Uniting Israelis, Palestinians, and Tech Leaders with MEET

Lemonade’s Giveback to MEET

MEET (Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow) connects, educates, and empowers young Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make a positive social and political impact in the Middle East. In Partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MEET encourages its participants to work together to tackle real-world problems, showing them the value of working with someone from the other side.

Through the Giveback to MEET, the Lemonade community sponsored a field trip for young Israeli and Palestinian participants to meet with tech industry leaders! This will give the Israeli and Palestinian participants the opportunity to connect with experts in their field, and to unite over their common passion for tech and entrepreneurship.

The 2017 Lemonade Giveback

Our total Giveback for 2017 was $53,174, and this number calls for some context: this amounts to 10.2% of our revenue. As a point of reference, the Fortune 100 give 0.08% of their revenues each year (CECP p.36). So if year-one is anything to go by, Giveback has the potential to 100X that benchmark. Time will tell, but early indications are encouraging.  

We had 21 cause-centric-groups as of June 30, and 14 (66.7%) received a Giveback. Here’s a fun fact: among these 14 causes, an average of 18% of premiums were given to charity. These funds can go a long way when put in the right hands.

But it’s more than just numbers. Giveback amounts to a change in kind, because it isn’t dependent on profits (Lemonade hasn’t turned a profit yet). We think of Giveback as a social contract among our community, where the size and allocation is determined not by our big profits or big hearts, but by the good fortune and good behavior of our members. Remember, it’s not our money.

As our Chief Behavioral Officer Dan Ariely explained, “it’s money our community has entrusted to us, first and foremost to help our members recover from unfortunate events in their lives, and secondly, to help the less fortunate in our broader community.”

Share your MEET impact, and read more about our 2017 Giveback here.