The Matchmaker

Founder: Rachael Chong, 29

Company: Catchafire

Founded: September 2010

Site: catchafire.org

What Catchafire does: Catchafire matches professionals who want to give their skills with non-profits and social enterprises that need their help. They create matches based on a variety of characteristics including skills, cause interests, and time availability. Think eHarmony.com for volunteers and non-profits. 

How she’s changing the game: Chong was born in Australia but lived throughout Asia from the age of eight until she graduated high school because her mother was an Australian diplomat. From that experience, Chong grew up seeing and understanding poverty from a very young age. Being skeptical of the efficiency of the non-profit space, Chong chose to study business and go into investment banking after college. She wanted to figure out how to help the world using market forces. After stints at Goldman Sachs and UBS, she went into microfinance. “I decided to go into microfinance because I felt like I couldn’t stay in the corporate space and give back,” said Chong. “It felt very mutually exclusive, which is a false choice that felt very real at the time.” 

Chong subsequently helped start the non-profit BRAC USA. While working to start up this stateside arm of the international BRAC organization, Chong created short-term pro bono projects for her friends. “I had my friends who worked in private equity help with the financial plans and I had friends who worked at AOL help with the marketing plans,” said Chong. “And this helped free up my time and the organizations’ CEO’s time to focus on fundraising and building the organization.

According to Chong, this experience taught her that this strategy of short-term skilled projects could be an effective way for professionals to make a difference in the world while providing non-profits with access to skilled professionals that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. It was through this experience that she developed the idea for Catchafire. 

Catchafire is a mission-based company, but it is structured as a for-profit. They charge non-profits for the volunteer match service on a sliding scale, based on the organization’s operating budget. This allows Catchafire to serve organizations of all sizes. “I spent a lot of time deciding whether or not we should be for-profit or non-profit,” said Chong. “But I think the way that we’ve set up our business model allows us the opportunity to scale. We have the flexibility to plow our profits back into the company to help it grow and achieve our social mission much more quickly than if we were structured as a non-profit.” 

What’s next: According to Chong, the most immediate goal for Catchafire is to break even. “From there we’re going to try to scale very quickly and expand across the United States so that we can serve as many non-profits and social organizations and as many professionals as we possibly can.”