Submission

JoeVolunteer Keeping Austin Weird and Much Kinder!

JoeVolunteer helps humans spread kindness to other humans (and sometimes animals and the environment)--through our ingenious mobile app!

Technology
Education
Health

JoeVolunteer is making an impact by helping all Austin folks know exactly when and where to help their fellow humans and furry friends. The volunteer opportunities are lined up on your phone according to location, time, and preference to help with others.

We are making it nearly frictionless to help with technology--by assisting and helping coders and hackers volunteer to help the community through ATX Hack for Change; or teaching girls to get involved in learning tech through ChickTech...these places need more volunteers (we call them Joes), and our technology can help make that happen.

We can also help with the Education field by helping to get people involved with organizations like Junior Achievers, where our Joes can help teach financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurial skills to kids from kindergarten through 12th grade. Or working with the Inside Books Project, which gets books for people trying to improve themselves in prison.

We help in the Health field through providing our Joes to Children's Hospitals, or through organizations such as No One Dies Alone, Austin. We can also help with the homeless population, giving access to clean water, food, and dignified living through groups like Caritas, or Front Steps organization.

We are able to help in all of the above fields, and can also lend support and volunteers to places that help in clean energy and public safety, as well. This is the "one app to bind them," methodology of increasing volunteerism, notification technology that will alert volunteers to when and where they can help and to promote human kindness, in general. This will make Austin (and other areas soon thereafter) a much kinder place to live.

Here is the Genesis of the JoeVolunteer Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DREK0G5tfKM

Watch JoeVolunteer featured in the News at: http://www.kcentv.com/news/heart-of-central-texas-joe-volunteer-redefining-humanitarian-work/254923411#.VxU5aqraIMM.twitter

Right now, there's a void of knowing where and how to help the people and places that need it. We have surveyed many adults, and the top two reasons that people don't volunteer are (in order): 1) The idea doesn't occur to them on its own, out of the blue, and 2) They don't know where to start when they actually want to volunteer.

The JoeVolunteer App is the perfect solution to that, as it will push-notify its users when a new, imminent volunteer opportunity that matches their interest becomes available (we'll limit it to 3 notifications a week initially so we don't make people angry at our attempted kindness ;0); and it will show ALL of the places nearby the Joe (User/Volunteer) that need their help using our filter for location services, timeliness, and preferences (Poor/Homeless, Sick/Elderly, Youth/Teems, Animals, and Community).

We use an API from Volunteer Match to populate our app with (currently) 459 volunteer opportunities in Austin alone; and we're creating an input for our Joes to input opportunities personally, as well. As an example, a REAL TIME coat or water drive could be organized nearly instantaneously through our app to deliver materials needed to the 7th Street Front Steps on a particularly cold or hot day.

There hasn't been an app that provides this type of information and technology. The JoeVolunteer App is next generation because it makes helping others frictionless. It makes spreading kindness as easy as opening an app, pressing, "I Volunteer!" and showing up to aid the people that really need it.

I am Chip Franks, entrepreneur and humanitarian. I've successfully built and run The Real Estate MarketPlace, a sales and property management company for the past 20 years; which I recently sold in March of this year to follow the Hero's Journey and make something that will IMPACT THE WORLD--JoeVolunteer. I am the self-titled Chief Joe and Bottle Washer, as if it NEEDS to get done, I'm all over it. Find Chip on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chip-franks-b732b81b/ and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/chip.franks

Joe Polish is my partner in this endeavor. He is the founder of Genius Network, the world's highest level marketing mastermind. He is the mouthpiece and megaphone for what we are doing, and knows really, really cool people (you would know them). Aside from that, he is a literal marketing genius. He has been titled, by me as the Grand Pooh-bah Joe. You can find out more about him by watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgGxHgthrYA and his website at www.JoePolish.com.

Our entire Virtual Assistant team at Leverage (www.GetLeverage.com); they provide our on-demand virtual services and have expertise in literally EVERYTHING: they have provided Coders and Programmers for us, designers, videos and editing, research, fact-finding, and best practices. They also have experts in app promotion, Facebook advertising, website development, travel arrangements, and the like. Joe and my mutual friend Ari Meisel owns the company, and they are spectacular. I consider them my team, and use them literally every day. You can find out more about these superstars and more of their superpowers at www.GetLeverage.com.

The actual technology for JoeVolunteer will be available to everyone with a smart phone; both Apple and Android. It's intuitive and easy-to-use. There is no learning curve for it, it's ready to be used by most everyone.

The App provides a direct benefit to the technologically under-served by helping to get people that can help the poor, the sick, the homeless, elderly, and children. There will be food distributed, drinks given out, shelter provided, courses being taught, cleaning being done, animals being cared for all through this glorious technology that will literally benefit everyone.

$4,000 approx to complete the Time, Location, and Preference filter with Swift programmers on the iOS to our functional app.

$1,500 approx to help farm out the current Volunteer Match API hosted in our website to automatically send out the info to those that have the Mobile App.

$2,500 for the "Push Notification" feature for alerting all of our Joes of opportunities that fit their preferences and gently and humorously remind them to help their fellow humans (and furry friends).

$5000 to take current wireframes, design, and functionality and to copy it to the Android Platform
The remainder will be used to promote, push, and champion the App through local media, social media, and a HERO X contest of "Getting the Word Out" for the app--for the person/team/organization that can verify the most app signups.

On all of these, we have ready, willing, and able programmers for a special rate of $30/hr due to the social impact of our App.

JoeVolunteer Pitch to Tarmac TX.pdf