I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.
Mother Teresa
Ideally we'd like to ensure our communities are supported on a long-term and reliable basis through the offer of Torch free to any volunteer centre (VC) in the country that wants to work with us.
This would remove one of the burdens from the VC having to source their own funding (which so often is not allowed to be used for operational costs), and frees them up to get on with the great work they are doing with real people.
However that means we need to find a few Herculean supporters that can underwrite the costs involved in offering the service into the future (because trying to operate on an oily rag only goes so far when there are external infrastructure needs, as well as putting food on the proverbial table).
What are these tangible components, you ask?
- A place to host each volunteer centre's instance of Torch
- The domain name for each website
- Secure Socket Layers (SSL) certificate
- Design of each website to reflect the VC's brand and community
- Subscriptions to Send Grid for email delivery
- Subscription to Plausible for statistic feedback and monitoring of each website
- Website administration (alongside each VC)
- Ongoing software development
- Future feature service fees (ie SMS)
If you are a person or business whose heart is also for strengthening our communities, and who operates with integrity; we'd appreciate your financial support.
What might we be able to offer in return?
Every person who applies to volunteer, coordinates an organisation, or manages applications of both has an online dashboard they can log in to. In the instance of the VC that this project started for, that is 3800 people. So your logo could get exposure in the footer of every dashboard page. We can also provide you with digital graphics so you can add your support of Torch to your website and social media channels.
Or perhaps you know of someone just waiting for an opportunity like this, and could pass the invitation along to them?
We would also value a mentor that could guide us on how to decide on a bona fide structure whether that is a registered business or charity, or something else so that those who donate are not disadvantaged for their contribution. As well as someone to bounce ideas off as we set to scale from one to many.
Thank you,