Thankyou’s Chapter One crowdfunding campaign has reached its target of $1.2 million, one day before the warehouse is set to become a construction site.
The campaign, which launched on Friday, February 26, raised funds by selling a pay what you want book about the Thankyou journey called Chapter One, written by Thankyou co-founder Daniel Flynn.
In a record-breaking four weeks, the social enterprise has sold 43,640 copies of its book online and through Relay, Newslink and Watermark bookstores in Australia and New Zealand, with Chapter One reaching best seller status (9000 copies) just two hours after launch.
The $1.2 million will fund the launch of a baby range to fund infant and maternal health programs and Thankyou’s expansion into New Zealand. All the profits from the sale of the book will go towards funding the third milestone, to be announced once Thankyou baby and Thankyou New Zealand have been launched.
“At Thankyou we choose to have no shareholders and no investors so we can give 100 per cent of profits to our projects, which is awesome for impact, but makes it hard to scale the business – the Chapter One campaign is our way of tackling that problem,” said Mr Flynn.
Corporate businesses including PropertyInvesting.com, Optus, Domino’s, Zadel Property, NAB, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac all made large purchases of books as a leadership and innovation tool for their staff. For one week, a donor came on board to match fund purchases dollar for dollar to the value of $250,000.
The main campaign sponsor was Xero, and campaign partners QMS Media, oOh Media, A.mo.bee and ROKT supported with free advertising across Australia’s most sought-after spaces valued at almost $1 million.
Chapter One is available for purchase at a ‘pay what you want’ price online at www.thankyou.co/chapterone and all Relay, Newslink and Watermark bookstores.