Who Gives A Crap’s record year boosts donations during Covid

For Who Gives A Crap, the pandemic has accelerated its growth and it is on track to more than double its earnings this year.

For Who Gives A Crap, the pandemic has accelerated its growth and it is on track to more than double its earnings this year.

Toilet paper brand Who Gives A Crap has defied global belt tightening in corporate philanthropy as the panic buying fuelled by Covid-19 lockdowns flushes the company with record profits and, in turn, record donations.

The Melbourne-headquartered business that takes delight in being the butt of dunny jokes and other forms of toilet humour - with slogans like ‘give yourself a pat on the bum’ printed on its rolls - donates 50 per cent of its profits to global Wateraid programs and other charities.

In the past 12 months, as it battled a run on demand, donations have soared to $5.85m - a 700 per cent increase on the previous year. It comes as JB Were has estimated 7.1 per cent has been wiped off total corporate philanthropic donations last year as Australia battles one of its sharpest recessions - and is anticipating a steeper 12 per cent in 2021.

But for Who Gives A Crap, like most e-commerce companies, the pandemic has accelerated its growth and it is on track to more than double its earnings this year.

“It certainly has been our biggest year by a long shot,” co-founder and chief executive Simon Griffiths said.

“The pandemic certainly helped. We were on track to make our first multi-million dollar donation as it was and then the pandemic kind of pushed that number even higher. I think what happened there is that it has accelerated e-commerce penetration and adoption of the online sales channel to people who might not have discovered us in the last year or so.

“We are seeing those customers stick around so it looks like it’s a shift that’s going to be permanent and structural, which is exciting for online retailers.”

While the pandemic has propelled Who Gives A Crap to lofty heights, the business has not escaped interruption, particularly at the onset of the pandemic, when its manufacturing facility in China was caught up in the extended Chinese New Year closure to limit the spread of Covid-19, which was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

“We manufacture responsibly in China and then ship globally from that centralised manufacturing hub and our supply chain was relatively unaffected - we had a two-week delay from the end of Chinese New Year but aside from that, we were able to take our production up to 150-200 per cent of what it normally is to make sure we had as much inventory as possible,” Mr Griffiths said.

Still, such was the overwhelming demand for toilet paper, that the company was forced to limit sales despite scaling up production. On its website all products were listed as sold out, new customers could no longer subscribe to deliveries, and when online business resumed it was by invitation only to people who had registered.

“We had to mark our store to ‘sold out’ so we could ensure our subscribers and business customers were receiving orders as they normally would. We were very conscious that we had a lot of amazing customers who had ordered from us up to seven years consistently every six months as an example, but they weren’t subscribers. As the pandemic hit we had to mark our store as sold out, which meant they buy from us when they weren’t ready to come back and purchase again.

“For some of those customers they realised that maybe it was time to take up a subscription and have some of the benefits that come with that, so we have seen an uptick over the past few months.”

Charity sector stress

But throughout the pandemic, Mr Griffiths and his team said they have been acutely aware of the drought of philanthropic funds, particularly to Wateraid programs across Asia Pacific region and in South and Central America.

According to Philanthropy Australia, the economic downturn has placed “unprecedented financial stress” on the charity sector.

John McLeod, JBWere’s Philanthropic Services team co-founder, estimated donations had fallen 7.1 per cent in 2020 with the “generous support” given during the devastating bushfires from last summer compounding the problem.

“Corporate giving has been affected when profitability has fallen although the actual proportion of profits given has risen during these tough times. Volunteering on the other hand is being severely hampered by isolation requirements, regardless of how strong people’s desires may be to help,” Mr McLeod said.

“Analysing each of the giving segments in Australia and looking at the main factors influencing their levels of support, we estimate total giving will fall by around 7.1 per cent in 2020 after rising by almost 5 per cent over each of the previous two years. The larger effect from the current crisis is likely to be felt in 2021 when giving is estimated to fall by a further 11.9 per cent, back to levels not seen since 2012.”

Wateraid has not been immune at a time when sanitation is desperately needed to help weaponise developing countries to fight Covid-19.

“The pandemic shone a light on toilet paper but I think if you kind of zoom out that’s a pretty privileged problem to have. Our thoughts went immediately to our beneficiary partners who we support throughout the developing world, who don’t have access to soap, let alone a toilet, let alone toilet paper,” Mr Griffiths said.

“As soon as thoughts of a recession popped up, everyone’s purse strings closed up and that meant a lot of our partners weren’t going to meet their fundraising budgets if they relied on the same sources of funds as they had in previous years.

“We were very lucky to be able to help people like Wateraid close the gap in their budget because our donation was bigger than anticipated and so it was able to help meet that shortfall. When we donated in June, Wateraid said that was the largest donation for their current financial year and the third-largest donation the year prior.”

As the Covid-19 pandemic enters its second year, demand for toilet paper has began to stabilise, with sales forecasts returning to pre-pandemic levels, despite Woolworths reimposing buying limits at about 200 of its supermarkets in the Greater Sydney area to prevent panic-buying in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak in the city’s northern beaches last month.

“There was an initial stocking up period from March to June when people bought more than they would typically use in those months, and that meant that there was a period when customers were buying less from July to September. Then things stabilised around October and we are continuing to see that stable demand that’s pretty much on track with what we forecast,” Mr Griffiths said.

“Our business tends to double in size every year and we are broadly on track for that, probably slightly above just because the pandemic accelerated that slightly.”