Develop a platform that revolutionises fundraising
Philanthropy is hard work, especially to do well, wisely and with care. Whether it’s giving £10 or £10 million, knowing the who, why and the how are critical and require effort. Often the more we give the more we want to understand, the more we want certainty. However, when you are starting a new venture, certainty is hard to come by. Attempts to solve, reach out and engage are steps into the unknown. They are risks, but often when seeking to serve, they are risks worth taking - but sadly not often risks worth funding.
Enter JustSow, a group of philanthropists passionate about exploring new ways to reach out and serve, inspired by the idea of entrepreneurial endeavours in the world of Christian ministry. Many from business backgrounds, this group wanted to bring that seed funding model to the world of non-profit start ups.
The Challenge
That was the challenge brought to our team. Leaning into the Kick Starter model as a starting point we designed and developed a platform to call up ‘Gospel Entrepreneurs’ and allow them to present their ideas to the world, with a back-end allowing ‘Sowers’ to generously give to projects close to their heart.
Beyond the KYC process and knowing some basics we needed a method to help the Gospel Entrepreneurs connect and clearly communicate their vision, but do so succinctly in a shareable way.
The Solution
The solution was developing a video aspect to the submission form. Our engineering team developed tooling to upload, crop and edit these videos automatically into one minute portrait videos that portray the core essence of each idea. A second video allowed users to verify themselves or provide references, further giving confidence to identity and genuine nature of the person and idea.
Impact
To date the project has seen well over 200 projects submitted and over £800k given in seed funding to projects up and down the UK.
The success continues with a future expansion to the Asia Pacific region planned later this year.
