Who Is Springboard Commerce?
The Quick Answer:
We are a crowd-funded, donation-based charity web agency established with the mission to help small businesses (especially small restaurants, bakeries, and others that rely heavily on foot-traffic) who are struggling with a technology gap that was either exposed by, or exacerbated by the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic and it's after-effects on the economy. These small businesses such as small restaurants, bakeries, and other small shops tend to rely heavily on foot-traffic.
A More Detailed Description
At the core of our mission is a focus on tearing down a barrier to the entry, growth, and success of small, bootstrapped, mom and pop style startups and small businesses by building a solution that quickly and effectively allows these startups and small businesses who didn't previously have a website (or have one but can't take orders on it) get a website built FREE OF UP-FRONT COSTS.
Removing this barrier and filling the technology gap helps make these small businesses more flexible and responsive to future challenges. This in turn helps them become more profitable - springboarding them to higher levels of growth than could otherwise be acheived; and in many cases, saving these small businesses from closure.
We are able to achieve our goals by combining funding from both individual donors as well as sponsorships from larger businesses across all industries and sectors who receive a benefits package in return for their sponsorship, then leveraging proprietary solutions paired exclusively with the power and flexibility of the Shopify platform - all driven by the will of our small, and incredibly dedicated team.
If a lot of people are willing to lend a hand with a small donation, we can make a giant difference in the lives of many small business owners, their families, and their employees.
A Program Use-Case (or Three)
A Local Restaurant
The program goal is to help these small businesses diversify their order sources by allowing people to easily order online with the added bonus of reaching new audiences who might otherwise not know about them.
Example 1)
Take "Small Family Restaurant A" for instance who has a single location and no website. Their order and sales stream is limited to mostly those customers who live in the immediate area (say within a few miles). They have no website to increase online visibility, nor to take orders for customer pick-up or delivery.
Example 2)
Alternatively, "Small Trendy Restaurant X" has a bit larger of a following from customers who live further away. They also have a website, but can't take orders from it.
Example 3)
Lastly, "Small Local Chain Y" has a few locations spread out across a few local cities / towns. They have a website, and it does take orders for carry-out, but not delivery. Their site also charges a "convenience" fee to customers for the ability to order online. Bleh...for making the customer pay extra for "convenience".
who have their own sites can help keep the cost of ordering lower for their customers by removing the premiums attached to ordering with delivery services such as GrubHub and DoorDash, as well as removing unnecessary "convenience fees" if a restaurant does have ordering online processed by another service.
Additionally, there's a whole demographic of people out there who refuse to call in to a restaurant to order, and a whole other demographic out there who refuse to pay those premiums to use delivery services like GrubHub, Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. Our goal is to help small restaurants reach those people and keep costs lower for both customers and restaurants.
We're building the COVID-19 Restaurant Recovery Program as a way to help the struggling restaurant industry not only survive, but begin to recover from economic impacts from customers self-isolating or government imposed lockdowns that have prevented restaurants from allowing inside dining or otherwise operating as safely and closely to full-capacity as possible.
While we hope to receive small-dollar donations from a large number of people, we will also soon be offering a corporate sponsorship package for businesses looking to also lend a helping hand. Business sponsorships will come with blog articles containing backlinks to your business website.