Connecting Charities Together - Tom Neill of Time to Spare

Impact Hustlers - Entrepreneurs with Social Impact

Did you know that the UK government allots 16 billion pounds every year to charities? That’s seven billion pounds more than private donations made to these same charities. With that, Time to Spare founder Tom Neill shares what it’s like providing data that helps charities manage their projects and volunteers as well as collect information that, in the end, not only keeps charities transparent and organized but also allows the government to decide on local projects and organizations that would benefit most from being funded.

After quitting his job at Oliver Wyman and taking a sabbatical in China, Tom realized there was a problem that needed to be solved, which was the lack of data on what charities were doing and the impact they were having on people’s lives. And so, Time to Spare was created. With their software that records all the information on charities and their projects, they help charities provide support to the people that really need it.

Having to pivot during the pandemic was one of their main challenges, among others, and along with that, Tom also shares the story behind their business model, how they figured out how to make it sustainable, other challenges they faced and overcame, their competition, what it is like working with the government, and more.

Tom’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “I think the main source of motivation really is a lot of the organizations, especially the charities that we work with, are really quite underserved by software tools in general.” (24:46)
• “You go to a local community center and their activities they're putting on for people, the support they're providing to people who just have no other way of getting that support is really inspiring.” (25:49)
• “The only way you can do it, or at least the way we managed to do it, was to do something on the cheap.” (30:35)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• Tom’s journey from Oliver Wyman to Time to Spare (1:32)
• The world of Time to Spare, charities, and government (7:57)
• The lessons Tom’s learned from his journey with Time to Spare (20:17)
• Why Tom and his team do what they do (24:46)
• Tom’s advice to startup founders (30:23)
• How the volunteer space will be in 10 years’ time according to Tom (35:30)

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