Episode 23 -Building NonprofitsHQ: A Journey of Innovation, Impact, and Ethical Growth

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hey my name’s Leon this is the Boost we’re at geekdom today and I have a returning guest a friend a mentee all of the above uh it’s Zac from nonprofits HQ um we wanted to talk you know non like the nonprofit world I want to get some updates on your platform it’s been about 8 n months since you launched roughly yep something like that okay so has the the how has it been since since we launched you came on here you were just launching it just in May right so that’s a huge time in startup world like

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I’m kind of curious just how it’s felt and obviously we I’ve got some background knowledge but I find it really fascinating just the the journey and the growth of of a startup and a person and a company yeah definitely um so first thanks for having thanks for having me back on um you know the very first like interview where we publicly talked about what we were building and what we were doing was on the Boost there in the conference room at like 702 right and that’s the first the first time where we publicly like provided

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details on what we were building and and how we were doing it and the stuff that we wanted to accomplish so it just feels natural you know as we’re seeing this progress we’re seeing this traction generating uh Revenue to come back and like Circle back to the booth so uh definitely happy to be here and appreciate the invite back um yeah there’s a lot of stuff happening you know not just with nonprofit Tech but in the nonprofit space in general right you’ve got a lot of uncertainty with the new year coming up and how organizations

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are going to position themselves to be more self- sustainable and to carry themselves through the next couple of years and that’s obviously the the government change the new the new uh Trump coming in I I have heard from many nonprofits especially anybody in the DC area that they’re kind of scrambling to want organized better to make sure that they can do compliance they can keep track of everything but figuring how to secure the money now from Grants to to just like extra donations because I I

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believe the stat is going down every year as donations for non-governmental entities are decreasing year-over-year which is kind of fascinating because nonprofit Tech is growing in the in the tech space I’ve seen a lot of that that is you know that is a really interesting uh Point too because money from the public is getting smaller and smaller into the nonprofit space but nonprofit Tech is blowing up you know in the last year there have been over $150 million invested in nonprofit Tech from reputable VC firms right and these are

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groups that were scared of nonprofit never would touch never go near nonprofit but as more uh need is demonstrated and as people are starting to shift their focus they’re recognizing that you know organizations need tools to help support what they’re doing to help maintain uh the requirements the regular regulatory requirements and all these different things that they need to be sufficient and so as the organizations are looking for these tools that market is growing and we just happen to be experiencing that pain

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point at the right time to get in kind of the beginning of this like large jump into nonprofit Tech and I think that is why we’ve seen the success in the traction that we’ve seen uh you know just launching May 1 uh to where we are now I think that that’s largely we just happen to be experiencing a problem that other people were and we happen to be just a little bit early on that problem to uh be able to build a solution and be ready when people are are starting to see it it it’s building a startup it’s

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always a little bit of timing it’s always a little bit of luck and it’s a ton of hard work and and I see that from you is you you you built your luck you know you you don’t just get the luck you built the luck you had impeccable timing and now now you’re doing the hard work of of it now as all that money gets pumped into it and the funding for nonprofits are going down like why do you think that like is it’s it’s a it’s fascinating because I would expect if all of these VCS are putting their money in to say

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hey there’s going to be really big exit some of these companies will be able to go public it’s a weird dynamic considering it is a nonprofit company that then you know working with a for-profit and then you have less giving like how are these companies like navigating that in in this world how are you navigating in this world yeah definitely and so like what you’ll notice and you can look back there are statistics I didn’t bring any with me now but you can look back and see the correlation to the various economies in

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the world and how that correlates to not just like direct charity giving but also Grant sources um because that money comes from somewhere as well right and so we have to think about we have to have tools that kind of adapt to those conditions as well and so the way we’re solving it and every company is solving you know these different problems differently but the way we’re solving it is bringing uh grants to our organization right so real quick can you describe what the what a grant is because I I I fundamentally understand

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it you know comes from some government or company but like what is it for everybody that’s listening and a little bit on my education side definitely yeah so grants are amounts of funding they can be super small grants $100 couple hundred or really large grants 50 million you know any dollar amount uh they come from an organization and they’re usually earmarked for a specific purpose so for example if I have a nonprofit one of our customers actually in Arkansas um just received a grant they provide nutrition to the homeless

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population and the the lowincome population there uh in Arkansas and they received a grant to build in a a kitchen right build a space where they had a commercial kitchen and they weren’t just kind of like putting this stuff together through various different uh people’s kitchens at home right and so they’re they had a grant that was specifically earmarked for that money that they receive from an organization after some qualification process that usually has some strings attached right they have

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compliance requirements winning a grant is not the only step you have to remain compliant uh with kind of like a scholarship for somebody going to college right exactly and a lot of scholarships are grants okay okay so the one and the same now that compliance component that’s that’s what nonprofits HQ does right that’s one of the facets of of how our platform works and you know what the benefit of our platform is an organization has the convenience of everything that they need to run their organization smoothly you know the

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management of contacts staff donors uh fundraising board of directors SO meetings decisions resolutions all that in one place that means we have a very granular understanding of what that organization qualifies for what grants that are available that that organization qualifies for and we can generate a score um to indicate the likelihood of this organization winning a particular Grant and so we’re tackling this and we’re providing this functionality to our customers through um grants that come to you right

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sourcing grants uh figuring out qualifications writing proposals that takes a lot of time for our change makers and they’re really dedicated to making sure that their mission is Amplified and that they’re creating the change that they want in their communities and they shouldn’t need to worry about all of these other overhead administrative type tasks but granting is incredibly important to these organizations especially as public donations kind of uh wither away um granting sources become a really

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important source of funding to keep these programs going and so our platform one of the really cool functionalities that we’re rolling out in 2025 is uh our platform is always searching for Grants and sourcing grants on behalf of our organizations and what happens is it finds grants it checks qualifications we use a lot of AI models that we train specifically on you know 20 plus years of Grant uh data and we uh match the organization based on how they qualify are they serving the right group of people is their operating

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budget the right amount are they in the right area geographically you know whatever these requirements are for these grants and then the first indicator that our customers get that they qualify for a grant they have full toolkit they have the grant information they have a score um indicating the likelihood of winning that Grant and they have a draft Grant proposal right there so we take out the entire first two three steps of this grant process so your Grant staff now all they have to do is edit a proposal and submit right and

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so you can you can submit for and uh be more specific or explicit in the grants that you submit for uh with a smaller team that sounds amazing CU I know that nonprofits always put somebody in place you know that’s their full-time gig they’re that’s that’s all they’re doing and it you know to my comparison it’s a scholarship you know you got to write something you got to type it up yep I I like the blend of of AI I think that’s also really good timing wise is how do you use AI That’s an effective way that’s not just like a

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hey it’s a feature check like you can you can you can ask this something and it’ll process some you know data or I’m going to write you know a quick blog for you about this but it it’s speeding up that time and those grants like my assumption is there’s you can apply for as many as you you want and I’m sure that there’s like a win loss rate that you know they’re kind of factoring in hey we win 50% of the grants but that’s really interesting as a as a feature set because that’s how they generate the

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revenue so not only are you uh tool to manage compliance you now become a revenue generating tool definitely and and so you know our goal is to be as impactful with our technology as we can and really help these people that dedicate their lives to doing good really amplify their impact and and focus on their mission and so all of the tools that we’re building are with that in mind right and so money and time are two really big things for all of our customers so we can’t just ignore that especially when we’re asking them to buy

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software from us right we have to I feel like it’s our responsibility to also create paths for Revenue generation for that organization so you know not not only can they afford software to help you know keep their organization smooth but they can continue to run their programs and continue to operate the uh the impact in their Community um not to get off on a tangent here uh although I’m going to get off on a tangent here we’re going we’re going down the path let’s do it we’re heading that way um

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you had mentioned that it’s a really interesting mix of a really interesting blend of AI and uh it reminded me of this uh kind of meme that I saw on LinkedIn and it was an elephant right and there was a little snake behind that elephant and that snake throughout the progression of the pictures was was swallowing the elephant right and the whole caption was companies that build an AI feature and then call themselves an AI company right and so then you the the last graphic was still the size and shape of an elephant but now inside the

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snake’s belly right and and AI was the snake and I think that really illustrates what a lot of companies are doing instead of thinking about the problems that AI can solve for their customers they’re ruling out really quick AI features a lot of times they’re just calling like a chat GPT a uh API or some functionality like that and they’re they’re calling themselves an AI company a lot of times that’s all you need for your AI features right there’s nothing wrong with that but I think when we start thinking about the blend of how AI

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can help solve real world problems in our products and that our customers are experiencing that’s when I think we get that really good balance right we’re not trying to replace Grant Riders we we’re a long long way from AI being able to replace uh something like a grant Rider I’m glad that you’re saying that because I think a lot of times too is there’s a huge assumption in the consumer mind of if AI writes it it’s good I’m going to you know kind of push it out but there is an important part of you know the AI

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is going to hallucinate it might you know say the wrong thing it might pull a fact that’s not totally correct it could be tangent right but having that human that grant writer now be able to do you know 10 a day versus before they were able to do two or three exactly they they increase their productivity they increase their impact and I I really think the biggest part for the software that you have is it’s a revenue generation spot because any company no matter where it happens if if you’re not

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a revenue generator a a lot of times you’re going to get put on that chopping block no matter what absolutely and even even with crms it happens you know at some point you look at it and you go is this the most effective could I go to something cheaper could I use an Excel sheet could you know could they roll back and if you’ve got those features that are compliance helping them at some point they might go H but if they’re like hey we can attribute $200,000 in Grants to this I think it’s really easy

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for those non profits to justify that fee um and you know keep keep using the software absolutely and you know I was speaking yesterday with um a reputable uh nonprofit consultant there in the DC area and that that’s one of the things that that we talked about too because he was like look Zach uh you know this is a really cool product this is a really cool thing but as organizations are kind of starting to trim down as they’re starting to adapt to this you know uh lack of funding or funding drying up

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they’re going to start cutting things and N Out of 10 times they’re going to cut software especially you know we’re and that consultant and that consultant so there there’s a there’s a pro for the consultants and then there’s a pro for you I I think that’s a it’s a it’s a winwin win in every scenario and and I think that’s how you move forward right your your customer or the nonprofit needs to win we need to win and the people we’re partnering with we need to win if everybody takes something tangible out of the relationship that’s

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going to set you up for Success moving forward and it’s going to help us be more you know focused on on our product on our platform and help us really do something good with what we’re building because that’s why we started out to do this related to the DC I don’t want to go too into the weeds of the politics but I’ve also heard from many people that in some ways the government kind of slimming down and changing they’re going to Outsource a lot of stuff to P the public to you know the free market

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and stuff in some ways could that also benefit these nonprofits like if grants are are there you know they become government contracts or something but it it could you know benefit in some ways if it goes that way yeah I mean so it really depends on so there’s a lot of things you can predict in kind of the free market and there’s a lot of uh inability to predict in the free market right um I think I think as Things become more I guess privatized right in the way uh the uh government and various different

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entities operate that probably does create more so one that’ll create more available money right in those spaces um which can translate into purchase services or um uh things like that for nonprofits so for example one of the biggest misconceptions about a nonprofit is that you can’t charge for anything that you do that everything that you do has to be free all the time right and that’s a really big misconception and and a lot of even nonprofit what I thought even a lot of nonprofit leaders um are still kind of under that

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assumption and the challenge with that is you know you are focused on impact and not dollars as a nonprofit but it’s still dollars in and dollars out you still have to pay your bills you still have to generate revenue or generate uh funding for your organization right and so while you’re more impact focused you should still operate like a business but charging for services are ways that organizations can become self-sustainable and not rely as much on their programs now there are going to be instances where um that just doesn’t

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make sense right you could subsidize it or something exactly and so like there’s we have a customer in Phoenix that uh they provide um different services to the homeless population right so uh showers uh haircuts uh food uh things like that so in that PL in that instance it doesn’t make sense to charge for that but what they do is they host a quarterly dinner right and it’s for people you buy a plate it’s kind of Gala style and that’s how they raise money right and so they also have these other

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programs that they do like they make these uh they’re not 3D printed uh but they make these little Trinkets and these these different things that they sell right and and I think they also have some classes like organizational classes that they sell and so they find these other services to to fund uh the actual main impact without being completely reliant on public charity and grants now that’s still a huge portion of their funding right but if for example you know you could lose a grant not because you did something to lose

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that Grant but because it’s not there anymore right and so if you have some other Revenue coming in that you control that you’re generating you can fill in that Gap until you’re able to replace that funding source so in many ways that nonprofit is is a business it’s just it’s got a small fundamental backend difference of like the you know CEO like none of that but it it is like you can have multiple streams of Revenue grants you got to sell some stuff you got to you know generate donations so there’s a

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path and that’s all in in the nonprofits like even for example the selling of stuff like is there any tools inside of nonprofits HQ for that yeah so um not currently um it is on the road map several customers have asked us for it they want to be able to do auction items and things of that nature and so we are building that in in like eshops there’s some like regulatory things to work through to deliver that uh uh functionality which is why uh it’s not there yet but um that is on the road map and and that like

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tooling to support all these different things right we we we’re always going to be evolving we have to evolve with our customers so as they have these needs you know we’re going to have to do the hard work to figure out how to deliver this and get this functionality in a very clean very legal way right to our customers um but yeah like all nonprofits are are businesses right they’re registered as domestic nonprofit corporations in their states right they apply with an employer identification number to become tax exempt with the IRS

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they are businesses they just nobody owns them and nobody there are no shareholders right nobody turns a profit um they still you know CEOs and executive directors still make salaries they still like it’s it’s very much a business I and I think that’s a lot of misunderstanding to the public is is you know I I’ve heard it you know like Goodwill or Salvation Army that they’re they’re terrible because of their ratios and stuff and it’s like yes and no like there’s there’s so many nuances to the nonprofit back in

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now I’m kind of curious on on what other features in there so you know like you talked about eshops like communicating to donors communicating to people that they’ve served is there like tool sets inside of of your product that will let them you kind of do like what I’m thinking is some ways you’re you’re kind of like the Uber for X You’re Building like a HubSpot for nonprofits is is kind of where it sounds like it’s heading in some ways but correct me if I’m wrong no I would absolutely correct you if you

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were wrong Leon um but no so like that’s I think a a HubSpot for nonprofits is a great way to start right it’s a really good start and you know what we’re building is a platform that’s tailored specifically to how nonprofits work and operate that provides all those useful tools um one of the the upcoming features that we’re really excited about this year are um agent AI agent uh workforces right so we’re calling them virtual volunteers and what virtual volunteers uh are meant to do is kind of help out when you’re short on people

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right do you need to send a bunch of follow-ups do you need to uh you know do a bunch of mailings uh do you need to do any type of research on some program or look for for regulatory requirements all these different things that virtual volunteers will be able to take care of tasks that are very definable very repetitive that don’t have too much Nuance from or differentiation between uh you know logical decision- making um things that that that are I guess I said it right very definable and repeatable

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um to help out right where you can save time so your actual people which are becoming harder and harder to find for nonprofits as well your actual people are focused on the really big things that that matter that make that that tangible the relationships the donors theact with the the homeless whatever they’re doing that is interesting because it also goes into that like is the cost like a a human might be a volunteer you know it’s hard to track those down but also a human might be an employee yep that’s going to have a a

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hard cost that’s going to eat into I don’t know if you would call it profit but it would eat into the revenue that then can be used to make an impact you know even though that is part of the impact that AI agent really becomes a an accelerator you could you know in theory like run five of them at a time right and you know have have something that a human would have taken a week done in maybe a day or two and yep and that that that speeds up the impact so not only do you become a revenue generator become a

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compliance Center you got now you’ve got a virtual esque Workforce that is and and that’s what like that’s what we’re trying to create right we called ourselves in the beginning and it was like we had this really ambitious Pie in the Sky idea that we would be everything a nonprofit needs right to operate and that’s how we started building this thing and at first we had like a couple things that worked right and you know in true startup fashion and as we as the platform matures as the you know Market matures as we’re working

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with larger and larger organ organizations we’re really getting a very deep understanding of the problems that our customers are facing and we can use technology to continue adding to the platform to really create that everything uh uh you need to run your nonprofit um and virtual volunteers you know they you don’t have to arrange transportation for them you you don’t have to do background checks on them you don’t got to pay benefits or you know you don’t got to pay a salary and it’s all just there they work 24 hours uh you

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just got to pay a subscription fee that’s all and you know on that on that note too everything that exists on the platform and everything that we’re adding you know we’re the first all-inclusive platform right so when you sign up to nonprofits HQ uh you get access to everything on the platform there’s no additional setup fees no additional subscription charges for the uh virtual volunteers or the granting product or fundraising you get it all and that’s really what we wanted to do an easy way for organizations to become

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more efficient through our technology and focus more on their actual missions in okay so you’ve got it’s an everything platform in in some ways I don’t want to call it an everything platform but it’s an everything for for nonprofit so you’ve got the the CRM for donors you’ve got the compliance CRM for uh whatever you know the the people that you’re serving You’ got a revenue generator you’ve got a virtual somewhat free Workforce you know quote unquote free uh any is that additional cost or is that

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baked into that it’s baked in okay so I I like that because I I have heard and I’ve been working with a lot of nonprofits doing Google grants and helping them build websites the big thing is it’s kind of like those old school softwares where it’s like yes they’re they’re virtual and their softwares but it’s not an easy spin up it’s a oh hey just like a VMware thing oh we got to spin up an instance and we’re going to install it on this address and by the way there’s a $3,500 setup fee and this is your fee every

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month and uh you got to plug in twio to do this and that and all of a sudden your cost goes from $2 to $500 a month to $1,000 a month and then when you get more people they start charging you for contacts like that is a in my mind that’s where nonprofit Tech always kind of confused me because I was like how does a business be a business but also do it an ethical way and you guys are definitely down the path absolutely abely and and that’s why you know we have this General this General perception that if you’re a for-profit

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company building for nonprofits you’re just there to take advantage and when you when you charge a subscription fee and you charge a setup fee for this one of our biggest competitors you buy their product say you buy their CRM right and you want to add fundraising cool you can totally do that so there’s another setup fee and an additional monthly cost right say you want to add uh board of directors management or you want to add these different things like if we’re always nickeling and diming these

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organizations that are already struggling for funding to keep their programs going anyway we are that unethical problem right and so that combined with the fact that my generation doesn’t like paying for fees uh we we we wanted to build a platform that was easy I want to know when I go buy something exactly what I’m going to pay and exactly how I’m going to pay that and so we take those same principles um and ultimately I think you know our customers that’s kind of what they’re looking for is a little more

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transparency in what that pricing looks like too because especially when you’re talking about virtual uh volunteers and and things of that nature with these variable um uh functionalities you might buy the subscription right you might pay for the add-on to set up these things and pay an additional monthly fee but then if you used too much of these volunteer virtual volunteers you’re paying again right and so if our entire business is built on uh putting our customers or put putting these organizations in a position where

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they’re trying to figure out how to pay us instead of put more money into their mission and serve the people that they’re serving that’s a problem for me and I think that’s what’s unethical that that has always been a dilemma that that I see in it and and I think you know one you’re heading it hit hitting it head on you’re you know talking through it you’ve got a good sense of it and then you are doing it an ethical way it’s it’s ethical you said an ethical way right way yeah not not not anti uh

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but it makes you especially on the nonprofit side and I’ve talked to a few nonprofits that have worked with you and using your software it it is almost like a night and day for them a lot of times like they welcome the oh that there’s not an add-on fee that this is there but on your side how how does that look like for your business like is there you know is there pressures do you have investors like I think that’s part of this is I believe that your boots strapped almost through and through with minus some some

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winning funds but I think that’s part of it right absolutely so all of the money yeah so the shareholders are us right and that gives us the ability to really stick to our vision and and really uh uh operate this the way we want we can stay a super lean company right I don’t see I know a lot of startups want to higher higher hire open a bunch of offices right that creates a lot of overhead we have the team in place to support our customers and to ensure that they have a smooth experience on the platform and

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that’s it right we don’t we don’t need all these e extraneous things and all these flashy fancy things to operate and so a lot of the majority of the revenue that we generate from subscriptions goes into the platform into providing these functionalities because let’s be honest especially when you’re working with and hosting AI which is like we host our own models that’s not cheap right that’s not cheap at all but the fact that we are a for-profit company if the need ever arises that we do need to generate or

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ingest a large amount of capital to support our our platform or to bring in new features we can do that right um I think from our perspective in terms of pricing the revenue pricing is always hard right uh and we go back and forth and we play with those different modelings and projections almost daily everyone will scream at us and say raise prices y absolutely that’s going to be the the through and through advice raise your prices absolutely and so many people have told us that too but when when when you’re thinking about it from

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the eyes of your customer right and our case is nonprofits right they need to direct as much money as possible into what they’re doing and we want to be able to help them with that we want to provide the framework and the tooling for them to do that to to generate their revenue to amplify their impact um and that comes with the cost right we have operational costs and so our subscription fees should cover that right we’re not trying to get rich off all of these nonprofits that’s that’s not what we’re doing and so I think the

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fact that we are bootstrapped we want a pitch competition and so there’s some dollars in from that um but they’re not decision-making dollars either right we didn’t give up a board seat we didn’t uh we are still in control of the vision and the direction and as long as that’s the case we’re going to be able to build this in that that ethical easyto use way for our uh for our customers I I love it you you see it too too often just like I’m sure everyone’s seen it on Twitter is the the bench uh accounting from kind

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of falling apart and you know I think that they’re blaming a lot of the VCS I don’t I don’t know if it’s fully true I’m sure there’s a bunch of backend but when you take on money and you take on funding you now have other people to answer to and right now if you can build it into a really great way which you’re doing you get to a point where you’ve got a lot of Leverage youve got a lot of power and say hey this is our Brand This is how we’ve done it and that it’s rare to see those those types of businesses

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out there because the trend is ingest money scale ingest more money scale exit and it seems like you’re trying to build a sustainable bootstrapped company that you know funds you and your team and that’s that is rare exceedingly rare and and I love that more because it it’s it’s a calmer way I think you know you don’t always need all that Capital sometimes you you might and you know if you need to go and adopt you know those those models and roll them out you could do it and and and the benefit the like

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so we had a lot of support from Google startups as well right so we had a large amount of credits applied to our account that helped us pay for the expensive Tech part of developing this and and getting it out right so like you can build businesses and I think more business owners need to think about this um instead of a lot of the programming and a lot of the resources that you have um when you think about starting a business and when you jump into it um and a lot of the ecosystem even here in

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San Antonio kind of kind of does this too you start a business you position it to get to raise Capital you go raise Capital you you uh go a little longer and then you exit right you get those returns and then you exit I think we need to start thinking more about how we create self-sustainable business how we start generating Revenue early on and um because that allows us to do things like reasonable subscription prices and adding all this functionality at no cost you know when or additional cost and

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when we’re in control of that Vision the company operates the way that we intended it to operate right and hopefully we know what we’re doing in this case I think we do yeah um but like you said you know if we anytime you bring on VC dollars your focus kind of shifts from delivering a product that’s meaningful and impactful to your customers to at least split right maybe it doesn’t shift completely but at least splits to also delivering returns for those shareholders that just gave you a few million bucks right often

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High multiples 15 20 x you know definitely and it’s big bets and and be and when you have to do that how do you do that you raise your prices you get super expensive software and that’s how you get you know you get all these setup fees you get all these usage uh Gates and things like that on your large sales team that has to be covered and and all of that now again I’ve got some background knowledge the one thing that we were talking about outside of this podcast was about a Community platform and everything I think that you’ve been

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talking about and describing and and everything I think a core part of it is a community I I’m curious like what does that look like and how does it play into the software absolutely so you know when you introduce any type of software well first off the nonprofit space is a very Community focused um area right it’s a very small area too if you operate or work in one nonprofit you probably know or are good friends with or have worked with others across the country that is how I have fallen into working with so

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many nonprofits the first one went to the second one the second one said hey I’m a board member here it is it is a very small world and a very you know very big big country but it’s very small it’s very very fascinating to me absolutely and because of that you can naturally get uh get people to participate in communitybased things around the software and the tools that they’re using and and so what we’re building is a community platform that uh where all of our customers all of nonprofit leaders can go to get

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resources right um whether that’s uh strategy resources how do you plan for next years what is a uh impact report template things like that ask questions get help whether it’s related to our software or just related to nonprofit operations and what that’s going to do is a couple of things right that’s going to provide a way for our community or our members to to uh find Direct access to people that are experienced and doing exactly what they’re trying to solve alongside them right in in easy way and

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that’s also going to provide us Insight on the day-to-day challenges that our customers are providing so we can start tackling some of these issues with technology as well so for example in this community if we get you know a lot of people that are trying to understand how to um I don’t know how to optimize a fundraising campaign uh maybe we build techn ology that builds optimized campaigns out of the box right just as an example right and so there’s a lot that can be gained on both sides from having a community but more than that it

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when you bring people together you create a purpose right you create a way for their mission to be heard and for them to get help on amplifying that right and so that’s what the nonprofits HQ Community is is all about uh it’s not in production yet uh we’re we’re going to be rolling that out um in the next quar okay it’s 2025 it it’s we’re recording on the 31st so yeah true I don’t know when this will air but so it might be this quarter I I love the community part because a lot of the nonprofit leaders they came from a regular

36:16

background you know some of them were working at and I’ve seen it a few times like they’ve been working at you know water treatment plant and then they were like hey there’s so many issues here I want to go do something on how to treat water and educate everybody and set it’s a nonprofit they don’t know anything about business they don’t know anything about raising money they don’t know anything about these business nonprofit parts and a lot of times it’s really hard to plug into that Community initially right and if

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you can get a jump start to say hey there’s a bunch of like like-minded people and hey this is the problem we got all these donations and you know I need to deliver an impact report what does an impact report look like I you know it what do you even include in an impact report is there some standard structure or what ABS what are what are people often looking for and somebody that’s been doing it for 10 years is going to go hey I got a really great template here you go uh these are the things that I’ve been asked for the most

37:17

if they ask for other stuff you can say hey this is the most impactful and obviously it changes nonprofit nonprofit but having a community I think is one of the most important parts because whenever you’re doing anything whether you’re a business owner a nonprofit leader or building anything in in your life a lot of times it gets very lonely and that’s that’s a hard thing to fight because you need to feel that that kind of community impact and sense and doing good and you know it’s not so much a

37:48

validation point but just somebody kind of saying no you are on the right path like you are doing good beyond the people that you’re impacting because sometimes you just absolutely you get you get doubts I I do all the time of like am I doing the right thing and then you go talk to somebody and they’re like oh yeah and and they they push in the right spot absolutely and that like directly is how we got to where we are when when I first had conversations with with you know friends with uh people

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that I know in like the tech space with uh you know different people about what we were building the most the two most common responses that I got was that will never make money you’re going to be able to build a sustainable business because nonprofits are poor and the second one was well why don’t you just do that for for-profit companies like those are the two biggest like even initially some of the mentor based mentorship based conversations that we had were along those lines too and they’re like oh well

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that’s great but are you going to like pivot to to serve more for-profit companies and we were able to uh take that through the you know the mentorship that we found here at geekdom and in various different other places but we are able to find other people that are building at the similar stage and we’re able to talk through these things and be like oh okay yeah you know check some of the stuff that we’re thinking um but but get that additional yeah they told you you’re crazy too and you’re not going to

39:12

go anywhere so maybe this is normal right and maybe we are crazy I think you have to be at least a little bit crazy to start a company um and like just the amount of risk involved right you have to have a large appetite for risk but other people building in similar places that people said were crazy that you’re never you’re never going to go anywhere that that Community is what helps us all be crazy together while we’re building our companies right and that’s no different for like you were saying the

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nonprofit space right all these people are are are making positive change in their communities but they they still need you know you still got to take care of of the people that are doing it too those change makers they need support they need they need help from others and and Community is a really good way to do that yes yes and really a nonprofit even the volunteers are they see a problem and they address it it it’s it’s just like if you see trash outside your neighborhood sooner or later it’s like

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hey we’re we’re getting together a group and that group turns into something bigger that turns into a nonprofit and then the people are like how do we grow this like we need like and talking through those things ask question for you of of this and it’s a little bit more of timely question it is December 31st December 31st I almost said January 31st it’s December 31st we’re heading into 2025 what well two parts this question one one is it’s never just a last question no no it’s never just a last

40:31

question we we could talk for hours I’m sure y we of do yes the first the first part of the question is what does 2025 look for nonprofits HQ and then I I’ll follow up on that yeah so I mean we’re going to continue to to to move full steam ahead right uh we’re identifying problems we’re understanding problems we’re talking with our customers with organizations that aren’t our customers understand what these problems are and using technology to build it so that looks like you know tangibly that’s

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introduction of a large amount of features uh towards the end of q1 we’re having a large like product kickoff announcement um type of event and that kind of sets the tone for it we’re excited for um you know we’re excited for the road map and for the functionality that we’re going to drive and we’re excited to can expand our Partnerships with various different consultants and funders in the nonprofit space amazing now the second part of the question is 2025 for you any any Sage advice you want to give to to folks

41:35

wanting to build or starting to build or or doing anything whether it’s startup or nonprofit definitely so I think um a lot of what I hear so I do a lot of mentorship um just in general for startups and for um organizations H and so what I hear most as a blocker for getting started is I don’t have people I don’t have money right that’s what I hear and yes I understand that things need money sometimes to to go but most people’s idea of what an organization is or what a a startup is is a little skewed because of you know the shark

42:12

tanks and the YC’s and and all of these things you don’t need $20 million to build a company um and so I think the two biggest pieces of advice that I regularly hand out and that I would Echo here again today is one get just get started right do something and get it in front of customers even if it’s ugly you know the first MVP and I don’t know if I ever showed you those those screenshots or I think we have a couple video walkthroughs but the first MVP of our product now my entire background has

42:39

been in software engineering mostly on the back end right and so I designed our UI and ux for the initial uh uh platform and you know we got it out in front of customers super early um to get their feedback so we knew that everything we were building actually made s and some of the uh most common feedback was wow this is a really cool idea I think we could use it but it’s really ugly and it’s really hard to use so make it less ugly and make it easier to use and we were like well damn we thought it was uh

43:14

and then so we brought in people or we we worked with people that had those skill sets but my point is RIS cost me a few beers right a friend that is a uiux designer designed them while we were having some beers and I picked up the check right and so like you don’t need to go hire a large engineering team you don’t need to go hire a big design company to build especially an MVP you know so every quarter I host this MVP in a day workshop where we bring in uh found startup Founders or nonprofit leaders that are non-technical and we

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teach them how to use tools to build their mobile apps or build their applications you don’t have to hire a bunch of super expensive people I’m a recovering software engineer I know how expensive we are and it’s unnecessary for early stage startup and for for early organizations so get something out there get it in front of customers or in front of your um benefactors if you’re a nonprofit as quickly as possible and get early feedback but also don’t think that your goal is Raising funding or securing

44:16

a big Grant right because you have to sustain yourself whether it’s a company or an organization a nonprofit you have to sustain yourself beyond that round of funding and a lot of people their goal becomes that first Che in and then you hit that goal and you’re like oh okay well now what do we do uh I guess we’ll we’ll we’ll keep going and we’ll spend this money right but you your goal that first checkin or whether it’s revenue or whether it’s investment or whether it’s a grand that first check in is a tool to

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get you where you want to go right how many people do you want to impact in your first year how many customers do you want to have whatever those metrics are that’s your goal and that’s what you should be fighting for everything else needs to fall in line and and you know the the three things that I always say and uh my co-founder and I Alberto and you know our team we kind of go back and forth on this a lot because this is one place where I don’t budge every single thing that we need to do needs to uh

45:12

move our people forward our company forward or our products forward or all of them right if it doesn’t fall into one of those categories we don’t need to be doing it at least not right now maybe in the future we will um but we don’t need to be doing that right now and I think if you approach everything with that kind of mindset you’re going to always be focused on the right things and moving in the direction that your organization or your company need to uh needs to move in everything said 100%

45:38

agree with the small add-on is getting started could be as simple as a landing page and an email list y it doesn’t even have to progress that far initially if you can get 10 15 people and start interviewing them I think the one thing through this whole interview that I have heard from you and that I’ve pulled out for any anybody listening is the you talking to customers that is that is the biggest part and I think if you start building very easy to get get to talking to customers with that list and and

46:09

definitely and and that also shows like that gives you some early validation on your IDE or what you’re doing uh idea or what you’re doing as well I think I said IDE um and uh but but yeah so like I If you know I had an idea of what I wanted our platform to be when we first started this company it’s not anything like what that idea was right and if I would have stuck with that without talking to customers and then writing code writing code while talking to customers I would have this really cool product that I

46:39

really like and I would be my customer right I would be the person that I was serving so that goes nowhere and so that’s like that’s a really good point talk to customers and it is as simple as a landing page I know when we first put our our very first marketing website up uh we had a little landing page and it had a form that initially didn’t work and we we were trying to figure out why we uh why we weren’t getting people signing up for our list right and it’s because the form just didn’t submit uh

47:05

we found out but the the the point is that little simple thing right once we fixed the form that’s how we got in contact outside of the people you know directly through our Network that’s how we started reaching out to and and connecting with people in the space whether they’re a volunteer or an executive director or a CEO of a nonprofit right because our our platform it’s meant to make the organization more efficient but it’s not just that executive director or that CEO that’s using it right volunteers use it to find

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and sign up and confirmed for shifts right donors use it to manage year in tax forms and receipts for their donations right so you can’t just talk to one type of group that you want to serve you got to make sure that you understand what they’re looking for and what they need all around and then you know what that did for us it was slower to build uh but we had customers when we launched that’s what that that’s an important part too yeah well I really appreciate you coming in for everybody listening I’ll put the the link to

48:01

nonprofits HQ um I’ll you know link your LinkedIn and put your information uh really appreciate everybody listening and again thank you for coming on the Boost absolutely the Boost is super cool and I’m always eager to jump on and have conversations with you Leon