GiveForward

Supraventricular Tachycardia is a type of heart rhythm disorder in which a person’s heart beats faster than it should.  When a young woman, Hessed, was diagnosed with this condition she was told that she needed a catheter ablation procedure to remove the extra tissue in her heart causing the irregular heart beats.

When her friend heard about this procedure, they immediately stepped up and put together a GiveForward page to help raise money for her heart condition.  In less than two months, Hessed’s Mended Heart Fund raised almost $10,000.  Thanks to those who donated, Hessed was able to get the life-saving procedure.

We are happy to report that in April, Hessed had a one month post-operation appointment and her doctor officially declared her heart cured and healthy!  Hessed was kind enough to reach out and update us on her progress.  Take  a look at what she had to say:

“I am truly grateful to have come across such a wonderful website during a time of need.  GiveForward made it possible for me to be able to raise the funds I needed to have a catheter ablation done for my heart.  The site is so easy to use and the entire GiveForward team was always helpful if I ever had any questions.  This is truly a great organization and I will forever be grateful for their help and support… oh and my heart is now cured and healthy!

With Eternal Gratitude,

Hessed”

There is nothing the staff at GiveForward loves more than being able to share one of the success stories of our users.  Often, our users are going through a very difficult time and we always try to provide a little bit of hope by sharing the stories of those who have been threre, done that and fought on.

We all want to send a big GiveForward hug to Hessed, her friends and her new heart.  Thanks for sharing your story with us, and the rest of the GiveForward users!

Fundraiser organizers will see new functionality starting this week.  We are excited to share that we are now assigning a personal fundraising coach to each fundraiser started on GiveForward.

What does this mean for users?  It means you get the exact level of personal attention that you want.  Is this your first time fundraising?  Our coaches are

happy to help you figure out the next steps and share their tried and true fundraising tips, just email them at info@giveforward.com or give them a call at 312-957-6113.

Are you an old pro at fundraising and just want someone to call on if you get stuck?  They’re there for that too.

Plus having a personal fundraising coach also means you get a nice glossy photo of your coach with your introductory email.  Always a nice perk.

We hope that you guys enjoy working one-on-one with our coaches as much as they enjoy working with you.

Thanks to all of our amazing Giveasauruses (Giveasauri?) we have officially hit our $4million mark.  That means that over 49,000 donations have been made by people just like you.

These donations have changed lives and helped people cope with everything from an unexpected cancer diagnosis to rebuilding after a fire.  So we want to take a moment to say a big GiveForward THANK YOU to everyone who takes a little time every day to give.  It is donors like the Quinn Family, who made the $4millon donation to the fundraiser “Help Support Margie Bersterman” that are changing the world one dollar at a time.

Way to go, Giveasauruses; you are all rockstars!!

One of the cool things about being a medical fundraising tool is that at GiveForward we get to see all of the creative and inspiring ways that friends and family fundraise on behalf of their loved ones.

We wanted to share one such story about Jason Noble, who was diagnosed with cancer.   Friends came together to help raise money for Jason and his wife, Kristin, to cover the cost of everyday expenses that exist outside of insurance coverage.

The unique thing about their fundraiser was the way the organizers encouraged donors to get involved.  In exchange for a standardized donation amount, donors received a collection of 12 art prints that were donated by artists from all around the United States.

The organizers assumed it would take at least six weeks to reach their goal of $15,000.  Instead, during the first day donors from the U.S., Australia, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Canada had donated.  Within 12 hours of its launch, their fundraiser met and surpassed its goal, raising over $16,000!

Now, over a year later, Jason is on the road to recovery thanks to the support of his amazing group of friends.  We were inspired by not only the work Jason’s loved ones put into this fundraiser but the creativity they showed in their efforts.  A big GiveForward high-five to everyone involved in this exceptional fundraiser.

GiveForward co-founder Ethan Austin sat down with Robbie Abed of The Startup Foundry to talk a little about GiveForward’s mission and how far we’ve come in a short amount of time.

From 1 visitor a day to raising $4m for charity, Give Forward’s feel good story
by Robbie Abed on Feb 17, 2011 • 3:45 pm View Comments

I had the great opportunity to speak with Ethan Austin, co-founder of GiveForward (http://www.giveforward.org). Give Forward is a Chicago based startup that helps people raise money for their medical expenses. Ethan speaks about how they once had only 1 visitor on new years day, to being able to get funding a year later. The excerpt of the interview is below:

In one or two sentences, explain what GiveForward does.
GiveForward is a crowdfunding platform for medical expenses. In a nutshell, we make it incredibly easy for friends and family raise money for things like chemotherepy treatments or organ transplants when their loved one gets sick.

How long has Give Forward been around?
We launched in 2008.

Was Give Forward bootstrapped or funded?
We bootstrapped for the first two-and-a-half years but recently got funding.

Explain what the first 0-6 months were like for Give Forward. How did you get it off the ground?
Wow! To say the first six months were rough would be a massive understatment. We launched the site in August of 2008 and on January 1st, 2009 we had one visitor on GiveForward that day — literally ONE visitor! For the most part, our attempts at gaining traction involved coercing our friends and family to start fundraising pages. I enlisted about 25 of my college buddies and their girlfriends to run 5 miles through Central Park for the cause of their choice in in an event we dubbed “run for a reason” . I think we helped raise about $13,000 from the event, which probably accounted for like half of the donations on the site the first six months. It was kind of ridiculous back then.

We really didn’t start to see any traction on the site until about nine months in when two Chicago sisters from Depaul used GiveForward to raise $30,000 for a kidney transplant. After that, we received some media coverage and things started to pick up a bit.

[Editors note:] Give Forward has already raised $3,527,462 for medical expenses and other important causes. Talk about a startup making an impact on the world![/Editors note:]

How did you acquire funding. Was a prototype built before funding?
Last summer, we got accepted into a Chicago startup accelerator called Excelerate Labs, which turned out to be a game changer for us. Through Excelerate, we were able to demo at the House of Blues in front of 500 investors from around the county. My partner, Desiree, gave a pretty awesome presentation which really opened the doors for us. From there, Tim Krauskopf, one of the mentors at Excelerate helped us round up some investors. We also used Angel List, which I highly recommend, to secure the final part of our round.

How big is the team?
We have a team of seven right now plus a few really awesome interns.

Being a Chicago startup, do you find it harder to succeed then if you were in silicon valley as an example
Not at all. I know it’s a cliche, but the Chicago startup community is really coming into its own right now. Groupon has obviously helped to bring a ton of attention to Chicago, but things like Excelerate Labs, MidVentures Tech Week, and Social Dev Camp are changing the landscape in Chicago and helping to build a strong community here. Granted, funding is always going to be an issue and there is no Sand Hill Road in Chicago, but with tools like Angel List democratizing the VC industry, the need to be in Silicon Valley isn’t nearly as great as it used to be.

What is your biggest challenge now?
Educating people and getting the word out. That’s always been the hardest part. When a loved one is going through a serious health issue like cancer, their friends and family usually feel pretty helpless and don’t know what they can do to help. Our goal is make sure they are aware of our service. Once people find out about GiveForward, they always love it. We just need to let more people know about it.

Thanks to Ethan for the interview. All the best to GiveForward. For more startup news, follow us on twitter @startupfoundry.

You can also follow the author on twitter @robbieab.

BuzzRaid.com is a website that reviews startups and websites.  Recently, they posted a review about GiveForward that provides an objective look at our company and the services we provide.

Feel free to check out the site here or read the review below for more information on what they consider our strengths and details on how they believe we can continue to work to expand on the services we provide.

A big thanks to BuzzRaid for taking the time to evaluate GiveForward.

GiveForward – Fundraising for Out-Of-Pocket Medical Expenses

GiveForward located at giveforward.com is a startup that is focused on making it easy for people to have fundraisers to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses as well as pets medical expenses and other causes. The company has claimed to help raise over $3.5 million so far (since 08?) for families with out-of-pocket medical expenses.

The company has investments from Tim Krauskopf, Ed Chandler, New World Ventures, David Cohen, Social Leverage and Excelerate Labs. GiveForward is located in Chicago, Illinois.

Why It Could Be Big:
There are plenty of people out there who are having trouble with outrageous medical expenses for life-saving surgeries that may not be covered by their insurance. If GiveForward can help people with these expenses during tough times it can help a large number of families and become a stable business at the same time. At this point they charge a 7% fee which may seem a little high but does include the credit card fees of 2.5%+ as well as SSL encryption and more. The amount they take is less than most traditional charities and having stable revenue will let the company expand with more options instead of having to scrape by and end up closing like many in this space have.

GiveForward looks to have a good plan in place to verify campaigns which would be one of my main concerns when donating money. They verify personal information as well as talk to references and do their own research. There is typically no fool-proof model to completely stop fraud but the process they have in place should weed out almost all. Overall GiveForward could be big if they can continue to make it a simple process to start and manage fundraisers while adding in social aspects to help it spread through Twitter and Facebook.

We are very excited to announce GiveForward has raised $500,000 in its first round of funding.

After meeting some fantastic people during our participation in Excelerate, we were able to do some creative fundraising and are now ready to expand on the services we currently provide.  With this backing we will now be able to grow our team and bring on additional fundraising coaches so we can continue to provide the best service possible to our fundraisers.

Feel free to check out the story featured in the Chicago Tribune, TechCrunch and FastCompany:

Chicago startup GiveForward raises $500K

By Wailin Wong
Posted today at 8:45 a.m.

GiveForward, a Chicago-based startup that helps people raise money for out-of-pocket medical expenses, has raised $500,000 in its first round of funding.

Desiree Vargas Wrigley and Ethan Austin started GiveForward in 2008 and had looked for some funding at that time, but “what we kept hearing from investors is: ‘You should be a non-profit,’” Vargas Wrigley said. She and Austin funded the company themselves, with Vargas Wrigley waiting tables at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba in Lincoln Park in the meantime.

The GiveForward platform allows people to create personalized fundraising pages and share their cause through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. GiveForward collects the donations, which can be done through credit or debit cards, and passes them along to the beneficiary after deducting 7 percent for processing fees. The company said its users have raised $3.5 million since the company’s inception and about 10,000 users have joined the site, with almost half of them signing up in the last six months.

In 2010, GiveForward was one of 10 companies chosen for the inaugural class of Excelerate, a Chicago-based program that awards funding to startups and provides mentorship from experienced investors and entrepreneurs. Through the Excelerate program, Vargas Wrigley and Austin connected with Tim Krauskopf, a serial entrepreneur and former Motorola Inc. executive who had co-founded Spyglass Inc., the software firm that developed the basis for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.

Krauskopf gave the GiveForward team advice and cultivated a group of investors behind the scenes. He became the lead investor for the company’s fundraising round, which also includes several angel investors and New World Ventures, the Chicago venture capital firm that invests on behalf of the Pritzker family.

“There are a lot of fantastic new tech ventures coming out of Chicago right now and GiveForward is one of the best,” Krauskopf said in a statement. “It is a truly viral service that leverages social networking for a real, productive purpose.”

The $500,000 will allow GiveForward to expand its staff. Austin and Vargas Wrigley drew their first paychecks in January and recently hired a marketing employee and an in-house developer. Vargas Wrigley said the startup plans to hire another five to seven people this year, with most of them serving as fundraising coaches that work one-on-one with the site’s users.

GiveForward also plans to work more closely with hospitals and private clinics so doctors and nurses can recommend GiveForward to the families of patients that might be struggling financially or could benefit from the support of an online community, Vargas Wrigley said.

Vargas Wrigley said her startup’s success in getting funding speaks to how “the funding climate is changing in Chicago.”

“Companies really can be mission-driven or social ventures and still produce return,” she said.

GiveForward Raises $500K To Be The Kickstarter For Medical Expenses

By Leena Rao
Posted today at 2:40 p.m.

GiveForward, an online fundraising tool for medical expenses, has raised $500,000 in funding from Tim Krauskopf, New World Ventures, David Cohen, Ed Chandler, Social Leverage and Excelerate Labs.

GiveForward, which was incubated in Chicago’s Excelerate Labs, wants to become the Kickstarter for medical expenses. The platform allows anyone to create customizable fundraising pages where friends and family from across the world can donate online.

To make money, GiveForward deducts 7 percent of all donations. Since 2008, 10,000 users have joined GiveForward with the startup helping families raise nearly $3.5 million for their loved ones’ out-of-pocket medical expenses. GiveForward also gives users tips on fundraising, allows them to socialize their pages on Facebook and Twitter and more.

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With the Holidays upon us many people are in the giving spirit and are filled with the desire to give back to individuals around the world. Amidst this cheer there is an equivalent amount of families and people that can benefit from Fundraising. Ever wonder how you can make an impact?

If you are in the spirit to give or receive you will benefit from these 3 simple tips:

1. Increase Awareness - Whether you are looking to give back to your community, family, or an individual in need, knowledge regarding the subject is imperative. Raising awareness on a subject can be as simple as talking to your friend at a Holiday party about a site that your family friend has created for Cancer funds.

2. Personalization – Everyone wants to feel like they are connected to that which they are giving to or receiving from. With that said, personalization is key to ensuring that individuals feel as though they are truly having their needs met, or giving to that which their heart desires. Next time your friend talks to you about their fundraising page really take the time to listen to their story. You may find their story touches your heart.

3. Engagement – Often times in the hustle and bustle of the Holidays users question how they can really engage the audience and individuals that they hope to give to or receive from. Perhaps using Social Media strategies such as creating an event on Facebook or even Twittering about a cause that seems appealing. Or maybe you are moved by reaching out to a group of fellow cancer survivors this Holiday Season. Whatever it is that moves you, know that you really are making a difference through engagement with your audience.

May Christmas cheer and giving fill each of your hearts this Holiday Season. Happy Holidays from GiveForward!

A huge thank you to everyone who came out to the 3rd annual GiveForward Pub Crawl this past weekend that welcomed 300 plus cheerful individuals.  Because of your support we were able to raise nearly $3,000 for Imerman Angels, an organization with the mission of providing one-on-one support for individuals touched by cancer.

For many individuals, families, and friends that have have been impacted by cancer in their lives your generosity is greatly appreciated. Check out the pictures of the fun:

Facebook Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl 2010 Album

Stay tuned, GiveForward will be joining Imerman Angels to run in the Austin, TX Livestrong marathon in February…Perhaps we will be running in our ugly sweaters.