{"id":48104,"date":"2020-12-09T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/life\/local-fundraisers-take-on-new-meaning-during-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2020-12-09T05:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T13:30:00","slug":"local-fundraisers-take-on-new-meaning-during-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/life\/local-fundraisers-take-on-new-meaning-during-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Local fundraisers take on new meaning during pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t
In early September, tragedy struck Tukwila resident Taheem Jones and his family in an already difficult year when a two-alarm fire destroyed their apartment building and all their belongings.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
With his family out of town, Jones was the one to find the apartment on fire as a result of a different unit in the building. He couldn’t go inside, and by the next day, he discovered it was completely burnt down.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I was in shock. We didn’t know what to do,” Jones said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Jones has been a coach at Issaquah’s Skyline High School for three years, and has been entrenched in their basketball programs for almost eight years. He reached out to a parent he had seen the night of the fire and told her about what happened. Then she and two other parents — Paige Haapala, Sarah Edwards and Jeannette Gorman — took matters into their own hands to create a GoFundMe account to support his family in some small way after losing everything.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The results were more than anyone expected. The fundraising link was shared throughout the community and exceeded the $10,000 goal, then exceeded the second goal of $15,000, ultimately raising $22,655.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
With that money, Jones and his family got a new apartment, they have covered rent for the next year. People have donated furniture and even helped garner business for Jones’ hardwood flooring business, which has been struggling during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Everyone I’ve shown love to in the past years came out to help and keep me afloat as much as they could,” Jones said. “It felt like we had a home to go to and start over with.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The power of crowdfunding<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Families, businesses and organizations around the world are being devastated during the COVID-19 pandemic in a variety of ways, including financially. But with these hardships have also come stories of the strength and power of community crowdfunding in our own backyards.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Former Major League Baseball player Gerald Smiley used a GoFundMe in 2017 to raise money to save his alma mater high school, but he had concerns with the fees that the website took from the fundraiser. He also didn’t like the lack of process involved to validate where funds for a campaign will go.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Smiley said he then got the idea from a dream in March 2018 to start his own fundraising website, Chip-in. He pitched the idea for a local, transparent fundraising platform with Redmond startup studio Doxxa<\/a> and was able to start its first fundraiser in July 2020, which buys laptops for students in Federal Way Public Schools, as previously reported in Federal Way Mirror.<\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Since the start of that fundraiser, the Federal Way school district has received almost $45,000.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Smiley is a board commissioner for Seattle Housing Authority, and said that experience has helped shape what he determined people want to see from their donations.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “People don’t always get to see the money. Our taxes get raised, but most don’t really know where it goes,” Smiley said. “So by creating a platform that we can all use to stick together and be transparent with our funds, we say, ‘This is our community, I can give a little to help these things happen.’”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Smiley said they have been pushing the Chip-in platform with an aggressive grassroots campaign in Washington state, pitching the ideas that all money from a fundraiser is given to the organizers, and that just a little donation from a large community can make a significant difference in people’s lives. The platform also uses incentives including user profiles and live fundraising events to encourage lots of people to offer a little.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t One example Smiley gave was a Seahawks-themed fundraiser. Participants could pledge $1 to a community fundraiser for every touchdown. Donors are also incentivized with prizes and discounts from participating local business partners, he said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t But launching Chip-in in 2020 has created a drastic change to this story. Community members have been rallying around Chip-in fundraisers even without incentives, Smiley said, as people want to support one another.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “Everything we’re doing right now is just speaking to what’s going on in our world,” Smiley said. “It’s really powerful to see the community come together. It’s a miracle. It proves if you just chip in a little bit here or there, whenever you can, you can change, not just Washington, our whole world.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t A friend of Smiley, Tony Hayes, is a community activist who ultimately exceeded his goal for funding meals using a Chip-in fundraiser.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t