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Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Carl Nassib dreamed of a unique form of social media app for years — one which celebrates positivity and neighborhood.
With Rayze, a brand new app that hyperlinks individuals to one another and to nonprofits that enchantment to their pursuits or are based mostly the place they reside, he could have created it.
Now, it’s only a matter of getting individuals and nonprofits to make use of it. “After we scale, if we’re hanging round on a Saturday afternoon and we’ve acquired time to kill, we will get on our telephones and inside 10 seconds, we will discover one thing in our neighborhood to do to offer again,” Nassib stated. “There’s gonna be alternatives galore.”
And after an funding of Collection A funding and incubation help from Monetary Finesse Ventures introduced Monday, Rayze will launch applications so as to add customers and nonprofits. Particulars of the funding weren’t launched, although Monetary Finesse Ventures stated their typical funding ranges from $500,0000 to $1.5 million for a minority stake.
Liz Davidson, Monetary Finesse Ventures CEO and founder, stated Rayze ticked all of the bins the enterprise arm of her agency was on the lookout for in an funding — constructive social affect, robust enterprise mannequin and a CEO who can encourage individuals to work collectively.
“Carl is a power of nature,” Davidson stated. “It’s gonna be actually laborious truthfully to search out different investments that may match this.”
Nassib, who made headlines final 12 months when he turned the first lively NFL participant to come back out as homosexual, stated the thought for Rayze has been with him since he volunteered with the Buccaneers at a juvenile delinquent middle in Tampa in 2018.
“We visited with youngsters who had been as younger as 13 or 14 years previous who had been in jail cells — quite a lot of them had been there as a result of they had been simply operating away from a violent dwelling setting,” he stated. “These youngsters had been in actually, actually determined want and probably the most transferring half about it was they had been half a mile from the place we went to work daily,” he added. “And none of us knew they had been there.”
Although many nonprofits say they’re having bother discovering sufficient volunteers, Nassib says it’s due to an absence of connection, not an absence of compassion.
“All people needs to offer again,” he stated. “It’s just a bit tough proper now, however we’re going to make it as environment friendly as potential.”
Nassib hopes to assist smaller nonprofits by providing them a strategy to obtain donations via Rayze, in order that they don’t must construct their very own on-line assortment websites. He stated a part of the funding from Monetary Finesse Ventures would permit Rayze to match a volunteer’s abilities with a nonprofit’s wants so as to tackle a scarcity of volunteers who might help nonprofits with expertise or advertising.
Social media platforms are going via a tough patch, between Elon Musk’s struggles with Twitter and Fb mum or dad firm Meta shedding 11,000 staff. Nonetheless, Nassib and his backers suppose they’ll discover an viewers.
Rayze’s new funding will help a collection of latest, in-person occasions, referred to as “SatuRayze,” the place individuals can meet nonprofit representatives in their very own communities.
“I need to get individuals out and giving again to their communities — making it a preferred factor to do,” Nassib stated. “We actually simply need to encourage grassroots actions. And we need to make it cultural, the place it’s a part of society to stand up and do one thing.”
The primary SatuRayze might be Thursday in New York Metropolis’s McCarren Park, that includes nonprofits that embrace the New York Police Division Basis, The Trevor Challenge, which supplies suicide prevention and psychological well being providers for LGBTQ youth, and Sow Good Now, which helps philanthropic athletes.
Kevin Wong, The Trevor Challenge’s vp of communications, stated the group was grateful for Nassib’s help. “Along with inspiring so many younger individuals to reside their fact, he additionally conjures up adults to just accept and help the LGBTQ individuals of their lives,” stated Wong, including that analysis exhibits neighborhood interplay at occasions like SatuRayze is vital. “Acceptance from not less than one grownup can scale back the chance of LGBTQ youth making an attempt suicide by 40%.”
Nassib believes Rayze could make a distinction to communities of all types.
“My imaginative and prescient is simply getting individuals up out of their homes and concerned,” he stated. “It’s simply probably the most rewarding factor ever — being of service to different individuals. It offers you a way of accomplishment, of self-worth, versus social media all day, which is simply so crippling to your vanity and self-image. So we’re combatting all these negatives of social media by getting individuals out of their homes and giving again. It’s enjoyable.”
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Related Press protection of philanthropy and nonprofits receives help via the AP’s collaboration with The Dialog US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely accountable for this content material. For all of AP’s philanthropy protection, go to https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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