Helping Hand
New Austin-based app makes it even easier to support your favorite nonprofits
Altruism on the go? There’s an app for that. Meet Everybody Helping: a new Austin-based app that helps you subscribe to your favorite nonprofits from your phone to easily give back each month.
With the app, you set a personal monthly goal, browse a list of nonprofits organized by type, and then track your impact in your profile so you know you're making a difference every month.
"When great nonprofits know how much money they’re getting every month, they're naturally able to spend less time fundraising and more time helping people — and that's what we want," says CEO Scott McElroy.
McElroy sees a disparity in the way nonprofits are currently viewed by millennial donors, in that they "don't trust nonprofits the way their parents do," he says. "Everybody Helping exists to bridge this gap with an experience that modern donors want to use to support the causes they care about so that great nonprofits can ultimately raise more money, more efficiently and naturally, in order to be more effective."
Early signs show McElroy may be onto something. The initial public reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. In just six months, the app's first subscribers give more than $2,500 altogether, averaging $5 per month, to dozens of nonprofits in Texas, such as Austin Pets Alive! and Houston Food Bank. Everybody Helping expects to give more than $25,000 annually in the first fiscal year.
If you are a nonprofit looking to expand your membership base, the app helps you send simple mobile messages to your supporters every month, so they can see how they’re helping. Plus, all nonprofits receive 100 percent of the donations made through Everybody Helping. (Those donating pay a 5 percent fee for each donation.)
Everybody Helping is currently available in Texas, but it plans to expand to California, New York, and the rest of the U.S. Currently, there is a waitlist for new nonprofits wishing to open a free account.
Moving forward, McElroy sees success in "continuing to build a business that helps our users more effectively support the causes that they care about. From the product to the brand to our Everybody Helping community, we have a lot of cool stuff in the works, so executing these immediate opportunities would certainly represent success for us in the short-term."
Head to the Everybody Helping website to download the app.
