Brandon Kaufer is co-founder and CEO of Social Good Club, a storytelling think tank and content studio focused on building stories and strategies around progressive issues.
Kaufer has always had a penchant for building organizations to bring people together, starting with an events business he launched when he was in seventh grade. In 2008, Kaufer started his career in music management, working with some of the biggest artists of the time. At the same time, he worked in criminal justice reform and advocacy.
“Over the years, with one foot in the creative world and one foot in the impact space, he saw the biggest moments of change happen when the two worlds were bridged in a truly meaningful way,” Kaufer’s team said. “He used the time he had to make introductions and support whatever collaborations he could, but without being able to play a role in handholding the collaboration, most of the introductions fell flat.”
In 2017, he saw an opportunity to be the bridge between those two worlds, and the Social Good Club was born. It started as a community bringing culture shapers and changemakers together, then evolved into a content studio and agency in 2018 with its first client, the United Nations. Finally, in 2021, the organization shifted to a think tank “focused on reimagining how we tell stories and build lasting social movements around today’s most pressing issues,” the organization said.
In the next five years, the Social Good Club plans to create a process and framework called “The Science of Changemaker Storytelling” that it says will change the way it develops communication strategies, creates content and engages mass audiences. “These frameworks can be applied to all issue areas to leverage science, technology, psychology and research-backed storytelling strategies to create longlasting social movements, driven by culture, that can fundamentally change society and the way we live,” the organization said. “While the issues are vast and varied, the underlying principles that are needed to affect real change are quite similar. As we define and narrow in on our research, we will constantly be releasing our findings and data, crowdsourcing their impact and refining our strategies.”
Kaufer has produced an annual global gathering of more than 200 industry leaders to connect and support each other’s missions on Africa, Asia, North America, South America and Europe. He established the first Creator Fellowship program for the United Nations, focused on ending violence against women and girls, and raised more than $40 million for a range of causes and campaigns to pass multiple state and federal reform bills.
Kaufer previously managed two Grammy-nominated musicians, and he reached over $1 million in annual revenue in the first year of operating Social Good Club. He has spoken in front of multiple highprofile audiences, including the UN General Assembly, the Clinton Global Initiative, U.S. Congress and the California state Senate, and is a regular guest lecturer at multiple universities.
