History Shapers
History Shapers is the first mobile app to help people discover all the ways they can take action on injustices and environmental issues, ALL in one centralized hub for activism.
Widespread injustices in the U.S.
The U.S. is filled with injustices from racial injustice to mass shootings to economic inequality to environmental issues among so many more. Black Americans are up to 6x more likely to be killed by police. There have been 600+ mass shootings this year so far. Gentrification and redlining have contributed to a growing Black-White disparity in homeownership “larger now than it was in the early 1960s before the 1968 Fair Housing Act and other civil rights legislation.” On the environmental front, there is a drinking water crisis (tap water contaminated with lead, Chromium-6, and forever chemicals) affecting millions of people across the U.S. and causing a growing public health emergency.
Why is there not enough change happening?
These statistics are just the tip of the iceberg as there are many more injustices. Change is needed urgently. There have been so many incredible human rights leaders who have achieved so much and continue to do so BUT there just isn’t enough change happening. So, what is the problem?
Inadequate solutions
We were on a mission to find out so we interviewed people across the U.S. about their experience navigating the activism space and we discovered the answer loud and clear: current solutions are inadequate. As a result, not enough of society is taking action. We checked both the app store and the web: NO centralized hub for activism existed and there was NOT a single social media app dedicated to taking action on social injustices. It’s no wonder people we interviewed kept repeating that solutions are difficult to navigate, disorganized, and scattered all over the place. While social media is a major access point for users, it is filled with misinformation and hate organizing goes uncensored.
As a result…
As a result, people who want to take action reported that they feel overwhelmed, due to information overload and the many issues to keep track of. It’s difficult and time-consuming for them to navigate how to take action. Plus, they have to do it all alone. They feel unsure about what to do or whether any of it makes an impact. Most importantly, all of this discourages them from taking action.
Why this is such an important problem to resolve
Fixing these injustices will require a massive number of people in the U.S. to take action (locally and consistently) but fixing these injustices is ENTIRELY possible. While the BLM protest movement has now dwindled, it was eye opening. The amount of change it was able to create shortly after is proof that activism works. For example, lawmakers repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret and states across the country passed new laws banning chokeholds. Once people find it EASY to take action together locally and consistently, the impact of activism can be scaled rapidly across zip codes.
Our solution
Over and over again, the people we surveyed said they feel overwhelmed when navigating the activism space. Information is scattered everywhere and there is too much to keep track of. Figuring out what to do and how to do it requires way too much effort and time. Time they seldom have! What they need is to effortlessly learn about issues and actions they can take. Our mobile app helps people in the United States easily discover ALL the ways they can take action on ALL the injustices, ALL in one centralized hub for activism.
What does it do?
People can discover various actions they can take such as:
attending an event (ex: a protest or speaking at a local board meeting)
contacting their representatives (with the help of scripts)
volunteering for a local effort
community activism lawyering
boycotting a business
grassroots lobbying
donating to a cause
signing petitions
posting ideas
art activism
What processes and technology does it use?
Direct guidance: via a feed, people can follow issues they care about and receive a list of recommended actions they can take (especially locally) and save them on a to-do list where they can track their progress.
Connecting to community: through community chatrooms and the ability to connect to others (in their local area or around issues they care about), they can feel energized by an active community who cares.
Awareness-raising: people can browse information on various injustices and environmental issues and learn how they interrelate with one another. Information is fact-checked, quickly browsable, and easy to digest.
Impact updates: people get notified whenever their actions make a difference to encourage them to do more.
Recommending ethical businesses: an individual’s purchasing power is pocketbook activism. People can discover ethical / environmentally responsible businesses to support (B Corps, social enterprises).
Who does your solution serve?
Our solution serves two groups: everyday people yearning to get into (or more into) activism and community organizers who need more people power as they work on leading change for their communities.
1) Everyday people who care about injustices
Our target users shared many frustrations when they were interviewed about the pain points they experienced navigating the activism space. People vary in their experiences so our solution serves the three types who most need it:
A novice with limited experience taking action on issues. This type of user wants to make a difference but feels dissuaded from seeing things not changing for the better and does not know what to do or how to start.
An ally to a cause who is moderately to considerably engaged with activism. Social injustices matter a lot to this person but they feel overwhelmed from so many injustices to keep track of and because it is difficult to discover what to do to combat these injustices.
Someone who is directly affected by an injustice and who is moderately to considerably engaged with activism. This person feels exhausted from feeling unsafe and wants to see more people taking action and caring.
While our solution is open to anyone yearning to make a difference, it targets mostly young people who do not want to have to wait decades to see change. The age group is mostly Generation Z and Millenials who are affected by climate change, inequities, frequent mass shootings in the news, and who aspire to live in a better world than the one that was handed down to them. Millennials were born at the cusp of technological advancement and Generation Z has been surrounded by technology growing up. They want to see technology being leveraged for good and not to control their data for profit.
2) Community organizers
Community organizers are doing incredible work but despite their best efforts, not enough change is happening. Community organizers need all the help they can get as there are so many pressing problems that need fixing and they are doing as much as they can 24/7.
Community organizers are doing incredible work, but despite their best efforts, not enough change is happening—they need all the help they can get. They post information on their websites, send out e-newsletters to some who subscribe, organize events, try to collect donations, and use social media. They feel overwhelmed by the many pressing problems that need fixing and ask themselves: “Why is it THIS hard to create change? Why are some injustices worse NOW than they were back in the early 1960s?” While some people DO show up to take action, it is often NOT enough to bring about the rapid change they hope for.
How will the solution address their needs?
History Shapers addresses the needs of people navigating the activism space in a few ways:
The feed enables them to discover a variety of issues and streamlines all the various ways they can take action ALL IN ONE PLACE so they no longer have to feel overwhelmed tracking scattered information across the internet.
The app notifies them when their actions make a difference so they do not have to feel unsure about whether or not it made any impact.
The community features connect them to people and groups, especially locally so that they do not feel alone and disconnected from others who take action.
The app lets them save actions to track their progress, create to-do lists, and keep an event calendar so nothing slips off their radar and so they can find the time to do more on their timeline.
In addition, History Shapers helps amplify the efforts of community organizers by connecting them directly to people who care and the local community the issue affects most. This way, they can get a massive number of people to rally behind their idea for change and build momentum. They can also collaborate with other community organizers and non-profit organizations in new, more effective ways through community chat rooms, idea sharing, and community strategy.
Our goal is to connect community organizers with everyday people so they can together help shape the U.S. to better address all the injustices people face today.
Our team
We are 3 co-founders who are passionate about building a platform that can allow people to better discover the ways they can effectively combat injustices in (and with) their communities:
Josh, App Developer (he/him):
Josh is a recent graduate with a Bachelors in Business Information Technology. He has both start-up and civic engagement experience. He has experience working as a developer and scrum master on an agile team and has presented deliverables to company executives. Finding it important to affect local change, he has canvassed for multiple local government campaigns and witnessed the impact one can make through civic engagement as one of the campaigns won the local seat. He has served his community through jobs such as teaching at a local youth coding camp, working with the elderly as wait staff, and lifeguarding at a local pool. He is multiculturally focused, learning the Spanish and Japanese languages. He has worked on multiple mobile app projects over the course of his scholarly career. He is passionate about social entrepreneurship, fighting for data protection in the technology sphere, and investing in the potential of the next generation.
Alex, App Developer (he/him):
Alex has always been an autodidact. As early as middle school, he started coding, and by age 14 he already had a profitable Minecraft server. In high school, he competed in programming competitions while excelling in computer science classes. While in college, he worked on multiple mobile app projects and released one to the app store. He graduated with his undergraduate degree Summa Cum Laude in Computer Science and proceeded to complete a Master’s degree in Computer Science with a concentration in machine learning. He has experience working as a developer and scrum master on a DevOps team and has led meetings with executives to evaluate their products. As a software engineer, he focuses on building production-scale systems to provide customers with secure software. His skills range from mobile app development and database management to machine learning and finding vulnerabilities in code. Along with his technical background, he is passionate about bringing to light the injustices faced by those in less fortunate conditions and giving all people the same opportunities no matter the size of their wallet.
Mathilde, Product Designer (she/her):
Mathilde brings 10+ years of experience at the intersection of social innovation, community-building, impact assessment, human rights, and design. During her career, she managed a startup incubator for social innovators to help them launch and scale their ideas and won a public service award for the impact of her work. She coached social ventures, built partnerships to establish a pan-university social innovation initiative, and developed a social innovation co-curriculum that won attention as a best practice on a panel at a global conference. She has also worked at non-profits including Digital Opportunity Trust, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the International Rescue Committee. From this experience, she gained strategic planning, program design, grant writing, and organizational messaging skills. She also served on a B Corp Champions leadership committee, hosted numerous B Corp leaders at annual events, and interviewed social entrepreneurs and B Corp founders as part of a research consultancy project, which all together helped her build connections with B Corps and social enterprises across the country. Finally, as a product designer, she has experience designing mobile apps, conducting user research, and teaching design sprints and UX design principles. Social injustice and environmental issues are what she wakes up thinking about every day. It is why she has always gravitated towards the social impact and social innovation space, why she is passionate about ethical design, humane technology, and civic engagement, and why she is driven to research and understand pressing problems.
What drives us?
Together, the three of us are dedicated to leveraging technology to reduce inequities and address environmental issues. Combating injustices is not just a moral conviction for us, it is a personal one too.
The murder of George Floyd made Josh realize that as a young Black man, there are many issues in our country that affect him personally and that need fixing. He fears that he could be the next victim of a mass shooting or police brutality. Coming from a family of activists, he’s seen the power of taking action and knows he has to help in the way his abilities best allow.
As a woman, Mathilde knows what is on the line as many legislative attempts are trying to roll back women’s rights. As a former resident of a town with very high risks of lead exposure in public water, she is shocked by how widespread water crises have become all across the country. She cannot stand by and stay silent in the face of police brutality and racial inequalities.
Watching the prices of prescription medication skyrocket, Alex has found it ridiculous how companies can leverage the idea of life-saving medication to constantly increase their profit margins. He is frustrated with injustices like this and believes we need a platform to help everyday people find ways to affect change.
During our research, we interviewed people from across the U.S. and found that there are various levels of activism among people who want to take action. Our team is representative of those various levels of activism, giving us a first-hand perspective on some of the challenges that people experience navigating the activism space.
External support
When faced with an obstacle, we try to surmount it, either through research or consulting experts. Prior to being appointed by the President, Dr. Henry McKoy, who is one of the leading civic innovation leaders in the U.S., previously served as our advisor. We are currently planning to invite multiple advisors to an advisory board.
Dr. Henry C. McKoy, Jr. was appointed by the President as the inaugural Director of the Office of State and Community Energy Programs in the U.S. Department of Energy. "He was previously the lead entrepreneurship faculty and Director of Entrepreneurship at NC Central University in the School of Business and was also on the faculty of the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as Professor of Practice in Strategy and Entrepreneurship. In addition, he taught in Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and was part of the faculty of Duke’s Executive Leadership Institute where he teaches on Public-Private Partnerships. Dr. McKoy has been a Fellow of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as an Aspen Institute Scholar. He previously had an appointment at Harvard University Kennedy School’s Ash Center, where he was an Associate Fellow of Municipal Innovation, and led the effort to launch a national network of economically inclusive and equitable cities.” View more
Research with potential users:
Over the course of 6 months, my co-founder who is a product designer conducted research interviews with people from across the country to discover what their current experience was like navigating the activism space in the U.S. After listening and synthesizing the research, she learned some important insights:
they currently feel unsure about what to do or whether any of it makes an impact
they feel overwhelmed because navigating the activism space is difficult and they are doing it all alone
they feel they have very little time and feel very guilty about not doing more because they care a lot
they use social media as an access point to activism but find it to be toxic, distracting, and filled with misinformation and hate speech / organizing (as one person she interviewed put it, having to use social media to discover ways to take action is a “sick joke.”)
They shared many frustrations so she created affinity maps and personas to ensure that she was continuously tapping into their experience when designing. She then framed a question from which any future solution would have to answer to: “how might we make it easier and less overwhelming for people in the U.S. to take action on social injustices?”
Engaged potential users in the design of the solution:
She designed a prototype to address potential users’ most essential needs and frequently conducted user testing (throughout each stage) to test her designs and uncover any issues that may come up.
Through many usability tests, what became very evident was that potential users were eager to use this app. After testing the prototype, one person said:: “WOW! I’m really impressed at how this resolves everything I experience whenever I’m looking to take action.”
Another person, who realized what she would finally be able to do using this app, said: “I can’t wait to use this! What can I do so I can start using this app today? I’m serious! I need this in my life!”
- Other: Addressing an unmet social, environmental, or economic need not covered in the four dimensions above.
- Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model
Discovery
There is currently NO all-inclusive platform for activism. This mobile app will be the first centralized hub for activism where people can, in a matter of seconds, discover ALL of the ways they can be civically engaged across all injustices - be it social or environmental. No such hub exists for BOTH community organizers and everyday people to manage their activism.
History Shapers will help everyday people figure out how they can meaningfully contribute to where they live so their zip codes can become safer, greener, and more inclusive. Our mobile app will also put forward new forms of civic engagement that are effective but underutilized such as community activism lawyering (uniting lawyers with activists around a goal), pocketbook activism (choosing ethical and sustainable options when making purchases), and participatory budgeting (local communities voting on the best ways to allocate local public budgets).
By gamifying the activism space, we can encourage more civic engagement through progress points, rewards, and community team challenges.
Community
This mobile app will be the first bottom-up national network of people, community organizers, and social enterprises working together as agents of change across ALL issues collectively.
The social justice space and the social innovation space tend to work separately in silos despite sharing similar goals. History Shapers will bring them together in one space.
Co-ideation
Through idea sharing, communities will be able to share best practices and co-design new solutions that can help create change. By tapping into communal creative input, History Shapers can cultivate collective innovation.
Impact
Through impact notifications, social impact + sustainability footprint calculators, and gamification, we will show both everyday people and entire communities their viewable progress and the outcomes of their activism in real-time.
Paradigm shift
Social media has “connected” us like never before and yet we live in an increasingly fragmented and inequitable landscape where injustices, gun violence, and environmental crises are all growing rapidly. The problem is that social media has been designed for revenue and data collection, NOT for social impact. We are “connected” but we are NOT unifying around social and environmental change. Our social media mobile app takes being “connected” one step further - turning “connection” into collective impact.
History Shapers is a paradigm shift in how communities can address their most pressing needs and tackle injustices together (creatively and actively). We are re-imagining hyperlocal civic engagement and the role of technology to help make progress happen in months, rather than decades.
Our solution will bring more progressive-thinking individuals to the forefront and help us be heard as a group, giving a chance for more people (especially young people) to emerge as new leaders in their community
Impact goals
Our overarching goal at History Shapers is to be the motivating impetus for everyday people to feel more impelled to take action. To stay laser-focused on our mission, we have come up with the acronym I.M.P.E.L. for our 5 impact goals we are working to achieve over the next five years:
INCREASE the number of people who engage in activism as well as their level of engagement.
MAGNIFY the impact of non-profit organizations and community organizers by connecting them directly to everyday people who wish to combat social injustices and environmental issues.
PROPAGATE new forms of activism that are proven to be very effective but are currently underutilized such as community activism lawyering, grassroots lobbying, and boycotting. To encourage more innovation and people power to shape the systems around us, we will introduce progressive co-design. Through idea sharing, History Shapers can harness people’s creativity and intelligence to co-create solutions to issues locally.
EXPOSE people across the U.S. to more ways they can take action at a local level and grow local activist communities in all 50 states.
LAUNCH pocketbook activism to elevate B Corps and social enterprises who are using business as a force for good. As a result, more customers will choose to support these ethical businesses over businesses that exploit their own labor force and cause environmental harm.
A few technologies and management tools currently drive our application.
Current:
Flutter for our app development framework along with the Dart language to build applications for the app store and android play store. Using many libraries and APIs to provide functionality such as location services and database calls
Speech recognition into text using built-in functions to provide access for those with disabilities
Google Firebase for:
User account management, authentication, and password encryption
NoSQL database hosting and file management/storage
Android studio and iPhone / Android emulators for testing in the development environment
Google Analytics to track user engagement throughout the app
Git / Github for codebase management and team collaboration
Jira to manage development workflow and long-term progress
Webflow for the web development of our website
Planned:
Email service to authenticate emails and send weekly e-newsletters to keep users engaged
Firebase ML for sentiment analysis of posts and comments to block hate speech and bots
Our social media app allows users to:
View their feed, filter search results, and receive notifications
Post an idea, take action, and track their own activism progress
Follow users, issues, and organizations and see their posts
Join groups, create chat rooms, and message other users
- Crowd Sourced Service / Social Networks
- Software and Mobile Applications
We have not yet launched our solution. Our initial primary target users will be people between the ages of 18 to 40 (Generation Z and Millenials) who care about injustices in the United States and seek to make a difference.
We plan to serve 1,500 people in the very first year of launching our solution. Using our app, they will - very quickly and easily - be able to find out all of the ways they can take action across all the issues they care about in just seconds. They will additionally become part of an active community (composed of local individuals and community organizers) consistently working to combat injustices in their local area. They will finally see the outcome of their efforts through data visualization that will inform them of the impact they are collectively making.
In the future, as we expand our team, our five-year goal is to work with 500 partners across the United States and deliver this solution to 25,000 people. In turn, they will use our app to create an impact for the millions of people in the U.S. suffering from ever-growing social injustices as well as the devastating effects of climate change.
Financial, Technical, and Legal
The majority of our technical and legal barriers are currently financial in nature. Our team members are currently in school or have jobs to sustain their livelihood while we work on the application part-time. At the release of the application, we will need to cover the costs of:
Legal advice around liability, license and distribution, intellectual property, risk management, and compliance.
Website hosting and holding a domain name for an online presence.
Database hosting to scale our system as users increase
Market
Since the app must be crowdsourced to become a centralized hub, we will depend on community organizers to post their actions on the app in order for us to acquire users. We will also be depending on users being on the app to draw enough interest from community organizers to join. This is commonly referred to as the chicken and egg problem in startups since our solution is two-fold and serves the needs of BOTH the community organizers AND everyday activists. When we conducted a competitive analysis, we realized that the problem in navigating the activism space is that a two-fold solution does not exist. We learned from user interviews that they are in need of this very solution.
This is why we are passionate about delivering this solution to them but we are aware that it will require more work and effort and that we need to be strategic from the get-go:
That is why we have a partnership plan in place as soon as the prototype is finished and why we will be organizing a “National Activism Week” as an initial strategy to get many collaborators on board around the same collective goal.
We will also expand our team to include an outreach role that will be fully dedicated to successfully building partnerships.
Cultural
Over the past few years, the amount of division, hate speech, hate organizing, and misinformation has risen sharply, especially in the U.S. When left unchecked, it runs rampant, which is why we have already devised a strategy based on social media best practices:
A reporting and blocking system to combat harassment
An algorithm for flagging hate speech
Moderating content and groups for hate organizing
Giving users direct insight into each topic to combat misinformation
These are just some of our ideas, but we plan to consult experts on the best methods to counteract hate speech/organizing.
Mutually beneficial partnerships are integral to the app’s success. We believe in integrating partnerships every step of the way, from research and design to curating content and building a community. If we’re trying to connect communities together, then WE need to be connected to the community as well. To do this, we will establish partnerships through research interviews, hosting a “National Activism Week”, affiliate marketing, and organizing webinars / attending conferences.
Research interviews
We will conduct research interviews to learn about community organizers’ essential needs and integrate features that can support them in their efforts. For those interviews, we are targeting three main groups: national non-profit organizations, local community organizers, and student activism associations.
National Activism Week
We will invite advocacy groups and non-profit organizations across the U.S. and across various issues to join together in celebrating activism in the U.S. They will do so by organizing actions for people to take on our app during a “National Activism Week.” As a result of posting content on our app, community organizers will help promote the History Shapers app to the people participating in their activities (without us having to do outreach ourselves from scratch).
The week will include a “Pocketbook Activism” theme that will spotlight the B corp movement, and through this, we aim to bring in B Corporations as sponsors.
Merging these two silos - the social innovation silo and the activism silo - is integral to our app because we believe that the two are stronger together and thus will elevate both of these communities throughout the app.
Affiliate marketing
Our mobile app will continuously feature B Corps and social enterprises and the positive impact that they are making on people and the planet. This will help increase their exposure, connect them to their target demographic, and in turn, offer us a recurring source of revenue.
Organizing webinars and attending conferences
We will attend human rights conferences to connect to community organizers as well as to people looking to make a difference and inform them about History Shapers.
#1
PROBLEM for everyday people
Information on what people can do to tackle social injustices and environmental issues is scattered across the internet. It is difficult and overwhelming for people to keep track of all the issues and ways to take action because current solutions are inadequate.
OUR VALUE to everyday people
History Shapers is a mobile app for people to:
easily and quickly discover all of the various ways they can take action so they don’t waste time
help them keep track of their activism so they can integrate it into their daily lives
find out whenever their efforts have made an impact so they don’t feel like their efforts are just a shot in the dark
connect to an active community who cares so they don’t have to do it all alone
learn where they can shop ethically and sustainably so they can make a difference through their pocketbook (rewarding businesses who pay their workers fairly and take climate change seriously while boycotting businesses that exploit people and the planet).
#2
PROBLEM for community organizers
Community organizers depend on a large volunteer base to affect change. In fact, that is what community organizing is all about - organizing A LOT of people around a cause. They need all the help they can get. However, help doesn’t come easily. Why? 1) Fatigue and burnout is high among activists. 2) There are many people in the U.S. who are aware of injustices and environmental issues and care about these issues deeply. However, they do not perceive themselves as activists and often do not believe they have the individual power to make a difference. 3) Others are so exhausted from long workdays and emotionally exhausted from seeing ever-growing problems in the news that they try to find some relief through entertainment rather than taking action. They wish to see a change as it matters a great deal to them but they don’t even know how to create that change and their energy is depleted from all the terrible news they read.
To build a larger movement, community organizers must broaden participation. 1) They need to engage people who may not perceive themselves as “activists” but who want to make a difference. There is a lot of untapped potential, energy, contribution, and talent that community organizers could greatly benefit from. 2) They also need to engage people whose energy levels are depleted and who have a hard time staying hopeful. They can recharge these people’s energy by connecting them to an active community who, all together, can visualize the collective impact they are making and inspire one another. Simply put, positivity is contagious and hope comes from tangible results.
OUR VALUE to community organizers
History Shapers is a mobile app for community organizers to:
post their actions for everyday people to get done so they can receive much-needed assistance
expand their reach and engage more people, including those who are new to activism
connect their organizing efforts to those of other community organizers - be it locally or nationally - to collaborate easily around shared goals and avoid any duplicative efforts
help them to collaborate across different movements and different social groups (the issues those movements focus on are often interrelated and representation needs to be more diverse)
#3
PROBLEM for B Corps and social enterprises
B Corps and social enterprises are using business as a way to create impact on people and the planet. To grow their impact, they must grow their business. To do so, they need to increase their brand awareness and bring in new customers. To achieve this, they need to find new avenues where they can advertise and reach more of their target customers.
OUR VALUE to B Corps and social enterprises
History Shapers is a mobile app for B Corps and social enterprises to:
advertise their products and business to their target customers
be connected to the activism community who share similar hopes and goals but often work in a separate silo
#4
PROBLEM for local communities
We’ve never been more connected, and yet we’ve never been more DISCONNECTED. Many communities in the U.S. want to combat climate change and see progress where they live, but few of them know how and alongside whom to meaningfully contribute (even if we live in proximity to one another). Armed with the cooperation of so many others who dream of progress like they do, more community members could be empowered to take a stand in their local community knowing that they are not alone. Armed with the know-how, it would finally be easy for community members to know HOW to take action. Armed with a digital tool to share ideas with one another, local communities could co-design ways to become more equitable and sustainable.
OUR VALUE to local communities
History Shapers is a mobile app for local communities to:
share ideas, voice their concerns, imagine a more equitable and sustainable future, and provide communal creative input to co-design progress and develop concrete solutions to local injustices
give a chance for more people (especially young people) to emerge as new leaders in their community
connect their local activism to activism at a national level and vice-versa
reinvent the future of social media, one designed for social justice and sustainability and not for profit
HOW WE DO IT
We are able to make all of this happen by establishing partnerships that are mutually beneficial.
As our partners benefit from our services, so do we because our partners will populate our app with content and their networks. B Corps and social enterprises will be our sponsors and customers. They will be able to reach more of their target customers AND, in turn, we will be able to inspire more people to support ethical and sustainable brands and align their spending with their values.
View our Social Business Model Canvas
There are numerous ways we will generate revenue to achieve financial sustainability:
Advertising
We will charge a small advertising fee for B Corps and social enterprises so they can run ads on the app. These ads will show up on the feed and their businesses can also be featured in the Pocketbook Activism marketplace. For an additional fee, History Shapers can write a spotlight feature on the positive impact they are making on people and the planet.
Via affiliate marketing for B Corps and social enterprises, we would receive a small percentage of a commission whenever users purchase products from these businesses through the links on our app.
Subscription
Community organizers can pay for optional premium features that can further help support their organizing efforts.
Sponsorship
We will invite B Corps and social enterprises to sponsor an annual National Activism Week to increase their brand awareness. We will also invite art foundations to sponsor artivism (art + activism) contests.
Donations
We will also accept donations to History Shapers whenever people donate to a cause on the app. They will be asked if they want to round up their donations to help support History Shapers.
Grants
Initially before we scale, we will apply for grant funding from foundations interested in supporting civic innovation.
In the long term, our revenue streams will cover all of our expected expenses:
Co-Founder / Developer
Co-Founder / Product designer
Co-Founder / Developer