Now that the giving season is upon us, you're probably feeling a little more generous than usual. But with so many charities and nonprofits around the world, how can you find causes that affect your local community and know your donation made a difference?
Enter Purposity, the Atlanta-based nonprofit startup that connects users to real life needs in their community and tracks their generosity.
Founder Blake Canterbury said he created Purposity after speaking with friends about their difficultly finding local needs to support. He said he wanted to reimagine philanthropy from the ground up to make it fun, engaging and impactful, with a brand people want to be associated with.
Purposity currently operates on a website, but will be launching a mobile app sometime in November. The startup sends users one notification a week for an opportunity to do good in their city, Canterbury said.
The nonprofit also has notable backers, including former Home Depot CEO Frank Blake and a recent sponsorship with Georgia Power, which has started using Purposity for their employee giving campaigns.
"When you follow the link in the notification, it comes to a page and you're able to see an organization that vetted the need, how much the item costs that they're in need for and a story written firsthand," he said.
With a click of a button, users can check out on the site. Once their information is stored, they can start meeting needs in seconds.
"We've been saying that it takes less than 2 minutes to meet a need. And they have it in two days," Canterbury said. "Now it will take you less than 1 minute to meet a need and they'll have it in two days."
When Purposity launches in a community to meet local needs, the startup partners with local school systems and nonprofits that have been vetted and are designed to move people from poverty to sustainability, Canterbury said.
"So the school social worker will walk into a house and they'll see the kid sleeping on the floor and now they'll pull out their phone and enter that need into our system in real time, immediately, on the spot," he said.
Nowadays, people are skeptical about where they donate their money to after instances such as when half a billion dollars was donated to relief Haiti following an earthquake in 2010, but little of the reconstruction happened, he said. With Purposity, all needs are vetted at least three times before reaching users.
"People genuinely want to do good, so our belief is if we just gave people an action step of somebody in their community that needs help that they would respond, and so far every need in our system as been met," he said. "And 80 percent of our needs are met in under 3 hours."
Purposity's belief is that people would help their neighbor if they knew they needed help, Canterbury said.
"We just have no idea that the person down the street doesn't have food to eat or clothes to wear," he said. "And now with Purposity that completely changes."
Purposity is designed to provide for local needs, so a user can plug in their zip code and see what's affecting their neighbors. The startup currently operates in Georgia cities, Denver and Nashville. Canterbury said he wants the startup to get better before it gets bigger, but the new app will allow the company to scale quickly anywhere in the country.
The average need costs about $40 on the site and once a need is met, it's closed out, so a user knows their donation has made a difference. Users can also keep track of all they've donated through Purposity and the needs they've met on a profile.
"This is a new model that is working 100 percent of the time," Canterbury said. "Because now, we've met over 9,000 needs and have over 20,000 users."
