We’ve been dabbling with fundraising technology since 2007, and our trip to Uganda, a few years ago, was the catalyst for CauseVox. We served Action for Children (AFC), a Kampala-based NGO that serves children and families vulnerable due to HIV/AIDS and poverty, by providing pro bono marketing and IT support.
Like a lot of pro bono projects, we had to raise funds to get ourselves there, but we couldn’t find a good way to make that happen online. All the choices out there required hacking tools together, were hard to use, or were very outdated; as a result, we built a prototype and used that to fundraise for our project.
It was awesome. We were overwhelmed by the response from our friends and family through the prototype. Jeff exceeded his goal by several hundred dollars (apparently he’s more popular than me), which helped send other team members to Uganda, too. In the end, we provided services to AFC worth about 7 times the cost it took to go.
After the prototype, we began asking ourselves how this tool can help other people. We talked to countless donors, supporters, and a wide spectrum of non-profits. The common theme that kept bubbling up was that using technology to fundraise was a real challenge for small/medium non-profits.
Today, CauseVox helps non-profits raise funds for their causes. Our online platform turns their supporters into fundraisers. We’re a fully customizable crowd-funding platform that non-profits can white-label and call their own. Once they do this, their supporters can create fundraising pages of their own and invite their friends/family (the crowd) to support and donate to the non-profit.
While in Uganda, visiting and living in the slums, we were struck by the poverty and need we saw. We were also struck by the difference and impact that non-profits make. The world could be much better, but without non-profits, the world would be much worse.
Our vision is to make it easier for non-profits to do more good and effect even more change in the world. We believe that making this vision a reality is worth having quit our lucrative jobs and living off our savings.
We started CauseVox because we believe in you.
