We are a social business which operates under the roof of the charitable Good Impact Foundation. We commit to allocate a minimum of 50%, better close to 100%, of the revenues, which we generate through our search engine, to support our cause.  

We transferred our company shares to the charitable Good Impact Foundation (℅ Noah Foundation) to saveguard our mission. 

We use the market to generate funds for good cause. Moreover, we support good cause with the most effective means, be it a donation, a social investment or any other support such as media work or supporting a crowdfunding campaign. 

We support also young, innovative initiatives, which others – charities, investors, public programmes – find difficult to support. Unlike many others, we are open to take risks. 

We maintain a flexibility to support causes where opportunities arise. We support projects without asking for much paperwork, safeguarding the quality of the projects supported through other means like strong references through our network.  

We love cooperation and actively look out for partnerships with organizations from all sectors, be it companies, other non-profits or technology partners. 

We seek to engage our stakeholders e.g. in the process of selecting or evaluating the projects which we support, or the way how we further grow.

We follow the guidelines of the Initiative Transparente Zivilgesellschaft and publish all relevant information with regard to our governance and flows of funds.

We form part of the global network of Certified B Corp, united by the mission to use business as a force for good, and publish the B Impact Report.

We seek to live our values also within our organization, based on the principles of use soft communication, flat hierarchies, a diverse team, open mindedness, tolerance, co-creation and a high appreciation of the work of the team. We see the people we work with, as human beings, not just as a resource. 

We define environmental protection guidelines for our organization and review them regularly.

We have a policy to avoid waste in the home office and to reuse, recycle or safely dispose hazardous waste (printer cartridges, batteries, etc.) and appoint a Zero Waste Officer to support the team: andrea@gexsi.com

GEXSI Impact UG (limited liability) Winsstraße 4 10405 Berlin Deutschland

Founding year: 2016

GEXSI Impact UG (“Gexsi”) is a B-Corp certified start-up with a vision of a world where social entrepreneurs are gaining traction. Gexsi operates a social search engine whose revenue is used to support innovative social projects that contribute to the 17 UN Global Sustainability Goals (SDGs) – locally and globally.

The criteria according to which we select projects are displays transparently on our website in the section Our Selection Criteria.

The shareholders’ agreement dated 29 January 2016, the entry in the commercial register dated 8 February 2016 and the transfer of shares to the non-profit Noah Foundation dated 5 April 2018 can be downloaded here.

Gexsi is a social business which is embedded in a non-profit framework. The founders transferred 100% of the company shares to the Good Impact Foundation (legal name: NOAH Foundation): www.goodimpact.com 

Further legal information can be found in the Imprint.

• Founder and Managing Director: Dr. Andreas Renner; since December 2019 Kevin Fuchs is also a managing director.
• Founder and Director of the Noah Foundation as owner of Gexsi: David Diallo.
  

We started the Gexsi search engine in May 2018 as a beta version. The activities are described on this website under “Our Impact Tracking” and on the page “Projects”.

Gexsi is one of the first B Corp certified companies in Germany. From 2014 to 2017 Gexsi was commissioned by the umbrella organisation B Lab Europe Foundation to set up the German chapter of Certified B Corporations as a country partner, actively supported various social business start-ups and advised international organisations on questions of impact-oriented investments.

With the launch of the search engine, we registered Gexsi as a new company, GEXSI Impact UG, which is entirely embedded in a charitable framework.

Our B Impact Report can be found here.

The Gexsi search machine was started by Andreas Renner and David together with Kevin Fuchs. Andreas ist heading the business development, Kevin the digital development. The core team is supported by Andrea Rebensburg (communication), Kai Kreuzmüller (Influencer Marketing) and Manuel Harder (programming).

We want to describe our business model as simply and clearly as possible. The following overview serves this purpose:

Our core business is based on

• a contract with System1 LLC (dated November 2018), an accredited partner of Microsoft, which makes the search engine technologist Bing available to third parties on the basis of a benefit-sharing agreement, and
• an agreement with the Berlin-based company Searchturbo (dated May 2018), which monetizes direct links of our autocompletion box.

As of January 31st, 2020, we earned a total of 3.950€ through these two channels.

We successfully closed a seed financing round of 75.000€ during the first half of 2019 from four business angels, which was matched by the GLS Treuhand Foundation.  

To fund our initial work, we offered consulting services in the area of Social Business / Impact Investing, which generated revenues: 

• Impact Investment Advisory Services: 5,000€ (2016), 1,554€ (2017); no services offered since the beginning of 2018.
• Building B Corp Network: 6.100€ (2016), 2.750€ (2017), 7.950€ (2018), a final down-payment is expected in the course of 2019.

Within our partnership with WWF we invoiced a total of 7,500€ which covered digital development work; within our partnership with the SensAbility Impact Summit we acquired a sponsorship of 2,500€ from a private company (LTVI)

Apart from these sources of funds, Gexsi has so far been fully bootstrapped through the founding team. 

The use of the revenues of our search engine is described in detail on the page Your Impact in our Impact Tracking Table. The development of the search engine has so far been done 100% by the founders themselves, i.e. no salaries have been paid.

The financial statements for 2016 and 2017 do not yet reflect any revenues of the search engine and are at a low level. The use of funds in the two years referred exclusively to the management of the network of Certified B Corporations by Andreas Renner and Andrea Rebensburg and individual Impact Investment related consulting services by Andreas Renner. The last submitted annual financial statements can be downloaded here.

The section about the use of funds in the most recent years will be updated soon.

GEXSI Impact UG (“Gexsi”) is a B Corp certified social business founded in February 2016 by Andreas Renner, whose shares were fully transferred to the non-profit Noah in April 2018. The transaction was carried out at the nominal value of the share capital (€1,000).

The Noah Foundation is an independent, private foundation based in Potsdam (Stiftung-Register: #164). It was founded in 2008 by David Diallo. It is planned to increasingly work with the label “Good Impact Foundation” in an international context. There is an agreement between David Diallo and Andreas Renner, which provides for the establishment of a subfoundation or a foundation of one’s own at a later date and thus ties in with the GEXSI history.

The idea of “GEXSI – Global Exchange for Social Investment” goes back to an initiative of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in 2001 with the aim of closing the financing gap for social entrepreneurs.

Even if the history is not directly relevant under company law, it is still important in order to understand the basic idea of GEXSI and to be able to classify the legal entities that operated with the brand in the past. The GEXSI idea was pursued in different legal forms, all of which sought a bridge between non-profit and for-profit structures. Andreas Renner joined in 2005, since 2008 in leading positions as CEO of Charity, partner of LLP and founder and managing director of GmbH and UG:

Launched as an internal project of the Schwab Foundation under the leadership of Pamela Hartigan in 2001, GEXSI was spun off at the end of 2004 as GEXSI Ltd in London and then, under the leadership of Maritta Koch-Weser at the beginning of 2005, quickly set up as a UK Charity, whereby this was supplemented by a sister company, GEXSI LLP, for consulting projects. The latter was replaced in 2008 by a German company, GEXSI Capital Partners, in which Andreas Renner and David Diallo (via Diallo Beteiligungs GmbH, today Impact Ventures GmbH) and Marc von Krosigk held equal shares. With the dissolution of the GEXSI Charity and the simultaneous revaluation of GEXSI Capital Partners GmbH as a “Certified B Corporation”, the GmbH was renamed GEXSI GmbH in 2015.

The new foundation of GEXSI Impact UG 2016, which replaces GEXSI GmbH, has opened the way to continue the original business model in a changed, now non-profit shareholder structure. Legally, GEXSI Impact UG is not a legal successor of GEXSI GmbH. However, the mission, the brand, the business model, to develop solutions that strengthen the social enterprise sector and the associated B Corp certification has been transferred to the new company.

The GEXSI story reflects a long-standing search for the most meaningful legal structure for a social business that operates in the market but is 100% committed to a social mission. It also carries a strong message that the challenge of closing the funding gap for social entrepreneurs has remained virtually unchanged despite the huge developments in the social impact sector, but that today – unlike 15 years ago when the GEXSI idea was born – we have new digital tools that allow us to rethink solutions. It is this continuity in vision that has led to the idea of using the search engine to revive the GEXSI – Global Exchange for Social Investment brand with its own history.

Gexsi has not yet received any grants.