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Humanitix Helps Event Organizers Improve Accessibility and Commits Profits to Support Nonprofits
Humanitix co-founder and co-CEO Josh Ross says, “Humanitix is a ticketing platform for events. Think of it like an ethical alternative to an Eventbrite. We exist to solve social problems.”
After recording this interview last month, we swapped out our ticketing host for SuperCrowd22 to use Humanitix. When you finish reading, watching or listening, I hope you’ll agree we made a good call.
The Story of Humanitix
Josh and his co-CEO Adam McCurdie built Humanitix from the ground up as a nonprofit. “We had this vision of how amazing would the world be if we had technology charities at scale that could use that force purely for good.”
The nonprofit tech company is now the go-to ticketing platform in Australia and New Zealand. As a nonprofit, mission gets prioritized above profits.
The profits the nonprofit tech company generates are committed to causes, Josh says:
All the profits we make from our booking fees go into different education programs. Globally, we focus on young girls literacy programs. In America, we partner with Code.org, and we fund computer science and STEM programs for disadvantaged kids from low-income backgrounds.
In addition to that use of funds, Josh sees Humanitix playing a pivotal role in making events more accessible. He notes that many people with significant disabilities have simply given up on attending events.
Josh and Adam don’t own shares in Humanitix. No one does. As a nonprofit designed to serve the community, the entity in effect belongs to the community. While the founders could merge the business into another, they couldn’t benefit directly from such a transaction. They can make a living from Humanitix, but it will never make them wealthy.
Josh explains that this is possible because before launching Humanitix, they spent six years in the corporate world “where we were doing well.” He adds that they come from “decent families” that have been supportive.
“So, we don't need to make tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars personally,” Josh says. “So, as long as we can earn an honest living, this is a way more exciting thing to do with our time.”
Josh adds that having pledged the profits to education programs, having traditional investors would create tension between them and the mission.
To finance the launch of a business that would never distribute profits to shareholders seems daunting. “We found philanthropists that understand the power of what we're doing,” Josh says, noting that they appreciate the fact that in the long run, the nonprofit would become self-funding.
“We've become a self-funding charity in Australia, New Zealand, so we didn't need [philantrhopic] investors for long,” he says.
The structure also makes the business and mission transparent. Josh explains:
We can't give a tokenistic amount to our projects and then sell this to a big tech company in five years’ time. Because even if there was a sale, the money is not ours. And there's a constitution and a registered charity there where we'd go to prison if we started pocketing that money. It's got to go towards benevolent purposes. So, it gives comfort to us, to all the people that have helped us get here, but also our clients who believe in our mission, that we're not going to sell out.
Given that the founders want to change the world rather than create wealth, the nonprofit structure has aligned the interests of everyone else involved.
Josh’s lack of greed does not translate into a lack of vision. He sees big things ahead.
If we can scale to a similar size as Eventbrite in America, which we've achieved, we think in Australia, New Zealand, we should be spitting out roughly $20 to $30 million a year to our education programs, and we’ll be a lot more advanced in improving accessibility at live events. We also save nonprofits money when they ticket through us because we let them use our platform at a sustainable price, which should keep coming down over time.
It is exciting to imagine.
