Originally published on the StartSomeGood blog.
At StartSomeGood we are very clear on why we exist: to support social entrepreneurs, non-profits and community groups to rally the community support they need to make a difference.
This comes directly from our founders, Tom Dawkins and Alex Budak. It’s not just that they founded StartSomeGood with the intention of support world changing initiatives, it’s that they had founded such initiatives themselves previously and so intimately understood the challenges faced by social entrepreneurs and community groups to raise the funds they need to make a difference.
Prior to StartSomeGood Alex had founded a major student group at UCLA and Tom had founded award-winning Australian non-profit youth organization Vibewire. Over eight years Tom brought $1 million into Vibewire to fuel their innovative community-development projects, including opening the first co-working space in Australia.
Alex and Tom met working at global social entrepreneurship champion Ashoka in Washington, D.C. They shared a passion for the power of technology to support grassroots change and innovation. But the social innovation sector has a challenge: for the most part it’s not innovative enough.
This is because funding for the sector traditionally comes from risk-adverse investors: government, corporate foundations, the wealthy. Most want to support "proven" innovation, but this isn’t real innovation at all. What was needed was an equivalent of "angel investors" for the social sector, prepared to back new ideas at the earliest stage and see what sort of impact they could create.
Inspired by the impact of Kickstarter who were solving a similar problem for creative entrepreneurs – how to go around the traditional gatekeepers and build a community of small-dollar supporters instead – Tom and Alex decided to give social entrepreneurs, and all organizations working for a better world, the same opportunity and support.
StartSomeGood exists to support social entrepreneurs, grassroots changemakers, and innovative organizations. We dream of a world where we innovate quicker and can find and scale the initiatives we need to build a better future for all of us, and where communities have access to the tools and support they need to build that future for themselves, rather than waiting for an outside authority to save them. This, to us, is democracy in action.
And everything we’ve done since then is focused on this mission.
This is why we invented the Tipping Point, because it gives innovation the best chance to succeed. This is why we provide the most meaningful support, why we hold ourselves accountable to helping you succeed before we earn any income, why we work with innovative partners like ING DIRECT, the City of Fremantle and the Foundation for Young Australians to give great social impact projects access to additional funding and support through our Crowdmatch program. This is why we are a B Corp, to hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards.
This commitment to social entrepreneurs, social benefit projects and social change is ultimately why we have the best project success rate going, which means working with us gives you the best possible statistical chance of success. Not trying to boast, but it’s true.
StartSomeGood: Not just another crowdfunding platform.