A pair of early Elemental Technologies employees are using lessons learned from that company’s deep community engagement philosophy and culture to create a platform that helps others develop similar programs.
The startup, called Field Day, was founded by Eli Blackman and Jason LaPier.
Elemental Technologies featured a robust community investment program, championed by late co-founder and CEO Sam Blackman, Eli's brother. When Amazon Web Services bought Elemental, Sam Blackman said he hoped Elemental’s community investment would influence, and grow within, Amazon.
Field Day is a result of that work. Eli Blackman spent time on AWS Elemental's global corporate engagement team, which ended up encouraging workers to volunteer hundreds of hours each year.
“It’s at a local level to get involved with local nonprofits that was effective for Elemental,” Blackman said.
The Field Day product is essentially a marketplace that helps companies and community nonprofits work together. Businesses can use it to find community partners and opportunities for employees to get involved. For nonprofits, it’s a first-touch platform that helps customers sign up for volunteer projects.
Blackman has developed the idea for a couple of years.
“You don’t have to be a Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 with a corporate responsibility team," he said. "If it’s easier for smaller companies to get (a community engagement program) going and grow it with the organization, it lets it be a piece of the company culture from the beginning. It creates the flywheel of community engagement and connection between employers, the nonprofits and individuals.”
Blackman left AWS Elemental in February. Field Day has a small office in downtown Portland and a full-time team of five.
The company completed a prototype of the platform and is planning a beta test in the first quarter. The test will include a handful of corporate customers and about 20 Portland-area nonprofits.
The startup plans to generate revenue from corporate users' subscriptions. Companies pay for the engagement metrics and other feedback, for social impact reports and other internal or eternal needs, collected through the platform.
Blackman added that nonprofits could use collected data to help formulate grant applications.
"It gives us an avenue to grow our audience, amplify our mission, and develop relationships with purpose-driven companies and the people that make up those companies,” said Anna Kurnizki, executive director of Portland nonprofit Community Warehouse, in a written statement.
The company recently closed a funding round of funding that's expected to fuel the startup for a year. Blackman didn’t release details but said Defy.vc led the round, which included local investors Cascade Seed Fund and Voyager Capital. Both Voyager and Defy founder Neil Sequeira had invested in Elemental.
“Field Day unlocks a critical engagement channel for nonprofits, in turn, building community benefits that tackle the widespread need for connection we’re seeing across company cultures today," said Madison McIlwain, Partner at Defy, in a written statement.
Competitors in the space mainly offer spreadsheets or other tools cobbled together by companies or from platforms like Benevity. However, Blackman notes those entities focus more on monetary donations and employee-matching programs.
Blackman re-emphasized the importance of establishing such programs early within a company's existence.
“We saw this at Elemental,” he said. “Many Elementals started as volunteers and then joined committees and boards and became donors. We should be supporting that (for employees) from a very early stage.”
