Crew Platform

Crew was started by a Mexican and Chinese immigrants who share a background in building civic engagement youth movements. We know all too well the pain points of grassroots movements organizing: having a small staff, limited resources and managing hundreds or thousands of volunteers with limited tech tools or guidance on how to optimize them to sustain and grow their movements. Also, we know that access to infrastructure, tools & funding for operations and capacity building, is lower for organizations led by BIPC than white leaders. 

Our solution is the Crew Platform, a powerful online tool designed to power movements by offering features to train, support and connect communities working towards a social, racial and/or environmental justice mission. 

Crew is accessible to ALL. We address funding and support disparities with a pay-what-you-can model that offers unlimited coaching and support to help each org meet their goals.  All together co-creating technology.

Crew was started by a Mexican and Chinese immigrants who share a background in building civic engagement youth movements. From our experience leading, and now supporting dozens of social movements, we know all too well the pain points of grassroots movements organizing: having a small staff and limited resources to run our programs which involve training, supporting and connecting hundreds or thousands of volunteers, often in different cities, with very limited tech tools or guidance on how to optimize them to sustain and grow our movements. And this is especially the case for movements led by BIPOC.

And of course, this is corroborated by  the most recent Bridgespan and Echoing Green Report and Building Movement Project’s Race to Lead report, both of which found that access to infrastructure, tools & funding for operations and capacity building, is lower for organizations led by BIPC than white leaders.

The result is that our incredibly passionate and successful grassroots movements, led by incredibly talented and visionary leaders of color are often limited in what their impact could be if they had access to better tools, more support, and more unrestricted funding to sustain and grow the longevity and impact of their movements.

The Crew Platform is a fully customizable white-label tool designed to power civic engagement and social movements. Our features make it easy for movement leaders to train, support and connect their communities and local leaders to work towards their mission.

We essentially help civic engagement organizations to run their programs. From onboarding and training, to maintaining communications, to collecting data and input from the ground work to have more accurate reporting and metrics. 

Our core features include: 

• A content management system (To manage training and project tasks)
• Live virtual events and event calendar to manage volunteer RSVP's, attendance and coaching.
• Teams and communication tools 
• Reward systems like badges, points and prizes
• And an easy to use admin panel with analytics and metrics, integration to other major tech tools.

CREW envisions a connected social sector that shares infrastructure and best practices and evolves together to build a world that works for all. 

Our intended impact is to help nonprofits become more scalable, effective and sustainable; to know themselves as part of a community of programs evolving together to transform society in systemic ways; and to help their volunteers be better equipped to lead and implement social change.

Crew is made up of 57 member organizations (and growing!) that mobilize and equip communities to solve critical problems and advance positive social change.

Of our 57 members, 61% of them are led by BIPOC and 64% are led by women. 90% of them have annual budgets under $500,000. And collectively our members have onboarded almost 20,000 local leaders who are mobilizing their communities towards each organization's mission. 

Building shared online tools, a community of support AND being 100% accessible to all are our founding principles. 

Every single organization is offered on-demand support and coaching calls. We schedule weekly onboarding meetings when a new organization joins Crew, to support them building the online hub for their programs and community. Our onboarding process is a great opportunity for each program to self-reflect on the efficacy of their process and document their program.

Our funding model is designed as a pay-what-you-can annual membership. 51% of our members don't pay a penny. And 12% of our members pay between $15,000-100,000/year by sponsoring specific features built in ways that can serve our entire community. The best thing is, they happily do so. Those who can give, are giving generously according to their means, and knowing that their contributions are serving tens of thousands of grassroots leaders and their community of Crew organizations. As a Tech Nonprofit, we also fundraise from foundations to help maintain our operation costs and keeping our mission to say YES to any nonprofit who wants and needs Crew.

Finally, our community building model connects organizations in our network by cohorts depending on the communities they serve and their mission. We host monthly wisdom-sharing calls to learn from each other and problem-solve together. Our organizations have developed a deep collaboration culture, developing joint projects like sharing impact reporting methodologies, organizing joint youth summer programs, and even merging. 

The Crew Platform, our membership model, our on-demand coaching and support program and our community building efforts, are all designed to support and amplify the work of BIPOC nonprofit leaders.

Our nonprofit members are working to mobilize their communities towards civic engagement and other social, racial and environmental justice missions. We provide them with the tools to mobilize, train, support and connect their communities of  volunteers, students, teachers, caregivers, social entrepreneurs who are working to improve their communities. Crew helps power register-to-vote programs, to local advocacy groups, youth leadership and poverty eradication programs. We support BPOC leaders fulfill their mission.

Crew has been an independent 501c3 nonprofit organization for two years now. And we've organically grown to serving 57 nonprofit organizations, mobilizing 17,243 local leaders who are working in 1,341 communities with presence in most US states and in 41 countries. Our first two years focused on building our staff, our product, and our community engagement practices. As a result we’ve experienced a healthy and exciting rate of organic growth, all while responding to the rapid pace of change driven by an unprecedented global pandemic. 

Now, as we start our third year of work and service, we’re getting ready to shift from solving urgent needs to embarking on a new stage of growth and impact for our movement. To launch more focused outreach and recruitment campaigns to let more organizations know that we are a resource designed to support their civic engagement and social impact efforts. 

Thanks for the opportunity!

Crew embodies an innovative anti-racist, community-driven,  approach to technology development 

57+ nonprofit organizations make up our community of members; all together co-investing and co-envisioning the evolution of our shared online platform.

Our innovative business model invites: partnerships to develop custom projects, membership contributions, and foundation grants for earmarked projects. The main goal of our business model is to offer an online platform, support system and community of practice available to ALL, regardless of their financial contribution level. And to build sustainable technology solutions that can be delivered promptly and that ensure on-going new features and security updates to all members in our network. All while fostering a spirit of collaboration and best practice sharing to bring forth a world that works for all life. 

We are currently serving 57 nonprofit organizations, 17,000+ local leaders working in 1,341 communities

Our goal for 2021-22 is to go from 57 organizations to welcoming 110-150 organizations into our technology and program. 

In five years, we hope to be serving between 600-1,000 nonprofit organizations.

• Number of organizations served
• Number of local leaders supported
• Number of community members reached
• Number of communities served
• Percentage of BIPOC leaders in our community and staff
• Quality of life or our staff and community
• Number of convening, wisdom sharing calls and collaborative projects.