to pay for.

[00:20:46] And you get obvious areas like climate change, right? Whether you've got kind of like a tragedy of the commons where everyone can or historically has been able to destroy the climate as much as they want. For, for whatever reasons, but often, often for with commercial goals in mind, and no one is willing to pay to fix it, right?

[00:21:05] So and there's obviously lots of different mechanisms to try to resolve that today. There's also probably, there's, there's a role also for some charities which are working in the climate change area. And the one that we kind of recommend is the Clean Air Task Force, which kind of looks at looks at driving systemic change through, through global, global agreements and regulation.

[00:21:27] You know, kind of being the driving force behind some of these agreements and domestic and, and regional legislation. But also like, kind of like advocating for neglected technologies, which don't necessarily at a very early stage have like really strong really strong market demand for them. So you've got this kind of like, you know, you've got this kind of like market failure in India area of climate change, but you also have market failures, like on a smaller level where, you know, the, I mentioned the one we think about in terms of saving lives is we recommend the Against Malaria Foundation, which distributes antimalarial bed nets primarily in or actually exclusively in sub-Saharan Africa, which is the area of the world most affected by malaria.

[00:22:05] Where, you know, we still get 400,000 people, upwards of 400,000 people a year dying from malaria. And there's not a necessarily a natural market for this product, partly because. It's very hard for the consumers to understand, right. You have, you know, there, there's like great economics research on this.

[00:22:24] There's great papers on, you know, kind of like you know, pub published in top journals on kind of explaining the cost effectiveness of this. But that's not necessarily like common knowledge. It's not necessarily that easy to understand. And if you have a market only for a small number of these things, the distribution costs get really high.

[00:22:38] Whereas if you do this on a charitable basis, you know, at extreme scale, you against Malaria Foundation, you know give, well estimates, it costs slightly under five pounds to protect two people against malaria. So again, there's, there's kind of like a market failure here where, you know, the, the, the true value of this is not necessarily going to.

[00:22:59] Result in, result in the product being available for purchase at a price that might might, might generate a lot of demand.

[00:23:07] James Gill: Yeah. Well, I think you've convinced me that charity does matter. Not I needed much convincing, but and you've obviously mentioned a few there, but there's, I'm sure there's a list a very, a very, very, very long list of those areas where pure play business cannot accommodate the needs we we have on, on in the world.

[00:23:29] I, I guess very much related to what we talk about EcoSend, like how, how can charity and particularly charitable giving then, how does that have an impact on climate change or how can it, and you mentioned Clean Air Task Force there. I assume that's a big part of it. I'm, I'm increasingly aware of their, their work, but yeah.

[00:23:53] Are there other, other areas where, where charitable giving can have, have a big impact here?

[00:23:58] Raoul Bostrum: Yeah, I think there, I think there are several. I think, you know, there's an organization called Giving Green, which kind of does evaluations of climate change specific charities, which I think is really worth checking out for people. I think where charity comes into this. So I think, you know, if you look at what EcoSend is doing right now, where it's like planting a tree for every planting a tree for every new user, but also on a monthly basis based on a certain amount, right?

[00:24:27] James Gill: Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:24:29] Raoul Bostrum: Which is awesome. I don't send enough, I use EcoSend, but I don't send enough emails to plant that many trees. But I imagine a lot of big businesses, a lot of big businesses will, and that's awesome. Right? And planting trees is like a great example of like the types of things that, you know, on an individual basis we can, we can get through using a product like EcoSend or maybe ourselves by using something like tree app and you know, kind of financing it ourselves.

[00:24:52] But planting trees, is only a part of what's gonna really help with kind of mitigating climate change. So I think I was reading, I was reading research that suggests that, you know, to, to look at having a real, really substantial impact in getting us towards towards a one and a half degree rise in temperature from pre-industrial times, which is kind of like the goal that most people see as kind of like a, a safe increase in temperature.

[00:25:16] We need to plant something a lot in the order of half a trillion trees, right? That's trees, right? That, that's a lot of trees. Even on, even if you divided that by like the 7 billion people on earth, right.

[00:25:28] James Gill: Even if all of them start using EcoSend, that's still not gonna have the impact we need. Yeah.

[00:25:33] Raoul Bostrum: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and I'm not sure I wanna live in a world where you send so many emails...

[00:25:37] James Gill: Well, exactly, exactly that. That could all come crashing down, couldn't it? Yeah.

[00:25:44] Raoul Bostrum: There's a sense of like, Okay there's all these pieces of the puzzle, right? Like for tackling climate change. And you know, some of them, some of them can be like, you know, a little bit like some of them maybe can be purely market based, right? Like you see the decline in, in the price of renewable energy, right?

[00:26:00] To the point where in a lot of countries now it's, it's it's competitive or, or better with fossil fuels. So, you know, if you're developing a new power generation project, you're gonna go for renewables if there's a good enough resource area. And that's incredible, right? That is probably like one of the biggest advances over the last kind of 20 years is just making these like attractive on a commercial basis.

[00:26:20] But I think there's a lot of other areas, like we say, where there's maybe market failures in place where there's not necessarily gonna be a purely commercial incentive for anyone to do anything. And I think things like global agreements and regulation and neglected technologies are some of those areas and, and in, in those areas, you know, that requires some sort of financing for people to address them.

[00:26:46] I think that's like a really good investment through or any charitable pound or, or dollar that we spend. So, I think it's, you know, again, charity is not gonna solve all of this problem with tackling climate change. I think the market needs to solve a lot, if not most of it.

[00:27:01] But I think, you know, charitable giving has like a, a role to play in, in specific, in specific areas and, and some spec, some areas that like actually are pretty crucial to getting their overall framework in place that then the markets can operate to really get great solutions.

[00:27:17] James Gill: Absolutely. Yeah. No, that's, that's great. Great to hear. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully we'll be making a lot of progress on, on all fronts over the, over the coming, well, not even years the rest of this. Yeah. We've still got a whole half a year to go. We, we, there's a lot of progress to come. I, I mean, was there anything else around the future on either on charitable giving or around. Around climate change that, that you had any views on then Raoul, like I mean, I, not that I'm asking you to predict or, or promise what's going to happen, but do, what are your thoughts on where things go maybe beyond this year and over the next, over the, over the course of the next several years, like maybe decade or so?

[00:28:01] Raoul Bostrum: I mean, it's so hard to know right. Especially I feel like for a lot of people, and I include myself in that, like I think the confidence with which we look to the future has probably declined in the last year because of the rapid increase in the performance of artificial intelligence. Right?

[00:28:22] So it's very, very hard to know what that's gonna look like in a year's time, let alone 10 years's time, and how that's gonna contribute to solving some of these kind of global problems that we've talked about. I think you can, I think it's probably easy to take a relatively. Look, it's easy to take a pessimistic view, but it's also easy to take a relatively optimistic view on that, right?

[00:28:44] That that, you know, increases in artificial intelligence might really help us with developing very cheap technologies that help us mitigate some of the impacts of climate change. I think one area, again, that's maybe a little bit overlooked where charitable giving makes, can make a huge difference is thinking about You know, the parts of the world that are gonna need to adapt to some level of climate change, no matter what we do on the mitigation front, right?

[00:29:12] So if we see even one and a half degree temperature rises there's gonna be parts of the world, especially the driest parts of the world and some of the wettest parts of the world, which is still gonna suffer more extreme weather events. And, and a lot of these parts of the world are actually some of the most most, impoverished parts of the world where we have the most people living beyond kind of living in extreme poverty and thinking about how do we help those people adapt.

[00:29:36] They're not necessarily always in places with either, you know, with governments that are in place to help them as much as they might want to, or with governments that are necessarily as stable as, as a lot of people would like them to be. So you know, I think a lot of us, a lot of the time we focus on like, what can we do to reduce climate change in the future?

[00:29:54] But I think, you know, whatever we do, there's gonna be a big role in thinking about how do we help the people who are, who do suffer the consequences of it, adapt. I mean, I'm sitting here in in London at the end of June after, you know, kind of three weeks of beautiful sunny weather and it can feel like it can feel like a blessing in some parts of the world that, you know, we we're able to, you know, kind of like the impact of climate change is maybe even like, you know, less than summers.

[00:30:19] And, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't, but if you go to places where it's already 40 degrees or, or 42 degrees and you add a few, you know, a couple of degrees there, or you add like a longer spell of heat in those areas, it, it makes it really tough. You know, thinking about, you know, what we do, one of the specific recommendations we have through tithe is give directly, which is unconditional cash transfers, where you, you basically are transferring money to people living in extreme poverty and often helping them double their income for just like, you know, a pound a day often will be able to double people's income, which makes a huge difference to their lives. In Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, and GiveDirectly focus on both the poorest place in the world, but also they've now moved into doing a bit more disaster relief. So when there's like large natural disasters giving people cash with no strings attaches often one of the best things you can do.

[00:31:09] Because you let them decide what they need the most in those circumstances.

[00:31:12] Like charities like that where you're basically able to help people adapt without necessarily what give directly does, it doesn't impose any conditions and it doesn't, it doesn't tell them what this, what they need to solve the problem, but it just, you know, enables them to go to, to have a better chance of solving them that problem that solves, I think it would gonna play a pretty, a pretty big role in the next in the next 20, 30 years.

[00:31:36] James Gill: Yeah, I I hope we also steer on the optimistic side of those predictions too. Like I I agree it's never easy even to just pontificate over the future, let alone put down some, some thoughts on it and, and actually clarify those enough to convey them to an audience.

[00:31:52] So thank you for, for that. It's yeah, really, really interesting to hear your take there. And also the, the various causes and, and businesses you've mentioned. We'll we'll make sure those are all linked to in the, in the notes for the episode if anyone wants to check. This episode has flown by and I, I don't want to finish without just asking.

[00:32:17] We always like to get some advice from people or we like to hear any advice people have been given, and I believe you've, you've got some very, very valuable advice for us. So, not that you haven't given any advice already, I shouldn't discount everything you've already said, but anything you've, you've heard or, or received as advice that you'd like to share with the audience, it, it'd be great to hear?

[00:32:37] Raoul Bostrum: I mean, I guess I'm not sure it's advice so much as just like...

[00:32:43] James Gill: it can be a joke if you want, but...

[00:32:46] Raoul Bostrum: I don't know if I would be great places to give advice, but I would say if you have a few hours I think it's worth for anyone who wants to think about, you know, how, think about the world's problems a little bit more deeply; picking up a copy of Peter Singer's, 'The Life You Can Save'. So Peter Singer is an Australian philosopher.

[00:33:04] You know, he is possibly one of the more famous, maybe most famous living philosophers. That's not really saying that much, but he's kinda like built a career on, on, on, I guess, challenging people's preconceptions about various problems in the world, including Including how we tackle problems like poverty how we think about treating animals more humanely.

[00:33:24] And 'The Life You Can Save' is really focused on, you know, the question of what is our, what is our duty to help solve the world's most pressing problems? And it's a book that's, I think had a profound effect on a lot of people have read it, including myself, and I think it results in a lot of people wondering whether they could live on 90% of their income they have now, or maybe even 99%. And, and seeing what they can do with the other 1% or 10% to, to, to really help improve the world. And yeah, it's a great book. It's really accessible as well. It's written in a way that, you know, you don't, you don't need to be. And academic in any way, shape or form to really get a lot from it.

[00:34:01] And it's available for free online, which I think is awesome. I think we should stick that in the as well. And there's actually a really great audio book version where there's like different, different people reading different chapters like Stephen Fry, Kristen Bell and stuff. So it's it's good.

[00:34:13] It's, it's a, it's a good read and I think it's yeah, it's one of those things where there, there's, there's definitely there's definitely a decent chance it'll make a, a fair impression on anyone who picks it up.

[00:34:23] James Gill: Oh, amazing. Yeah, I I have not read that myself yet, so that's now well and truly on the, on the reading list, so thank you. You made it hard to say no to that. Yeah, but the order can change, you know, so it doesn't really matter how long it is. It just depends what's at the top, doesn't it? Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you so much. Well, it has been a pleasure speaking with you. If anyone wants to find you and carry on any of the conversation, hear more from you, or wants to sign up to Tyve, where can they go?

[00:34:55] Raoul Bostrum: They can email me directly, I'm Raoul at Tyve.org. Or they can find me on LinkedIn and yeah, just add me and, you know, DM me. I'd love to chat. You know, whether it's signing up for Tyve or really about anything that we've talked about, it's, yeah, I'd love to love to hear from people.

[00:35:11] James Gill: Amazing. And it is Tyve.org isn't it? For Tyve

[00:35:16] Raoul Bostrum: Yes!

[00:35:17] James Gill: Awesome. Thank you so much, Raoul. It's been a, been a pleasure. Absolutely fascinating to hear your, your thoughts on, on the charitable sector, on payroll giving, on how businesses can do better and, and a great book recommendation too.

[00:35:33] So thank you. It is been a pleasure and thank you everyone for listening. And if you've enjoyed today's show, please do leave us a review and let us know what you think. Give it a five stars, give it a thumbs up. It really helps more people hear about the show and hear wonderful stories like those from Raoul today.

[00:35:51] So thank you, Raoul. We'll catch you soon.

[00:35:55] Raoul Bostrum: It's been a pleasure.

[00:35:56]