NOTE: This was originally published on January 11 2016 on the StartSomeGood blog.
I don't know about you guys, but 2015 was a pretty massive year here at StartSomeGood.
There were some great wins this year. We raised investment for the first time and launched a worlds-first collaboration with an impact investor. Our partnerships such as ING Dreamstarter, FreoMatch and Pitch for Good were huge successes. Our success rate remained a near industry-leading 53% and we launched our popular masterclass as an online course at Udemy.
We also made a lot of mistakes, learned a lot, and fought hard to make the progress we did, like most startups.
We ended the year with two huge milestones: 1. the launch of our new platform and brand and 2. reaching 600 successful projects and $6 million AUD in processed funds.
If you haven't had a chance to explore the new site, here’s what’s new:
- Fresh new brand and design;
- Improved project set-up flow and resources;
- Mobile responsiveness;
- New categories including Social Enterprise, Indigenous and Animal Welfare;
- Credit card processing in 10 countries with Stripe (previously only offered in the US and Australia).
And this is what stays the same:
- The best advice and support for social impact projects;
- One of the highest success rates in the industry;
- Great Crowdmatch partnerships to help you access more funds and co-investment;
- A unique focus on supporting projects and organizations that make a positive impact on the world.
And here's our new brand, like it?
This makes 2016 is a very exciting year for us. We are ready to step it up and make an impact on a bigger scale than ever before. We aim to help more projects raise more money this year than in our history to date. We have some great Crowdmatch co-investment partnerships coming up and continuing and an exciting roadmap of improvements to the platform to make it even easier to use and to share and support the projects you care about, as well as new functionality to power the partnerships which help make us unique. We’ll need to keep iterating and improving the way we deliver support, the way we tell stories, the way we build our community, constantly learning as we go.
Our mission is to support social entrepreneurs and changemakers to create the progress their communities need. The world needs innovation and social progress desperately, and that usually comes from hard-working social entrepreneurs and community groups willing to try something new in their pursuit of making a difference. Exactly the people we serve. The rise of social enterprise is a huge and exciting trend but the change in our economy towards community benefit won’t just happen on its own, it needs champions and it needs infrastructure. Our mission is to be that champion and provide that infrastructure.
So whatever your social good goals are for 2016, we want to help you achieve them! Get in touch or hit Start A Project on the homepage and tell us what you're working on.
From all of us at StartSomeGood, go well this year! Let’s create change together.