Marketing as a driver of positive change
BOTH by Ring Capital Issue #24 — Interview with Georges Basdevant, Co-founder & CEO @Dift (ex-Captain Cause)
Dear community,
In this month’s interview, we had the pleasure of speaking with Georges Basdevant, co-founder and CEO of Dift (formerly Captain Cause).
With their eponymous product — born from the combination of donation and gift, Dift replaces traditional rewards with charitable contributions. They go further by turning marketing into a tool for embedding impact into the very core of their clients’ business models, enabling them to tell a story that resonates with their values while contributing to a fair transition.
“Acting brings happiness” is a guiding principle for Georges, and this pursuit of meaning is something he shares with an important number of young professionals. According to a 2022 survey by the European Youth Forum, 62% of respondents aged 18 to 30 identified having a meaningful job as a top priority when choosing a career.
As impact stakeholders, it is our responsibility to shine a light on these entrepreneurs driving change. Not only to give them visibility and help them grow, but also to inspire younger generations, encouraging them to, in turn, become “part of the solution”.
This is what BOTH is about: showing how people, companies, investors and institutions can act and play their part in this transition.
🫵 Which entrepreneur, solution, project or concept related to impact would you like us to cover in this newsletter? Feel free to send us your ideas!
Can you introduce yourself, your background, and what led to the creation of Captain Cause (now Dift)?
I am the co-founder and CEO of Dift, a start-up aiming to create a new bridge of funding between the corporate world and charities. The idea to launch Dift was born from my desire to have a significant impact on transition-related issues. After studying law, with plans to become a lawyer, I quickly felt the need to give more meaning to my career by actively engaging in ecological and social transition issues. I wanted to be part of the solution. My guiding principle has always been Yann Arthus-Bertrand's quote: "acting brings happiness." (“agir rend heureux” in French).
I wanted to combine my interest in the charitable sector and the tech world; I was both fascinated by the non-profit sector, which drives change on the ground, and by the optimisation potential of tech, which allows solutions to scale up. It was through working with Frédéric Mazzella, Blablacar’s founder, that the idea for Dift took shape, inspired by its mission: to have a maximum impact on the ecological and social transition by identifying new sources of funding.
Creating something new requires strong convictions, energy, and the right people around you. When you have an inspiring mission, you know you'll succeed in bringing people on board. But our role goes beyond funding: we aim to raise awareness of solutions, engage people and companies, and actively involve them. The concept of "dift" (donation + gift) allows us to create a collective momentum. How do we achieve this mission? We've chosen to use marketing: moving towards solidarity-based marketing aligned with transition issues.
Could you explain how your platform works and the solutions you provide?
Dift is a solidarity-based marketing platform. We aim to create engaging experiences for consumers by integrating charitable actions into loyalty programmes and other marketing initiatives. Most of the time, brands approach us with two challenges: a marketing problem ("how can I re-engage my customers? How do I retain them?") and an ESG challenge ("how do we integrate ESG and impact issues into our strategy, especially as we scale globally?"). To address these issues, we provide several products.
Our flagship product, the dift, is a “charitable reward”, an innovative solution to replace traditional rewards, promotional items, and corporate gifts. It’s available to all types of businesses looking to reward their suppliers, clients, or employees, in the form of a charitable donation. Loyalty and relationship programmes are also key for us: we anticipate the emergence of new standards in the coming years, as the traditional transactional relationship seems to be losing momentum and the connection between brands and customer purchases lacks depth. Just as “rounding up” at checkout has become widely adopted in retail in France (representing €10 million annually), converting loyalty points into donations is becoming a new standard. This concept appeals to B2C brands that wish to thank their customers with a reward that is more emotional and responsible than traditional transactional benefits, such as discount codes. We are implementing this worldwide with Accor, among others. We also work on sustainable finance products: for instance, for BNP Paribas, we integrate charitable giving into structured financial products marketed to distributors. Essentially, a percentage of each financial flow is donated to charities linked to the product.
What comes to mind when you think about impact?
When I think of impact, I think of something quite personal: the natural landscapes of my childhood in France. For example, the Porquerolles National Park, an island off the coast of Toulon, or the olive groves of the Alpes Maritimes. Thinking about these wonderful biodiversity places gives me energy: if I want to have a positive impact, it's to ensure that these places are preserved for a long time to come.
How do you define your impact? What makes Dift different from other corporate philanthropy platforms?
In my opinion, our impact is threefold: funding causes of general interest, replacing existing marketing practices (corporate gifts, promotional benefits) with charitable donations, and raising our clients’ awareness of major transition issues. At a minimum, we hope to introduce people to causes, and ideally, to ignite change.
What sets us apart is our ability to integrate impact directly into customer marketing. Rather than addressing only the ESG teams, we target marketing teams and help them transform customer loyalty messaging into a message of impact. I believe this is the most powerful lever we have: bringing engagement where it doesn’t yet exist.
How are partner charities selected, first by you and then by your clients?
We have set up a strict methodology with an impact committee made up of ESG and corporate philanthropy experts, as well as the IDEAS Institute (a reference institute in France to certify non-profit projects). This enables us to offer a selection of "transition gems", highly dynamic organisations within the various themes of the fair transition. These charities are at a stage where they are ready to scale, and we help them reach milestones (such as hiring a full-time staff member) and build a strong local presence with the funding we provide. In return, we ask the charities on our platform to regularly share updates on their projects. This is essential for us, as each donation made through Dift is the start of a story, not a one-off action.
Companies then access this catalogue (of around a hundred projects available) and select charities according to their own values. Their selection usually aligns with a theme that the company wants to support — which may or may not relate to their core activity. Companies can also add a charity they already support to the offer, once our teams have confirmed that the charity is indeed of public interest. Providing this flexibility is important, as we want the companies to continue the story of engagement they have started to build. This dual option is also valuable from their perspective: having access to a ready-to-use catalogue is convenient, but being able to remain consistent with existing commitments is crucial.
What trends do you see in the selection of supported causes?
Just as new companies and activities emerge, new issues also arise, leading to the creation of new charities. In the 2010s, we saw environmental issues gain prominence, with initiatives focusing on pollution control, awareness, and education. It’s important to recognise that new challenges of general interest are constantly emerging, and our role is to help fund and support them.
At Dift, we are able to direct more donations towards environmental charities than what they receive on average in France (35% on Dift vs 9% at national level). This is due to the fact that a third of the projects in our catalogue are ecology-focused, bringing visibility to these issues. Another notable trend: while biodiversity and disability issues are still under-addressed by companies, these causes are increasingly being included in difts’ operations. This shows that when a suitable solution is provided, companies are eager to engage. Additionally, we are witnessing a rapid evolution in corporate giving; a groundswell that reflects the growing search for meaning among many working individuals. More and more people feel the need to align their personal convictions with their professional lives. This requires developing engagement initiatives like corporate philanthropy.
How can companies balance their mission with business objectives in corporate giving? What strategies help create genuine engagement and avoid greenwashing risks?
The main challenge is to avoid disconnecting the social mission from business objectives. Greenwashing occurs when brands convey an image of perfection. At Dift, we promote a more humble approach where companies and their customers move forward together to support tangible projects. By embedding impact into the customer journey, we facilitate genuine engagement, where each gesture becomes the beginning of a story.
Beyond the core trends previously mentioned, we are also attentive to changes in customer marketing. This area remains a sensitive topic for addressing transition issues and thus represents a unique opportunity. Marketing has undergone little transformation and remains a tool for promoting consumption, driven by big tech with a strong focus on performance marketing. Today, brands are facing skyrocketing customer acquisition costs due to their reliance on external channels. To move beyond performance marketing, it becomes crucial to build a brand identity and an engagement that generates deeper loyalty. Tomorrow's marketing will be more responsible, aligned with the evolving expectations of consumers who care about transition issues. And in ten years, I believe this will be the standard for all companies, not just large corporations.
On your website, each team member is noted as being "born at X ppm of CO2"; what does that mean to you, and why highlight it?
This reflects our commitment to the environment. All of us joined Dift because we want to make a difference in reversing the effects of climate change. This CO₂ notation serves as a reminder of the urgency and importance of action. It motivates us every day in our mission.