If you're interested, reached out to Barry at nobogeys1@gmail.com
Here's Bill's story of how Building Bridges was created:
Our concept began in 2020 during Covid. My wife and I were hoping to help a family that was struggling financially due to school closures, business shutdowns, etc.
We put a message out on Nextdoor hoping to find a family in need. We got a few leads, but to our surprise, most responses were more like “We would love to help, tell us what to do. ”
Thinking about how to turn good intentions into actual help. we believed the key was to present appealing stories, assuring the donor group that the family was deserving, and making it easy to donate directly to the family (no middle man, 100% goes directly from donor to recipient). All donations are made with Venmo or Zelle directly from donor to recipient.
From that we developed the model…
1. Identify families in need. The goal was never to solve chronic poverty, but to help families that had been doing ok, then suffered a setback, but with a “bridge” to recovery could return to financial independence.
2. Gather the story, vet the family by checking references, etc. put the story to the donors with suggested donation instructions
3. Follow up with recipient to determine if goal was met, and request “thank you” note to share with donor group.
We have grown from 20 initial donors to now over 100, providing a bridge to 50 families in crisis that we have helped recover to independence.