Atlanta, Georgia | Mobile and Social Apps, Social Media, Social Networking, Websites
Teresa is responsible for all of the fundraising efforts for a favorite charity. Each of the past three years she spends months planning the annual 5K, writing checks for permits, ordering t-shirts, and recruiting people in her local community to register for the event….and every year on event day….it rains……………Teresa knows that people around the world love her cause and would gladly support it but they’re not going to travel hundreds of miles to attend a fundraising event. She, along with many of the fundraising coordinators at the other 1.5 million non-profits in the U.S. wish there was a better way to raise their portion of the over $400 billion in annual donations. Hello, I’m Bobby Valentine CEO of fitRaise. Each year the top 30 fitness fundraising events bring in over $1.6bn. With the exploding popularity of the fitness marketplace lead by wearable tech reaching 112 million units by 2018 and the soon to be released Apple Watch expected to sell 30 million units there has to be a way to harness this growth and interest for major impact. Imagine instead of just seeing your step-count, distance, or calorie burn you can see a financial impact for a cause you care about.
Luckily for Teresa, and our other clients, fitRaise has created a Virtual Event Platform that allows participants to run, walk, or cycle anytime, anywhere, and as often as they want to raise money for causes. By signing up for a fitRaise event participants collect pledges on their custom donation page for each mile that they exercise and log with our free mobile app during an extended event period…up to a month long…..Donors use what we call the fun and fair pledge process to pledge an amount per mile a minimum donation and a maximum donation. When the event is over our system calculates and settles the correct donation amount.
Once an organization creates an account they are able to create any number of events. From standalone events involving their entire population of supporters to tie in events to their existing fundraising events to one of my favorite types….3rd Party Events where the grassroots supporters plan, host, and market their own fundraisers to benefit the charity.
Right now one of the most important tools we use in customer acquisition is the calendar. Each month there are dozens of ‘Special Awareness Days’ that tie in to specific organizations. We use this as our primary method to connect with development directors to set up their first event. With each organization that joins we receive access to hundreds if not thousands of their supporters, each of which, becomes a potential user of the fitRaise platform.
With a similar goal and business model to peer to peer fundraising sites and crowd-funding sites like Donor Perfect, First Giving, and GoFundMe, which by itself raises over $1million a day) we consider fitRaise to be peer to peer crowd-funding but with a fitness twist.
To keep with industry standards in the crowd-funding and peer to peer fundraising space our fee based model collects 5% of donations processed through the platform. This all happens automatically and instantly when the donations are completed.
The platform has just launched and has revenue generating events scheduled for the foreseeable future for world-class organizations like Make A Wish Foundation.
As more events come online we’ll be able to begin pursuing phase two of our roadmap which includes bridging the gap between workplace wellness initiatives and corporate giving programs. By combining these two areas we can improve employee productivity and reduce costs by up to $6 for every dollar spent while making the giving process more impactful for the organization, the employee, and the company as a whole.
fitRaise takes the local 5k global through a virtual event platform that allows individuals to raise money for causes they care about while they run, walk, or cycle.
Atlanta, Georgia
Mobile and Social Apps, Social Media, Social Networking, Websites
C-Corp
Startup.