Imagine a place where every time you shop, everybody wins. The Ideal Network makes that happen every day. We connect people with nonprofits and great brands in a mindful marketplace that balances profitability with philanthropy.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." —Richard Buckminster Fuller
Mr. Fuller said it best. So what is our new model? It's a platform—the Ideal Network—that makes group buying more powerful than ever. Just like other private sales sites, the Ideal Network offers generous discounts from your favorite brands every day. The difference: get great value here, and 10-15% of your purchase goes to a cause you care about. That's our way of shifting dollars from everyday purchases to create tangible outcomes for our communities.
Ronny Bell is an entrepreneurs who passionately believe in business as a driver for positive change. They envisioned creating a new kind of company that seizes every day to be a part of the solution.
The Ideal Network has its roots in their involvement with the Interra Project, a nonprofit created to give people a way to reward their causes through their everyday purchases.
Active in Seattle and Boston, Interra ultimately facilitated more than $125,000 in donations from 20,000 members before closing its doors in 2009. At which point, taking cues from the group buying phenomenon that was now well underway—as well as their own experience with creating deep social networks—Ronny and Jon whiteboarded their way to a single, simple word that summed up everything they wanted their new venture to be: Ideal
An ideal enterprise that would raise millions of dollars for non-profits and schools, support local businesses, empower socially conscious consumers, and generate great returns for the visionaries who invest in it.
And so, founded on principles of accountability, integrity, transparency and joy, the Ideal Network was born.
Ronny Bell, co-founder and CEO is well known as the founder of Pioneer Organics, which he established in 1997; by the time of its sale in March 2008, this Seattle- and Portland-based company had grown into the nation's largest organic home-delivery grocer. Ronny's career reflects a firm commitment to community and environmental stewardship—for example, incorporating alternative-energy vehicles into Pioneer's delivery fleet as early as 1999. Ronny won the Seattle Mayor's Small Business Award in 2002, and was honored as one of Puget Sound Business Journal's 40 Under 40 in 2003. He served as a Board member to The Interra Project in 2008, was a member of the Tilth Producers Advisory Board from 2005-2008, and has been a Slow Food Seattle Board member since 2003. Ronny studied History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from which he graduated in 1995.
Jon Ramer, co-founder and CTO is a leading social entrepreneur, communications designer and self-described "realistic optimist" whose effectiveness at enabling large-scale collaboration reaches back to the first groupware software to provide an email system for personal computers (The Coordinator, 1984). By 2001, two patents and a few successful startups later, Jon was turning his focus to community advocacy and social enterprise. Jon was the Executive Director of two nonprofits he also co-founded: The Interra Project, focused on rewarding consumers for supporting socially and environmentally responsible businesses, for which he raised $1.5 million, and the Compassionate Action Network, through which Jon and collaborators brought His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Seattle for a five-day visit, orchestrating Washington's largest public event to date.