American-born social entrepreneur Natasha Freidus was already living in France when migrants started arriving there, in the fall of 2015. She was one of thousands of volunteers in Europe who mobilized in small groups to help them, filling the gaps in aid that were left by overwhelmed governments and large NGOs.
While busy at this job, she noticed that although groups like hers were doing some of the most effective and responsive aid work, they did not possess the tools to manage supply and volunteer needs, or any effective way to get urgently needed supplies quickly to where they were needed.
At the same time, across the pond, another social entrepreneur, Philadelphia-based Amanda Levinson, was facing similar problems.
"I saw groups around the country spending months collecting in-kind supplies such as clothing and food into containers, then spending thousands of dollars to ship them overseas," she tells me.
Knowing that these items were readily available all over Europe, she wondered why they couldn't just be purchased locally. As she puts it: "If we can buy flowers for anyone anywhere in the world, why can't we buy a pair of shoes from a local business for a refugee in Greece?"
These twin imperatives: to provide a tool for small grassroots groups to streamline aid supplying; and to increase the speed and efficiency in humanitarian aid led the two entrepreneurs, who had met and became friends several years before in Boston, to join forces and create NeedsList, an online platform where vetted NGOs can list the stuff they need for refugees (anything from mats, to diapers to underwear, shoes or SD cards containing information on how to file asylum requests).
Donors can help by putting in their money, or their time. The purchased items are then delivered to the charities' warehouses by local businesses that can respond faster than long-distance freight carriers. NeedsList, launched in beta version since last October, has helped meet more than 22,000 "needs" so far, working with nonprofits in Greece, France, Italy, Serbia, and the US. When the project is fully launched, they plan to partner with more than 20 organizations across Europe.
Right now, they are active above all in Greece, where thousands of migrants are stranded in Chios, Lesbos, Kos, Samos and other islands, often in abysmal conditions and in the Oynofita camp, outside Athens, and in Calais, where they partnered with the NGO L'Auberge des Migrants. They do support however also initiatives closer to home, like buying new backpacks for refugee students in Philadelphia.
NeedsList is a for-profit public benefits corporation, meaning that it needs to achieve both profits and social impact. "We currently are operating on an affiliate business model: we receive an advertising fee each month from our preferred suppliers, and we're building out an "enterprise version" of NeedsList for large NGOs and companies who want to give more efficiently," Levinson says.
In the long run, the founders' vision is to create a holistic needs-management platform which could be used to address all sort of humanitarian challenges, not just the refugee crisis. It's still a long way to go: the website is pretty basic so far, and it lacks both an internal search engine that could help donors choose which projects to support in a more targeted way and a mobile version to use on the go.
Yet things are building up fast: a new version of the platform is scheduled to be launched today, for World Humanitarian Day and the company is trying to close a funding round that could enable Freidus and Levinson to hire staff, and further develop their product.
