Building Now: The Next Generation of Transparent Giving
New Giving Technology, Made in LA for LA’s Underserved Youth
In today’s age of big data, a growing philanthropic trend is the collection of evidence of how financial support results in intended positive impact. Hero Bridge was built to set a new standard in this regard. Our Heroes monthly reporting program uses data technology to exceed donors’ expectation while simultaneously ensuring long term project sustainability.
Disrupting the standard donor model. In the book The Product Mindset, authors David DeWolf and Jessica Hall, start with the simple premise that technology must support itself. We couldn’t have agreed more, and because our primary directive was to make a safe and free environment for foster youth and their mentors to focus on life readiness, we needed a mechanism that kept the issues of funding out of their way. The standard grant writing paper chase would simply not work.
Enter the humble Hero coin. Think of it as the fuel that keeps our community humming. What’s more, like a credit card it creates a unique receipt every time it is used. Hero coins - or simply “Heros” are the currency and the economy of Hero Bridge and creates what we call “the evidence of lives touched.”
The Quest: A Simple Tech to Fix a Systemic Weakness In our year long research we determined one of the main weaknesses of foster mentor organizations was due to ineffective marketing of their mentorship services to their target underprivileged population and new mentors. The result: the impact of many local organizations best suited to serve the target underprivileged remains small.
With our experience in social impact media, the solution was obvious - use media to create a vibrant community where the population can flourish through a reward system that incentivize everyone from donor, to youth, to mentor, to supportive service provider. True sustainability.
How it works (our simple non-techy version) By definition a donation is a trust relationship that the donation will make an impact. The Hero Bridge payment portal looks pretty normal. It’s what happens after that’s unique. Here’s how it works:
Enter the Hero Bridge payment portal: The stated goal of every donation is to empower and inspire transitioning foster youth to work with their co-mentors to set goals, pursue life-readying skill and access life enriching opportunities.
Tell us what matters to you: Hero Bridge’s technology puts you in direct control of the impact you want to have on a youth’s life. Perhaps you want to fund a foster youth trying to get a GED, or perhaps you think foster youth are under-represented in STEM professions . What you request is where your donation be applied.
Upon making the donation, a customized Heroes newsletter and a personalized Heroes Transcript is generated and sent to your inbox monthly.
While we are in building mode, half of your donation goes directly into the development of the technology that connects your donation to the kids and services through the app. This development investment is key to creating an “inspiration-to-activation” arc that provides for youth and their mentors access to programs that lead to the achievement of to real-world goals. ie. impact.
The other half of your donation will be encoded as “Heroes”. Think of these as the currency that fuels the Hero Bridge youth economy. We are often asked if these are bitcoin. They are not. Encoding your monetary donation simply makes it have a trackable life-cycle. Here’s an example:
Michelle, an 18 yr old minority female high school graduate is curious about a career in STEM.
As Michelle transitions out of foster-care, she is assigned a co-mentor at Stepping Forward LA and therefore has access to the Hero Bridge app.
Michelle expresses her interest in STEM and her mentor recommends she access the app library of STEM content.
She finds a “Learning Track” series of STEM videos. The series comes with a reward of 500 Heroes for successfully completing. She watches the series, takes the proficiency test and earns 500 Heroes! In this month’s custom newsletter, you the donor learn a little bit about Michelle, her goals and the fact that part of your donation has been earned through successful completion of the in-app STEM series.
Encouraged by the series and her earnings, she explores the STEM groups and resources on the app and finds an LA based Coding Camp. She gets feedback from other in the group who took the class and talks it over with her mentor. She is in luck, the course cost is only 150 Heroes!
The only problem is the Coding Camp is a few miles away in LA, and therefore, hard to reach. She finds out that for an extra 50 Heroes, she can schedule a ride share option through the app!
The following month, you the donor have the pride of knowing that your interest in funding youth STEM opportunities resulted in Michelle earning, learning and accessing STEM resources right here in LA.
Where does the monetary value of the Heroes go? Right to the organizations who provided the resources. That’s right. Your donation to Hero Bridge empowers the pass-it-forward economy directly to the local service providers, who in turn can sustain and grow the number of transitioning foster-youth they can support.
Lastly, the Hero economy allows transitioning youth to safely earn, save and transact in the resources to improve themselves. Rare instances of free-will, teachable moments, finance and executive functioning opportunities are an incredible value add to your donation
Quarterly you will receive a Hero Donor Transcript that accounts for how every dollar of your donation went to raising up a foster youth, granting them valuable access to resources and life enrichment. The hope is that a sense of intimacy with the journey of your sponsored youth will encourage you and them to continue knowing what a supportive and sustainable network (a family) feels like - there for them every, step, of, the, way.
Evidence of lives touched - direct to your inbox.
Act now and become one of our Founding Heroes. This unique designation goes to those who donated while we developed the technology and are in application for 501c3 exempted status. Help us build the Hero coin system to provide endless fuel and incentive to LA youth and orgs alike.
