FUNDRAISING
Give A Little | August 12, 2022
Give A Little today celebrates reaching £10m in donation revenues. This is a significant milestone that reflects over 4,000 charities who have made the move to cashless fundraising with the platform, taking payment card donations via contactless, Chip+PIN and online donations.
The Give A Little platform provides the point-of-donation experience for donors and campaign management for charities to set up their fundraising. The service launched in 2019 and supports charities of all sizes, including Cancer Research UK, London Zoo, and the Church of England.
All charities now need technology for handling cashless donations as donors have largely moved away from cash. According to CAF's 2021 UK Giving Report, just 7% of donors used cash in January 2021, and Give A Little has seen more than a fivefold increase in the number of cashless donations being made using its platform year on year (May 20-21/ May 21/22).
Give A Little's core mission is to reduce the cost barrier for charities moving to cashless and to thereafter shield them from the cost of technology change, which is increasing dramatically as new payment methods proliferate. The platform is built on a model where charities bringing in higher revenues subscribe to a Premium Account, which enables charities just starting, or micro charities who will never take much in the way of donations, to benefit from a free Basic Account.
"The Give A Little team is incredibly proud to reach this £10m milestone. We set out to ensure charities, especially the smallest ones, would not be left behind by the acceleration towards a cashless society and it's testament to the team's dedication that we have built such a robust customer base in such a short time, and mainly through word of mouth. We designed Give A Little from the outset to easily accommodate changing technology and to integrate with a range of portable and fixed donation points and a choice of payment processors. This allows charities to keep up with the latest innovations while at the same time eliminating technology risks and the inherent costs of change, and helps further by removing the need for staff to be trained as experts."
-Ben Stewart, Co-Founder Give A Little.
Our unique model as a point-of-donation platform enables us to offer charities reliability and resilience over very long periods of time. We achieve this while also being an affordable way to get started with cashless fundraising. Additionally, we believe strongly in making the donor experience as best as it can possibly be, whether that's by offering donors a choice of donation amounts or presenting them with a visually engaging campaign screen, and that builds trust with the charity. Our specialisation around the point-of-donation experience leads to industry leading average donation values (over £10 for App donations and £40 for Web donations). We look forward to helping many more charities increase their donation revenues and to thrive even in difficult times.
About Give A Little:
Give A Little aims to be the most easy-to-use, flexible and affordable way for charities of all sizes to collect donations in a cashless society. The Give A Little point-of-donation platform was founded by parent company, Caution Your Blast Ltd. (CYB) as part of its commitment to using digital as a force for good. CYB is one of the UK's leading digital practices and a provider of digital service design and software development to the UK Government and clients such as IKEA.
Give A Little came about after CYB worked with BT in 2016 to develop the first contactless donation solution with a touch screen - the Digital Tin. Trials of the Digital Tin were very successful, with charities like Comic Relief, Cancer Research and UNICEF loving the solution. Through this important work, CYB identified that smaller charities needed the support of a sponsor to be able to afford contactless donation solutions as the cost of entry was too high, sometimes even for bigger charities. So Give A Little was set up to drive down the cost of accessing cashless donations for charities of all sizes, as it was out of reach for many.
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FUNDRAISING
Indiegogo | August 12, 2022
Today, two of the biggest names in crowdfunding, Indiegogo and StartEngine, teamed up to ensure that startups have continuous access to the capital they need. In a move that's the first of its kind, Indiegogo will now share its enormous community of entrepreneurs and backers with StartEngine for follow-on funding rounds all the way through Series C (up to $75M per year). The exclusive deal between the two constitutes an unprecedented leap forward for StartEngine and equity crowdfunding, while delivering concrete benefits for both sides:
Indiegogo's community of 800,000+ founders now have an avenue to continue fundraising, while its 11M backers can further support projects they believe in.
Similarly, StartEngine's investor community gets a massive influx of new investment opportunities, and companies raising on the platform can reach a larger audience.
Teaming up with a global fundraising giant adds yet another layer of credibility to StartEngine's brand of equity crowdfunding and demonstrates its viability as an alternative to traditional funding sources.
The collaboration between the two could not come at a better time either. After an initial post-pandemic boom in investment and soaring tech valuations, funding for startups worldwide fell 23% between the first and second quarter of 2022. Economic uncertainty and dwindling stock market returns severely impacted venture capital portfolios and deal-making activity. As a result, savvy founders are now seeking alternative funding sources to help keep their startup dreams alive.
"At a pivotal moment for founders when many VC firms have slowed their pace of investments, we've joined forces with a fellow leader in crowdfunding to ensure startups consistently raise the capital they need. What we have created is a funding ecosystem from an idea stage through Series C, As we're seeing in our current economy, you never know what's coming around the corner…you protect your company by continually raising and maintaining sufficient capital."
-Howard Marks, the founder and CEO of StartEngine, explains the unique advantages of joining Indiegogo and StartEngine's platforms.
The Indiegogo/StartEngine startup ecosystem flow:
Launch a rewards-based crowdfunding campaign on the Indiegogo platform to introduce or solidify a new concept and acquire customers.
Raise funds for proof of concept and minimum viable product or prototype and build an enthusiastic community of backers.
Migrate the community as the company transitions to StartEngine to launch a regulation crowdfunding campaign.
Raise capital to scale the business while simultaneously acquiring new shareholders who serve as champions of the brand, motivated to see it succeed.
Becky Center, the CEO of Indiegogo, believes that joining forces with StartEngine will prove immensely beneficial for the companies crowdfunding on the Indiegogo platform. Calling the collaboration "a perfect segue," Center shares, "A startup can begin raising capital with us to fortify a concept, acquire customers and scale, and when the time comes, we can pass the baton to StartEngine to help them attract shareholders and raise the rest of the way."
While many founders assume venture capital funding is a necessity, Marks thinks otherwise, especially now the two crowdfunding platforms have teamed up: "The truth is some businesses may never have to take venture capital." Case in point, funds raised on Indiegogo, combined with equity crowdfunding on StartEngine – which can reach sums as high as $75 million in one round – are often sufficient for companies to reinvest and grow.
About Indiegogo:
Indiegogo is a global crowdfunding platform that enables entrepreneurs to go to market and raise funds from curious backers looking to support the most unique and exclusive products. Our mission is to create a worldwide network of communities that connect trustworthy, professional entrepreneurs and the enthusiasts who power their innovation. Since the company launched in 2008, Indiegogo has helped fund over 925,000 ideas and raised over $2 billion benefitting more than 800,000 entrepreneurs. The company has team members located all across the world.
About StartEngine:
One of the largest equity crowdfunding platforms in the U.S., led by Activision Games Co-Founder Howard Marks and Strategic Advisor Kevin O'Leary, StartEngine launched in 2015 with the mission to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams, while enabling everyday people access to private investment opportunities. To date, over $550 million has been raised for startups and alternative assets on the StartEngine platform from more than 800,000 investors. In October 2020, StartEngine also became one of the first equity crowdfunding platforms to launch an investor marketplace where anyone can trade private securities that have raised capital via Regulation Crowdfunding and Regulation A+.
StartEngine Crowdfunding Inc. is not a broker-dealer, funding portal or investment adviser. StartEngine Capital, LLC is a funding portal registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). StartEngine Primary LLC is a broker-dealer registered with the SEC and FINRA/SIPC. StartEngine Secondary is an alternative trading system regulated by the SEC and operated by StartEngine Primary, LLC, a broker dealer registered with the SEC and FINRA.
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NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT,NONPROFIT TECHNOLOGY
The Good Society | August 10, 2022
Nonprofit funding platform Heroe5™ announced today the creation of The Good Society™ to address the growing need for sustainable funding platforms for charitable organizations. The Good Society becomes the first project focused on Web3 solutions to raise awareness and support global causes working to positively impact our communities.
“The Good Society is a vital next step in the evolution of the fundraising industry: a Web3 platform to create art impact experiences, As the world moves to Web3, charities need more fundraising tools to stay ahead of the curve and embrace new ways to engage potential donors. The Good Society will provide those innovations, allowing them to raise critical funding and awareness for vital causes while feeding the public’s growing interest in digital collectables.”
-Sebastien Heimann, founding member and CEO of Heroe5 and The Good Society.
With each drop 1800 digital collectibles designed by acclaimed artists will be released each month supporting a broad range of nonprofits working to improve the environment, wildlife, human rights, and our collective health and wellbeing. A percentage of these art impact experiences will grant token carriers access to unique events in perpetuity.
Artist Nate Mohler created Out of Sight | Out of Mind” for The Good Society’s first program, which benefits Lonely Whale, No More Plastic, and Oceanic Global. The digital collectables, scaled to 3840 x 3840 pixels, 26 seconds in length and layered with white sound, emphasize the risk to fragile ocean ecosystems from the human-caused plastic pollution in urban environments and highlight how much there is left to learn. Three of the many cities featured in Out of Sight | Out of Mind include London, Los Angeles, and Paris.
No matter where you live, the oceans provide the oxygen you breathe, nurture the food you eat, and regulate the temperature of the air. Without a healthy ocean we’d have a very different experience on land, said Mohler. This series is not of the oceans but of major cities, which emit 60% of all carbon emissions and make up less than 1% of the Earth’s surface. Similar to my ongoing series ‘Painted Cities’ there are three unique styles intended to bring a more ephemeral and dreamlike memory of the city.
One of every 15 of the digital collectibles will also provide owners access to experiences that are provided by the benefiting organizations and artists for each drop. Some of the experiences tied to this premier release include:
Two front row seats at Paris Fashion Week
Two passes to Oceanic Global’s annual gathering for ocean conservation
An annual artist critique call with Nate Mohler
Invitations to Lonely Whale's annual leadership virtual town hall which discuss its programs and preview its impact report
Digital collectors will easily be able to purchase the artwork with a credit card or Tez, cryptocurrency of the Tezos blockchain, when they are minted on August 12 at 2pm ET. Once sold out, more than $1M (US) in new funding will be available to the benefiting organizations and, as the digital collectables are resold, the organizations will receive residual payments from each transaction.
“Lonely Whale’s goal is simple - to keep plastic out of the ocean. We want to thank each person who buys one of Nate Mohler’s striking NFTs through The Good Society, which will support the creative development and market adoption of alternatives to thin-film plastic and directly address the nearly 180 billion polybags used every year by the fashion industry.”
- Harry Bernstein, Chief Creative Officer, Lonely Whale.
Plastic pollution has become one of the biggest environmental scourges of our time. Microplastics are everywhere: in the deep ocean, in Antarctic ice, even falling rain over mountains and cities. Plastic pollution not only pollutes our planet; it pollutes our blood. We must act and the time is now. We are grateful to The Good Society for entrusting No More Plastic Foundation with this generous funding. With it, we will continue our work to end the cycle of plastics and microplastics flowing into our ocean.Rosalie Mann, Founder & President, No More Plastic.
We live on a blue planet. The ocean covers 70% of the surface of the earth and produces every other breath we take. Our well-being is intrinsically tied to the ocean. Thanks to The Good Society and their innovative fundraising platform and model – and to artiste extraordinaire Nate Mohler – Oceanic Global will be able to keep empowering individuals, communities, and industries to create positive change for a thriving ocean, Lea d'Auriol, Founder & Executive Director, Oceanic Global
About The Good Society:
The Good Society harnesses the power of non fungible tokens to fund global initiatives. Designed by acclaimed digital artists, every month a new NFT will drop that raises awareness and secures funding for nonprofits working to improve the environment, human rights, and our collective health and wellbeing. Led by Sebastien Heimann, the Co-founder & CEO of fundraising platform Heroe5, The Good Society leverages the uniqueness of Web3 to deliver a powerful and recurring source of funding.
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