Inspiring Service

We are at a critical point in our more than four years of evolution where we have a proven solution, passionate highly respected early adopters, enough scale and the right team in place to accept the leadership development and organizational capacity building the Elevate Prize offers. 

And we're poised for so much more ahead, making us a perfect fit for this 2-year program. We know we don't have all of the resources to achieve the enormous impact that is needed and possible. This program would be a critical bridge to get us from our current state to the future, where national partnerships are vital to us being able to achieve our vision. In many respects, the brand identity work and communication cultivation through social media that this program offers is exactly what we need as we begin cultivating and working with a variety of national partners.

Beyond the valuable organizational capacity building that is part of the Elevate Prize, the recognition and attention that accompanies winning the prize would be immensely valuable.  And the funds would be put to immediate use in accelerating our success.

My childhood was filled with abuse and alcoholism, threatened by foreclosure and only surviving by hard work and welfare.  Through the blessings of quality public schools and an affordable state university system, I was able to graduate and was exposed to the emerging opportunities created by computer technology.  After finally exiting poverty thanks to my first good jobs, I was inspired to start a computer software company, part of which went on to be the largest outside software supplier to Apple Computer for 7 years.  

Once I had earned enough for my family to live comfortably, we created a foundation to help others.  When we sold the company after many years, we used a large portion of the proceeds to grow the foundation.

I have devoted almost every waking moment, my technology background and the majority of the funds of our foundation for more than four years to revolutionize how inspired potential volunteers become actual highly valuable volunteers helping the people in their communities like the young man I once was in my community.  

Winning the Elevate Prize would help me globally do exactly its purpose: elevate opportunities for all people, elevate issues and their solutions and elevate understanding.

Even before the pandemic, it was far too difficult for an inspired prospective volunteer to find and connect with an active nonprofit where the volunteer could help solve a community problem. With certain databases -- like the IRS' 1.7 million approved 501c3s and platforms developed beginning in 1999 and still using outdated technologies, and being far too big for a volunteer to navigate while other platforms, mainly focused on giving, being far too narrow. Our frictionless guide (no account needed) is just right, representing a comprehensive view of all the active nonprofits in a state or community, helping the volunteer find any way to help from mission-delivery to board service. The old platforms rely on already overstressed nonprofits to populate their listings; we do the work for nonprofits, engaging volunteers ourselves and enforcing strict quality standards that ensure a positive user experience. 

We started rebuilding the Cincinnati volunteer ecosystem to demonstrate what's possible anywhere. Others saw the value of this innovative approach and we expanded to more than a dozen communities across the country from Los Angeles to Boston.  The importance of this approach is even greater during the recovery from the pandemic and to create resiliency for the future.

Our very first innovation -- a frictionless way for inspired prospective volunteers to connect with nonprofits and their evergreen ways to engage volunteers -- remains in place. A prospective volunteer finds a way to help that interests them, messages the nonprofit, and the nonprofit responds. Connection made. Out of 100,000 visitors to our Cincinnati site in 2020 -- even during the pandemic, 20,000 connections occurred. However, as the pandemic caused shutdowns in March 2020 and less volunteering could happen, we added ways for our visitors to make donations, donate needed items and find virtual volunteering when traditional volunteering didn't exist. Understanding the impact of the pandemic was important to all of our communities, prompting us to add ways to tell stories and share data about the pandemic's impact. As racial tensions raged, we added ways for our sites to highlight and promote Black-founded and led agencies. Now our innovation is critical to creating recovery from the pandemic and resilience in the nonprofit sector. While some nonprofits have been able to accept volunteer connections, others are in a state of disarray. The marketplace of nonprofits and volunteers is out of equilibrium, and so our Dynamic Volunteer Rebalancing provides healthy redistribution.

We believe strongly that a guide built at the community level is the best way to create a platform and distinguish it from our 20-year-old ineffective predecessors. We remain strongly committed to place-based volunteering, and have built regionalism into our state guides. With the pandemic, we saw the impact and scale that states have in our country. We began working with the service commission in Nevada early in our work, and that model helped us build successful relationships and models for other states, namely Massachusetts and then Michigan. Given the cost of building three states, and what it would cost to build our platforms in the next 10 states, we know we cannot do this alone, state by state. We need one or more national partners who buy into our world view of the impact our platforms can have on a state's ability to engage its citizens in volunteer service. Our strategy is to build momentum with state commissions in order to help them secure federal funding for our work. Another strategy is to go directly to Americorps with enough states saying they want our platform to engage Americorps in helping us build our platform at scale and time efficiently.