3 People That Started Something

1.) Mike Nemeth

Mike was inspired by his own life when he had his first daughter. He follows the idea of one-for-one with his book sales. For each book that is sold, another is given to a child that may not have a book to read. These books are often entertaining for not only the child to listen to / learn from while their parents read them, but also for the parent that is reading them too. This is due to Mike having the ability to write about normally copy-written things such as NCAA happenings. The idea behind making the books fun for the parents that are reading them is that it is more likely that they will read fun books to their children rather than not reading the typically boring ones. Enticing parents to read to their children this way allows the child to expand their vocabulary and can lead to a brighter future for them.

One of 3 books written by Mike Nemeth

2.) Mark Slagle & Alex Cox

Mark and Alex want to fight malnutrition, a daunting task in and of itself. Unlike Mike, they got their idea from working at another non-for-profit business. The theme of one-for-one seems to be a recurring one here as well. Every time they sell a packet of all natural peanut butter, they give away a sort-of nutrition pack to a kid in need. This is a little different from the TOMS original model seeing as the item they are giving away isn't the exact same item that they are selling, although it does involve peanut butter. They measure their success by how many people they help, not what they earn. Many of the other stories do not talk about how they measure success but this seems to be a large goal of theirs and so they talk about it quite frequently.

Mark and Alex's
Good Spread Company Logo

 3.) Steven Duque

Steven, like Mark, took his idea from a real life problem he was having. While living in college, Steven often needed refills on basic things such as soap and toothpaste after his night classes had finished and stores had closed. To get his machines into schools, he offers at least a 10% margin of all sales to go back to any school that has a machine. The entire idea here is to make the life of a college student a little less stressful. On top of giving back to hosting schools, Momba is also partnered with, Opportunity Works, an organization that empowers people with disabilities to get jobs back packaging Momba products.

Steven next to one of his Momba Machines