Support Fund

We are so pleased to be partnering with Support Fund, a fantastic fundraising opportunity for teams that not only raises money, but also teaches team members valuable life skills!  Below is an interview I did with Jacob Kent of Support Fund that highlights what this great company has to offer teams and coaches.

Melanie:  Our paths first crossed at the NDCA conference in Las Vegas, and I want to thank you wholeheartedly for being an NDCA partner, and now a Larkspur partner, and for supporting dancers and coaches.  I love that you not only solve a huge problem for teams and coaches (the dreaded fundraising), but you do it in a way that is not only effective and gets results, but also will give our young people invaluable tools and skills!  I just love that!  So, tell us a little bit about how you’re different from other companies that offer fundraising help to teams and coaches.  

Jacob:  Well, thank you for the compliments!  We appreciate it!  First off, it’s important to understand what we are not.  We’ve seen a lot of crowd funding platforms pop up, and what we provide is so much more than just a  “donate” button.  So, the big difference between us and your typical crowd funding platform is that we are effective at helping teams raise more money in one week than they would in one month with a long crowd funding campaign.  Now, there are a couple reasons for this.  One is that we give supporters the choice of getting something for their money or just donate.  No one else is doing this and kids love what we do because they tell us it doesn’t feel like just begging for money.

Melanie:  Yeah, nobody likes that.

Jacob:  Yeah, exactly, no one likes that.  And that’s why other companies demand that kids enter 20 emails into the company’s database so basically they can harass their friends and family in their behalf by sending multiple emails over the course of that month.  So with us, why we’re different, we do not ask kids to turn over the contact information of their friends and family.  

Melanie:  That’s nice.  They will like that.  

Jacob:  Exactly right.  We teach them to text from the kid’s own phone and we help them with what to say in that text.

Melanie:  That’s great because they don’t know!  Young kids don’t know!

Jacob:  That’s right, they don’t.  And people are responding much better to a personal ask, way better than an automated email campaign.

Melanie:  So you provide them with the tools and you provide them also with choices, either a donation or a product.  What kind of results are people getting?  What kind of results can a team expect?

Jacob:  We just had a dance team of 22 girls get a check for $8,628 in one week!  So that’s what you can do.  Typically, on average our teams raise $200 profit per dance team member in one week.  

Melanie:  Obviously a major benefit you offer is raising money, but talk about some of the other unexpected benefits that people can expect when partnering with Support Fund.

Jacob:  When you and I had talked previously, we talked about the “meta” of all of this.  It’s not just a fundraiser.  What we’re doing is helping and teaching kids how to make a personal ask from themselves, and realizing that not everyone is going to respond right away to a text, and learning to follow up with that.  It gives them a learning lesson of life.

Melanie:  I love how you’re teaching this life skill in a safe way by giving them tools and it’s something that they’re going to use for the rest of their life.  I just used the tool of following up.  As a matter of fact, I have to use it all the time!  So you teach life skills, provide them with tools, and they raise money in the meantime and in a really easy and effective way!  How can they get a hold of you if they’re interested in partnering with Support Fund?

Jacob:  The simplest way for them is to go to our website supportfund.com They can hit the contact button or the “learn more” button and a fundraising coach will get in touch.  

Melanie:  Thank you, Jacob, for all you do for teams and coaches everywhere and thanks so much for partnering with Larkspur Dance & Choreography!  

 

SupportFund from SupportFund on Vimeo.