The co-founder of Omaze relied on the likes of Lionel Messi, Arnold Schwarzenegger and even the late Pope Francis to make his for-profit fundraising company a huge success.
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88. Earlier this year Matt Pohlson, the man behind Omaze, spoke about his chance encounter with the head of the Catholic Church. Omaze has made headlines in recent times for giving away huge mansions in the likes of Devon and Cornwall to people who spent as little as £10 for tickets in luxury prize draws.
But before he began giving away multi-million pound houses in the UK, Matt and his co-founder Ryan Cummings, used an impressive network of celebrities to get recognised. And over the years they have worked with people like Bryan Cranston, George Clooney and the late pontiff.
His Vatican experience came up on the Secret Leaders podcast in January when he said: “We raised venture capital at the very beginning when we were doing celebrities.
“So we just did celebrities for seven years, that was all it was. It wasn’t until after my near death experience (heart attack in 2018) that we switched to prizes. And so we raised money for that model which was tough because you are constantly having to get the Pope, or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Messi to try and do stuff.”
The presenters, clearly surprised at what he just said, asked Matt to recall his experience with the Pope. And Matt, who is from California, told the story of how he organised with the Pope a Lamborghini draw, after the holy man had posed with the super car in front of the Vatican.
The draw was won by a man from the Czech Republic and he was handed the keys by Pope Francis himself – with $2m (approx £1.5m) raised from the prize going to people in the developing world to combat poverty.
But this unlikely event happened by chance because of a girl called Chloe Howard, then 15, who months earlier met Bono from U2 backstage. Her father, Dane, received a call from Omaze to say he won the prize. Chloe, born with a deformed club foot, had recently been assaulted at school and she told Bono his song Invisible helped her through it.
Bono offered her advice and said “make yourself available for work and your passion will be revealed to you” after asking her about her interests.
Speaking on the podcast, Matt, who said this story all led to the Pope, explained: “I have never seen a moment like that in my life, you could literally see this girl transforming before your eyes. Obviously Bono could say this stuff a lot more poetically than I can but it was magic – I was watching magic happen.”
Chloe, determined to harness the experience, started meeting other girls who had been bullied and soon schools were requesting her to come and visit. This led to a movement called Stand Beautiful and after being offered to do a TED-X talk, she received a book deal from Harper Collins. At one of her talks, a representative from the Vatican was in attendance, and he asked Chloe to connect him with Omaze to see if the Pope could be part of a prize draw experience.
This ultimately led to a collaboration with Lamborghini – the car company that had made a special car (Huracán RWD Coupé) for Pope Francis before auctioning it in 2017. According to Matt, someone bid €700,000 for it before backing out.
As for what happened next, he said: “Lamborghini called a guy who worked with us and was like, ‘Hey can you sell this to one of your high end donors’ – and he said that is literally the exact opposite of what we do – like people put in 10 bucks for the chance to win.”
He added: “But I randomly am going to meet Pope Francis by chance and I can ask… we will buy it if he promises to give it away – and that’s what happened.”
Pope Francis agreed to the prize draw pitch and he even blessed the Lamborghini and handed the keys to the competition winner. Matt later described the experience as “crazy” and “surreal” and said it raised millions of dollars for refugees.
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