These days crowd funding platforms are on the short list of money-raising option for just about every startup or new small enterprise looking to launch. Thought they were only for startups? Wrong. They fund humanitarian enterprises as well.
Brother and sister team Flynn and Ruby Kirwin – who are ages nine and four respectively – managed to use a special Vancouver-based crowd funding forum called Change Heroes to raise over $11,000 for their dream. That dream? To build a school for children in need in Ecuador.
The siblings’ campaign began in mid May and money was raised through friends, family, classmates and members of their community.
Initially the plan had been to raise money to purchase soccer balls for children in Africa (Flynn Kirwin is a big fan of the sport) but became more ambitious after the Kirwin’s met Change Heroes founder Taylor Conroy, last year at the Do Gooders Summit in Gulpeh, Ontario. His platform, launched in July of last year, has a specific focus: funding libraries and educational facilities in developing countries. Says Conroy: “The next evolution of business is for entrepreneurs to start channeling their creativity and determination to making the world a better place, instead of just trying to build a tech company and have the next big exit.”
Change Heroes operates upon a relatively simple funding policy, known as the “333” concept: 33 friends give $3.33 per day for 3 months, totaling $10,000—essentailly asking your friends for about $300 each. Change Heroes takes a 10% cut of all money raised.
When you sign up to the platform, users are given the opportunity to log in with Facebook. Odd that when making your list of 33 friends the platform does not allow you to tap your Facebook contacts, instead forcing you to either manually type in names and email address or import every single contact you have on Gmail. Will friend petitioning become more convenient? Let’s hope so. Let’s also hope that the formula is not set in stone—why can’t we ask all of our Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections and Twitter followers for 50 cents a day for three months? What gives?!
To date the organization has raised $1.37 million dollars from 3,427 donors from over 40 countries to fund 137 schools. Change Heroes has been developing a platform that will allow nearly any charity to fund projects all over the world using its software and approach , testing it on libraries in Bangladesh, girls scholarships in India, clean water initiatives in Nepal, anti-sex trafficking work in Cambodia, and AIDS research in the U.S.
Conroy, 32, worked in real estate before a 2009 visit to Kenya and Uganda forced him to change course. While there he was exposed to communities unable to provide their children the education that, he says, is essential to success in the modern world. That exposure inspired him to found Change Heroes. He bootstrapped the company for two years before raising $600,000. The company is looking to raise capital again now. “We are solidifying our deck tonight, and will be sending it out to a few investors – some impact investors, some traditional – that expressed interest, early next week,” Conroy told Forbes.
Change Heroes is by no means the only game in town, as far as charitable crowdfunding is concerned. Other players in the field include Razoo, the Sean Parker cofounded Causes, the UK-based Buzzbnk, Crowdrise and CauseVox, among others.
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