the suma platform

Our story begins with an intent to solve for the problem of poverty. We wanted to see whether platform power and network effects could save low-income people and other frontline community members money on essential expenses, using technology to update 20th century collective purchasing/buying power of the block models. But when we began talking with community members about a platform concept, they told us: “this isn’t solving enough of the problem. We want to work together to build tech that saves us money, but tech brings other problems”:

• Privacy-Security. Community members are concerned about vendors of essential goods and services (“essential vendors”) sharing their personal information and concerned about fraud and theft when using payment platforms.
• Banking-Payment Methods. Community members are more likely to be underbanked, unbanked or prefer cash, so many don’t have a form of payment that online platforms will accept.
• Enrollment-Subsidy. Community members know that discount and subsidy programs are out there for them, but enrollments are redundant, time-consuming and extract personal information. Even when a community member successfully enrolls, using subsidy resources at the point of sale can be challenging.

We talked to local BIPOC-led and affordable housing partners; they saw the same problems. We looked nationally and found these are persistent concerns: Data & Society’s 2017 report, Privacy, Security, & Digital Inequality, found that “Americans with lower levels of income and education are acutely aware of a range of digital privacy-related harms that could upend their financial, professional, or social well-being. And these concerns are often accompanied by low levels of trust in the institutions and companies that these Americans rely on to be responsible stewards of their data. At the same time, there are significant racial disparities when looking at privacy-related concerns. [M]any of those who feel most vulnerable to data-related harms also feel as though it would be difficult for them to find the tools and strategies needed to better protect their personal information online.”

As technology becomes the inescapable intermediary for accessing all goods and services, these barriers mean that frontline communities are financially excluded - left to pursue stressful and time-consuming workarounds, buy lower quality, go without, or enter extractive data relationships with essential vendors and payment platforms. These barriers also mean that antipoverty resources to withstand financial shocks and build wealth, like public subsidy and vendor discount programs, are underutilized. We realized we had to address privacy-security, banking-payment method and enrollment-subsidy barriers if we want to reinterpret platform power and network effects as antipoverty strategies.

The suma platform is an open-source, web-based app that overcomes the cost, privacy-security, banking-payment method and enrollment-subsidy barriers preventing low-income people, people of color, adults with disability and other frontline community members from using their technology to access essential goods and services:

• Cost. Our platform seamlessly integrates subsidy with vendor discounts and community buying power so users can save money on the things they buy the most: food, transportation, utilities. A user can see these subsidies and discounts in her suma wallet and spend them through the app.
• Privacy-Security. A community-guided privacy policy sets the data terms for user transactions with essential vendors and transforms personal data from a dispersed resource outsiders extract to an organized resource the community controls. Financial information is secured by bank-level encryption and never shared without user consent.
• Banking-Payment Methods. Suma works with community members, affordable housing partners and other stakeholders to develop platform payment solutions that serve unbanked, underbanked or cash customers, including reverse ATMs at community locations, leveraging affordable housing rent payment systems, and a user-helping-user approach modeled on grassroots collective savings and payment networks in user communities (e.g., Tanda in Spanish-speaking communities, Gae in Korean communities). 
  
• Enrollment-Subsidy. The app simplifies user enrollment in subsidy and discount programs by leveraging the intake processes of community partners like affordable housing providers, immigrant and refugee serving organizations, and other organizations in trusted data relationships with frontline community members. This allows us to prequalify users for many discount programs or – consistent with the app’s privacy policy – to enroll a user with the information they already provided to the community partner.

SERVE

This is a story about imagining an inclusive technology future with low-income people, people of color and adults with disability, starting in Portland, OR, USA. These frontline communities are left out of a larger data-rich society not just by poverty, but by a technology sector that often fails to center them as early adopters/key beneficiaries and by systemic failures to make technology investments in frontline community members and frontline organizations. As a result, our communities are technologically marginalized and financially excluded, disparities that are heightened by deep community concerns about digital privacy and security of personal data. Faced with these barriers, community members have told us that they buy lower quality, pursue stressful and time-consuming workarounds, go without, or enter extractive data relationships with essential vendors and payment platforms.

IMPACT

For suma app users, the story is different:

• Reducing Poverty. Suma app users save at least 20% on the things they buy the most. Our platform is a systemic, tech-based solution to addressing poverty by reducing essential expenses and increasing income.
• Save Time, Save Stress. The suma app makes it easier for users to make payments across different platforms, taking time and stress off the shoulders of low-income people and onto a technological solution. Instead of the daily work of searching for (and enrolling in) this discount here, that subsidy there, this payment platform for vendor A, that payment platform for vendor B, suma app users can easily see and spend discounts and subsidy across multiple vendors in the app.
• Sustainability+. Suma app users can afford better and more sustainable options, afford things they previously could not buy, and/or realize disposable income for savings or other purposes.
• Protecting Privacy. Suma app users trust and utilize a secure platform that is designed with their privacy standards in mind, with transparent and easy to understand privacy policies. Their data is respected, not extracted.
• Payments. Suma app users can add funds to their suma wallet through a variety of payment methods, including cash.

Importantly, the suma app also responds to the community’s climate resilience needs. From transportation to energy to food, frontline communities are demanding access to affordable options that do not pollute their neighborhoods, raise their rent or extract their data. But the digital divide is becoming a green divide as technology becomes an inescapable intermediary for environmental benefits, goods and services, and as environmental vendors – like all vendors – increasingly require personal data and non-cash payments to access their essential goods and services. We must overcome the technological marginalization of frontline communities if we want frontline community-led solutions that build climate resilience.

REPRESENTATIVE

Suma not only demonstrates proximity to frontline communities, we are by and of those communities, with representative leadership and staffing. Suma’s all-BIPOC board includes members from the Black, Latinx and Pacific Islander communities. Most have experienced low incomes and suma’s Board recruitment plan prioritizes engaging adults living with a disability to serve on our Board. All staff are Latinx and speak Spanish and English, including Executive Director/Team Lead Alan Hipólito. Mr. Hipólito has a track record of antipoverty, racial justice and social enterprise leadership. He founded Verde (suma’s fiscal sponsor) and served as its Executive Director from 2005-2018, growing Verde to a nationally recognized frontline-led environmental organization (see Team Lead connection response for more information). 

We founded suma because we looked at a powerful technology sector and asked: where are the racial justice and antipoverty innovations from this sector that talks a good game about innovating? Where are the tech companies that center frontline communities as early adopters and primary beneficiaries? In response, we created a frontline-led nonprofit that incorporates technology as the basis of its racial, economic and environmental justice programming.

ENGAGEMENT

Community participation and community trust are suma’s core competencies. Our human-centered and collaborative practice is reflected via:

• Survey, 2020. Suma worked with 10 affordable housing providers to survey their residents to better understand community buying habits, privacy concerns, and interest in working together to address privacy and cost barriers. 244 residents, across all 10 partners, completed the bilingual survey, including 32 in-person surveys of adults with disabilities. Respondents told us they are interested in working together to develop the suma platform concept.
• Transportation Pilot, 2021. Suma worked with Hacienda CDC (Latinx-focused affordable housing provider) and Verde on a transportation pilot in Hacienda CDC’s resident community. We tested an app prototype, engaged community members and built clean mobility vendor relationships.
• Solar Pilot, 2021. Suma worked with Proud Ground (affordable homeownership) on a solar energy pilot project with Proud Ground’s homeowners. We tested an updated prototype, engaged community members and piloted new models for accessing solar energy.
• Privacy Dialogues, 2022. Suma worked with community members and partners (e.g., Immigrant Refugee Community Organization) to develop the suma app’s privacy policy. In small group discussions, community members shared privacy concerns, reviewed best practices from the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and provided detailed privacy policy recommendations that guided the app’s inaugural privacy policy.
• Holiday Special, 2022. Late 2022, suma shipped a launch of the app for community members who have participated in app development to date. In a follow up bilingual survey, users identified products they want to see on the app: groceries (87.5%); utilities (75%); transportation (56.3%). These recommendations guide our upcoming work.

90 users. Late 2022, suma shipped a launch of the app for community members who have participated in app development to date. In this Holiday Special, 90 community members enrolled in the bilingual suma app. 50 of these users added $10 to their account wallet and ordered a prepared family meal (we only had 50 meals to sell) from a local grocer with a delivery option from a clean mobility delivery provider. No user information was shared with the grocer or delivery provider.

Each meal had a retail value of $180. Suma negotiated a 50% grocer discount and applied subsidy to reduce a user’s cost to $10 (collective savings: $8000+). A user saw the discount, subsidy and their $10 payment on their app checkout ledger. In a follow up bilingual survey, 90.9% of app users said they would like to stay involved, including 27.3% who would bring a friend/family member. With success across the launch's platform, user, vendor and funder goals, the Holiday Special showed the suma app’s potential to impact frontline community members and informs our practical implementation plans for the MIT Solve grant period.

For more information, please see this slidedeck from our 2022 Holiday Special.

The suma platform addresses financial inclusion for frontline communities. To advance our tech-based antipoverty solution, suma seeks Solve support with:

• Business Model. Suma already has a considered, community-guided business model to scale the platform by adding users, vendors and subsidy. But when new people hear about the platform, they have many new ideas for what it could do: could it help users build credit, reduce debt or access insurance? could it support climate disaster response, or in-home childcare entrepreneurs, or matched saving programs? These are just some of the ideas that community members, partners and other stakeholders have shared lately. MIT Solve can help us develop processes and criteria for evaluating such ideas so we can make good decisions about which ideas to incorporate into our business model.
• Human Capital. Scaling the platform means suma needs to grow from a small team of do-everything staff members to a bigger team with specialized roles and skills (e.g., customer service, vendor payments). MIT Solve can help us plan for this growth, identify new capacities needed, and source talent. 
• Legal/Regulatory Matters. To date, suma has secured significant pro bono and discounted counsel on regulatory compliance and intellectual property issues from Shook, Hardy & Bacon, Stoel Rives, Intel Corp and Perkins Coie. Upcoming, we anticipate additional need for legal counsel because of growing regulatory attention to electronic payment platforms, which impacts our platform’s ability to serve unbanked, underbanked and cash customers and MSMEs. MIT Solve can help us refine our compliant approaches.
• Monitoring & Evaluation. Most platforms generate internal datasets to support their business models, not external datasets to help their customers. In contrast, suma’s new, antipoverty platform model is designed to generate datasets to serve our users, user communities, and vendors. For users, we want to generate a dashboard that shows how an individual user is saving money via the app for different products and time periods. For example, this user dashboard could show a user how much they saved on transportation via the app in June 2024, from January-June 2024, or for the life of their suma app account. We also want to engage app users about how the platform can generate datasets for community benefit. For example, could collective transportation data support community advocacy for more transportation options in low-income neighborhoods? We want to engage MSMEs about how platform data (e.g., user food purchasing) can help them make investments that grow their business and increase their local customer base. MIT Solve can help us refine these data opportunities.
• Product/Service Distribution. Suma wants to grow our local user base and vendor base and begin planning for expansion outside of Portland and Oregon. Our national scale goal is to offer multiple food, transportation and utility options to at least 25% of the USA’s 5M affordable housing units. How do we evaluate potential expansion opportunities? Who are critical path partners and networks? MIT Solve can help us refine and answer scale questions.

INNOVATIVE

A new business model, the suma platform uses technology to apply community organizing principles to buying and data:

• Buying Power. The platform updates 20th century collective purchasing models, where community members organized their buying power to negotiate lower rents, better prices at the grocery store or other savings. These models were high friction and labor-intensive – someone must collect the money, transfer the money to the vendor, tell the vendor which customers get the negotiated price, &c. We believe technology can reduce the friction and the labor needs (as it has many times, but not for antipoverty work).

• Data Power. Data is a community resource – a disorganized resource today, but important enough that powerful institutions build models based on extracting it at minimum cost. In response, our platform applies community organizing principles to data, transforming personal data from a dispersed resource outsiders extract to an organized resource the community controls. Like a weak dollar finds strength in a cooperative and a weak job finds strength in a union, we believe an individual’s data can find strength in solidarity with their community in our platform. The more community members that use the platform, the stronger their collective data power becomes, and the more they can set data terms with essential vendors.

CATALYZE OTHERS

The suma platform is a systemic approach to addressing poverty by reducing essential expenses and growing income. As it scales, platform success will catalyze community-initiated pilot projects and policy change that support platform expansion and support other grassroots innovations to securely connect frontline communities to subsidy, discounts, and essential goods and services.  

Importantly, the platform’s connection to addressing climate change also provides opportunities to catalyze broader positive impacts. From transportation to energy to food, frontline community members demand access to affordable options that do not pollute their neighborhoods. Governments pass historic legislation that dramatically increases funding for climate action in frontline communities. But the digital divide has become a green divide. Our platform – incubated as a program at a frontline-led environmental organization, designed in partnership with clean energy, clean mobility and sustainable food stakeholders, in national grantee cohorts with environmental justice groups – is positioned to scale in response to the digital+green divide so that frontline communities do not have to choose between data privacy and climate resilience.  

MARKET CHANGES

In addition to market changes for frontline users (see Solution Impact, above), the suma platform supports:

• Local Economies. Users can bend their buying power to local MSMEs, strengthening local economies and creating a virtuous circle of neighborhood-level spending.
• Clean Mobility/Energy. Growing, inclusive market share by clean mobility and clean energy providers accelerates the pace of carbon reduction in the transportation sector and utility sector.
• Sustainable Agriculture. Growing, inclusive market share by local, sustainable agriculture increases land-based carbon sequestration and reduces the carbon impacts of food delivery systems.
• Climate Resilience. Stronger community networks and greater access to local, climate-positive goods and services increase local resilience to climate events.

NEXT YEAR

Suma’s practical implementation plans respond to user feedback about products they want to see on the app:

• Summer Hacking. These pilots respond to user feedback requesting more food savings options while also leveraging clean mobility partnerships to offer users access to transportation at reduced costs and with community-based privacy standards. 150 users access affordable e-scooter services via the suma app and join organized rides from convenient community locations to nearby farmers markets. At the markets, users access affordable fruits, vegetables and other market products via the suma app, then join organized e-scooter rides back to their community locations.
• Major Food Vendor. Suma works with Home Forward (local housing authority), Community Vision (disability-serving nonprofit), Oregon Food Bank and others on this fall pilot. We want to serve 30 Home Forward households, incorporate public food benefits to the app, simplify user access to those benefits while leveraging vendor discounts and user funds, and bring a major food vendor onto the app. For example, a pilot user could open the suma app, add funds to their wallet, see these personal funds in their ledger alongside a food vendor’s discounts and available public subsidy (e.g., WIC, SNAP benefits), and use personal funds, discount and subsidy to purchase groceries via the app in a single transaction.
• Utility. Suma works with Our Just Future (affordable housing provider), clean energy organizations, broadband access groups, and other partners in this early-2024 pilot. We want to serve 30 Our Just Future households, incorporate utility subsidy to the app, simplify user access to that subsidy while leveraging vendor discounts and user funds, and bring a utility vendor (e.g., internet, solar energy) onto the app. For example, a pilot user could open the suma app, add funds to their wallet, see these personal funds in their ledger alongside a utility vendor’s discounts and available public subsidy (e.g., American Connectivity Program, utility assistance), and use personal funds, discount and subsidy to pay their utility bill via the app in a single transaction.

5 YEARS

The suma app offers affordable food, transportation and utility options to at least 25% of the Portland region's 20,000 affordable housing units and expands outside Portland to affect the lives of more people:

• Users. 5000 active users open the app daily to save money on food, transportation and utility expenses.
• Vendors. Users see multiple food (major food vendors, community/ethnic markets, local agriculture), utility (electricity, internet, water) and transportation (transit, micromobility, rideshare, MSME vendors) options on the suma app.
• Savings. Users save at least 20% on these essential goods and services.
• Subsidy. Multiple public (government, utilities) and private sources (philanthropy, vendor discounts) of subsidy add funding directly to the app to support user savings on essential goods and services.
• Expansion. Suma has set expansion criteria, identified 10 expansion opportunities per the criteria (5 in Oregon, 5 elsewhere in the USA), and is actively serving users, vendors and funders via the suma app in 5 locations outside Portland.

Updating our successful December 2021 suma platform v1.0 Strategic Plan, suma has set realistic app objectives and key results (OKRs) for the coming year:

• Objective 1: Diversify our revenue model by incorporating platform fees and public benefits/user subsidy.
  • Key Result: Add 1 transportation vendor participation fee by month 6.
  • Key Result: Add 1 transportation vendor transaction fee by month 6.
  • Key Result: Add 1 flexible source of public subsidy by month 9.
  • Key Result: Add 1 restricted source of public subsidy by month 12.
• Objective 2: Expand vendor options for the suma app.
  • 2 transportation vendors by month 6.
  • 1 pilot project with a food vendor by month 12.
  • First utility vendor for pilot project by month 12.
• Objective 3: Enroll users into the suma app.
  • 200 users by month 6.
  • 1000 users by month 12.

OKRs are updated annually. Suma’s Executive Director reports against OKRs in quarterly meetings of the suma enterprise workgroup, a majority BIPOC group of cross-issue stakeholders (environmental justice, tech entrepreneurs, software engineers, affordable housing, legal, finance, clean energy, clean mobility, communications) who collaborate to guide and evaluate platform development.

THEORY OF CHANGE

Platform power and network effects can be reinterpreted as antipoverty strategies:

• Activities:
  • Partner outreach. Suma engages partners about technology barriers in their communities and the suma platform concept.
  • User outreach. Suma engages frontline community members about cost, privacy and other technology barriers and about the suma platform concept.
  • Vendor outreach. Suma engages large vendors and MSMEs about their discount programs, their challenges digitally connecting with frontline customers, and the suma platform concept.
  • Funder outreach. Suma engages funders about their challenges directing subsidy to beneficiaries and about the suma platform concept.
  • Platform development. Suma builds and operates the suma app, incorporating partner, user, vendor and funder input.
• Outputs:
  • The suma platform/app increases buying power via automatic, intelligent integration of user funds, subsidy and vendor discounts and enhances privacy by changing the data relationship between frontline communities and essential vendors.
  • Partners see the app as something that can help their communities and encourage users, vendors and funders to join the platform.
  • Community members trust and utilize a secure app that is designed with their privacy standards in mind.
  • Vendors trust and utilize an app that helps them digitally connect with frontline customers.
  • Funders trust and utilize an app that helps them distribute subsidy to frontline beneficiaries.
• Short-term outcomes:
  • The suma app offers affordable food, utility and transportation options to frontline community members in Portland, OR.
  • Users save at least 20% on essential expenses through the app.
  • Vendors see increased sales and growing trust with frontline customers.
  • Funders see increased utilization of their subsidy by frontline beneficiaries.
• Long-term outcome:
  • The suma app impacts poverty in Portland, the USA and elsewhere by organizing community buying and data power, leveraging grassroots payment networks, and simplifying user access to subsidy and discounts.

EVIDENCE

User, partner, vendor and funder evidence supports our theory of change:

• Users. Most 2020 survey respondents (see Engagement, above) wanted to build cost and privacy solutions together, but there was also real uncertainty and some negativity about helping design the platform. 2022 Holiday Special user feedback shows that community members view the app as something that can help them, and 90.9% want to stay involved.
• Partners. Suma partners have consistently supported app development in their communities, proposed specific ways the app could benefit their work and community members, and recruited vendors and funders to the project. 2022 Holiday Special partner feedback shows that 100% of partners want to stay involved. Upcoming, partners play key roles in our summer hacking, major food vendor and utility projects.
• Vendors. Clean mobility providers (e-scooter, e-bikeshare, shared electric vehicles), local grocers and farmers markets are working with suma to offer their products on the app.
• Funders. The Holiday Special included flexible subsidy from Meyer Memorial Trust (to model subsidy flow across the platform) and restricted subsidy from Lime. Suma is in active discussion with local government, food security resources and foundations to add subsidy to the platform for the summer hacking project.

Co-created with community users, the suma platform is first-to-market innovative technology that overcomes the cost, privacy, banking and enrollment barriers preventing frontline community members from using their devices to access essential goods and services, including environmental goods and services that promote climate resilience. An open-source, web-based application built to function with one bar of connectivity, our app increases buying power via automatic, intelligent integration of user funds, subsidy and vendor discounts and enhances privacy by changing the data relationship between frontline communities and essential vendors.

The app is designed and positioned to scale vertically and horizontally.
Vertical scaling grows members and vendors on the app/platform to
increase collective data power and drive lower prices. Horizontal
scaling licenses the platform to other entities who can better serve
other markets by running their own instance of the platform with their
own membership in response to local needs.

Suma is by and of frontline communities. Suma’s all-BIPOC Board includes members from the Black, Latinx and Pacific Islander communities, and its current recruitment plan prioritizes representation from the disability community. All staff are Latinx and speak Spanish and English. We founded suma because we looked at a powerful technology sector and asked: where are the racial justice and antipoverty innovations from this sector that talks a good game about innovation? Where are the tech companies that center frontline communities as early adopters and primary beneficiaries? In response, we created a frontline-led nonprofit that incorporates technology as the basis of its racial, economic and environmental justice programming.

Suma is also a bridge builder between disability, BIPOC and tech communities, bringing these often-disconnected stakeholders together to develop an intersectional, community-based technology vision and build the suma platform. This allows us to engage and serve multiple frontline communities in our work - 2021, suma programs served 9700 people: 9200 were people of color, 3500 were immigrant/refugee, 1250 were living with a disability and 4500 were low-income.

In addition to our leadership, partnerships and technological solution, suma also integrates diversity, equity, and inclusivity in our recruitment, hiring and contracting:

• Recruitment and Hiring. Suma prioritizes hiring from frontline communities. Consider our work to to recruit our non-founder positions:
  • Digital Organizer; Platform Organizer. We created job announcements, job descriptions, outreach efforts and applicant review processes that supported our values. As a result of these deliberate outreach and review processes, most applicants were from frontline communities, most phone interview participants were from frontline communities, and all finalists were from frontline communities. Importantly, we cast a wide net by promoting these openings outside of the nonprofit sector and being transparent about our willingness to hire from other sectors. While each position had applicants from within the nonprofit sector, the successful applicants came from the retail sector.
  • Chief Technology Officer. See response to “Tell us more about how you found out about Solve’s 2023 Global Challenges.”
• Contracting. Suma’s procurement procedures include commitments “to expand opportunities for businesses that are women or minority owned and/or local as well as to bring technology investments to low-income people, people of color and other frontline communities.” In the last 12 months, diverse contractors have helped develop the suma app by providing important services such as user research, platform development, communications, grantwriting and interpretation/translation.

CUSTOMER NEEDS

The suma platform serves frontline community users, essential vendors, and public and private funders:

• Users. Low income people, people of color, adults with disability, and other frontline community members – whether banked, underbanked or unbanked – want easy to use payment technology that offers low-cost, trusted access to essential goods and services. They want an alternative to stressful and time-consuming workarounds, hard to access discounts and subsidy, buying lower quality, going without, and extractive vendor relationships and payment platforms.
• Vendors. The suma platform serves micro, small, and medium enterprises as well as large vendors:
  • MSMEs. Micro, small, and medium enterprises want to improve their ability to digitally transact with frontline customers, reduce the need for cash transactions, simplify transactions with customers using public subsidy, receive payments from different public subsidy platforms, and make investments that grow their business and increase their local customer base.
  • Large Vendors. Large food, transportation and utility vendors want to digitally transact with frontline communities, simplify transactions with customers using public subsidy, increase participation in their community discount programs, reduce customer acquisition costs and comply with government equity mandates (e.g., serving hard to reach or low-income customers). 
• Funders. Funders want to easily deliver subsidy to target beneficiaries so these beneficiaries can withstand financial shocks and build wealth, ensure subsidy is spent on eligible uses, and maintain good reporting practices.

 PROVIDING VALUE

• Users. Our platform seamlessly integrates subsidy with vendor discounts and community buying power so financially excluded community members can easily save money on the things they buy the most: food, transportation, utilities. A user can see these subsidies and discounts in her suma wallet and spend them through the app. A community-guided privacy policy and ongoing community engagement make us a trusted option for our users. Suma encourages users to recruit MSMEs and large vendors to the platform.
• Vendors.
  • MSMEs. We improve MSME ability to digitally transact with frontline customers by converting cash into digital payments. The platform also simplifies transactions with customers using public subsidy by organizing subsidy into a single point of sale transaction between the app and the MSME, which also makes it easier for the MSME to receive payments from different public subsidy platforms. Finally, platform data can help MSMEs make investments that grow their business and increase their local customer base.
  • Large Vendors. The platform offers large vendors reduced customer acquisition costs by leveraging suma’s community engagement and partner relationships, offers compatible revenue by converting cash into digital payments, simplifies point of sale transactions with customers using multiple sources of payment (personal funds, subsidy A, subsidy B), and improved regulatory compliance by making it easier for them to serve frontline customers.
    
  
  
• Funders. The suma platform can accept subsidy, distribute subsidy to app users, and – consistent with its privacy policy – track subsidy, including flexible subsidy available to any app user and/or for any product as well as restricted subsidy available only to certain users and/or for certain products.

We believe suma can secure the grant funding ($1.5M-$2M) to ensure the platform’s short-term financial viability and local scale through FY25. At the same time, we develop a revenue model that allows the platform to serve more local users and scale beyond Portland by leveraging grant funding with investment from lending sources that range from inexpensive and patient (e.g., program related investments) to high rate and short-term (e.g., venture capital) to points in between (mission related investing, socially responsible investing, government). That is, the platform will always be competitive for grant funding, but must incorporate fees that ensure long-term viability by supplementing grant revenue and supporting diverse debt obligations. We expect to generate earned revenue from a mix of participation fees (e.g., user subscriptions, vendor subscriptions), transaction fees (e.g., at point of sale, when a source adds subsidy for distribution via the platform), and user payments for platform goods and services (e.g., the $10 a user added to their suma wallet to pay for the prepared meal offered in the Holiday Special). Suma works with financial planners, CPAs, commercial lenders and tech startup consultants to develop this revenue model for our FY24 budget.

Suma’s Executive Director has a strong fundraising track record. Before suma, Mr. Hipólito served as Verde’s lead fundraiser from startup to FY16, growing annual grant income from $151K to $2.4M and securing the first cross-program grants awarded by Kresge Foundation and Surdna Foundation. During that period, annual earned revenue from social enterprises increased from $33K to $712K.

Since transitioning to suma, he has led a disciplined fundraising practice that includes routine prospecting, developing a prospect list and pursuing priority prospects. Suma’s Board of Directors helps develop funder prospects and we supplement our internal capacity by working with a contract grant writer. As a result, we have secured diverse funding and in-kind support (e.g., legal counsel) to develop and launch the suma platform, including national and international funders prioritizing: frontline community access to environmental goods and services (Mosaic Movement Infrastructure Fund: $135K); BIPOC tech startups (Camelback Ventures: $40K); disability-serving technology (Borealis Philanthropy: $50K); and, data privacy (Omidyar Network: $100K).