Barely a year after graduating from Boston University with a Bachelors in advertising, Will Funk finds himself in a position different than most of his fellow 20-somethings. Funk, along with his older brother and two friends, is hoping to revolutionize the non-profit world through his tech start-up Givlet.
The company got its start as OrderNow, a QR code based checkout app that allowed small businesses to better analyze their advertising spending while providing their customers a quick and easy way to buy products off of ads. However, after a couple of months of working on their new venture, Funk and his business partners discovered they would have to go a different route.
“We knocked, figuratively knocked, on a lot of doors and reached out to a bunch of people and got feedback from initial investors and other entrepreneurs and just discovered that while the product was a compelling, sexy idea, it was a little before its time,” Funk, 23, told Latinos Post in an exclusive interview.
The Oklahoma City native added, “And on top of that, the e-commerce sort of, I guess, seems super saturated these days and there’s a lot of ways you can sell a product and we actually started to see a lot of demand from non-profits, for an instant donations solution. You know, scan to donate.”
And so, Givlet was born.
The idea behind the web app is to allow non-profits to create simple donation pages for their donors. “It’s literally, create a page and distribute it in a variety of ways in like a minute or like 30 seconds,” Funk said. “And non-profits like that because most every non-profit has somewhere you can donate on their website but that’s not always a good one-size fits all solution.”
Funk added that Givlet also allows non-profits to create fundraising-relevant donation pages. “By that I mean, showing relevant images or video or copy and you suggest a donation amount.”
"It's free to sign up. Free to create an account. Free to create your pages, as many as you want, and we take a small commission on every donation," Funk explained. "That rate currently is 3.9 percent plus 30 cents, that includes payment processing fees."
While the company is in its starting phase, Funk does hope to see it expand. "We would like to bring on someone who has experience working with non-profits, either as a consultant or as sort of a thought leader," Funk told Latinos Post.
He added, "It would be great to have someone who could go out and pitch for us, who can say 'Look I've worked in the non-profit industry and this is a good product and this is why you should use it.' I think they'd really take their advice."
In the meantime, Funk and his three co-workers, Jack Funk, James Gettinger and Matt Briançon, have already started working with local non-profits, including Generation Citizen, Career Village, StreetSquash and most recently Women of Wind Energy. Funk also hopes to work with non-profits that are using tech to drive social change. "I think that hardware and software can really be a catalyst for bringing people together and driving social change. Any sort of organization that is bringing technology to third world countries or to people who otherwise wouldn't have it, or are using technology to bring people together, I like and just kind of get excited about."
While Funk may not be doing what most of his fellow recent grads are doing, he told Latinos Post he has "no regrets." He added, "I am apprehensive every day that I should be doing something like the rest of my cohorts, i.e. getting a real job and like not boot strapping and sort of putting in my time, but if I can make this work than it's something I can really be proud of."
"And in that respect, it's already been a huge success, because we built something and people use it and we process donations and it's going to good causes and like wow. More than I ever thought."
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