CandidWorks

Welcome to CandidWorks

Creating financial growth through giving.

CandidWorks is an innovative web and mobile platform that enables benefactors to connect with like-minded students and graduates, and donate directly to their student loan debt in exchange for their volunteer service to a social or environmental cause of a similar interest.

OUR SITE

My Role: Founder, Business Strategy, UX/UI design, WIRE-FRAMe, financial planning

OUR STORY

As an ambitious student from a rural community, I was all but disheartened when I couldn't finance my college due to the 2009 sub-prime mortgage crisis. Returning from VCU my freshman year, I immediately began work to repay my student debt. Only a year later, news broke on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. As an able bodied construction worker at the time, I felt compelled to do my part in the clean-up.

After being approved for time-off and carefully planning a budget for food, gas, and lodging; however, I realized it wasn't my living expenses, but only my student debt that would hold me back from providing relief on the Coast. Watching as thousands of paid temp workers were shipped from across the US to facilitate the clean-up - and finding that the financial burden of my education had not only impacted my ability to help myself, but also the social and environmental causes I cared about - I set my mind on how to reverse the impact that student loan debt has on our ability to provide for ourselves and others. From the Deepwater Horizon disaster to the beginning of the US student loan debt crisis, arose the idea for CandidWorks - an innovative program that enables students and graduates the freedom to source funding directly to their student debt in order to provide volunteer service to the social and environmental causes that impact us all.

Through nearly a decade of hard-work, I made my way back to college in 2017, and completed a Bachelor of Science, Baccalaureate, and a Master's in Product Innovation. In this time, I was fortunate to partner with the VCU da Vinci Center, as well as the Unstuck Labs Business Accelerator in Rosslyn, VA to develop our MVP. This year I'm proud to say that we have successfully launched CandidWorks, and passed the mission on to other ambitious students to manage and learn from.

HOW IT WORKS

Benefactor

Identifies a student or social / environmental cause of interest, and donates through portal.

Sends funds directly to students loan debt in exchange for their agreement to volunteer

Student

Provides skilled volunteer work for cause, and provides video & photo updates along the way

Community

Receives skilled, empathetic support, and returns confirmation to benefactor

CURRENT LANDSCAPE

At $1.5T and growing, national student loan debt is the second highest debt group in existence today. Impacting 45M Americans and trailing only our total US mortgage debt, it would take an astronomical amount of funds, or a new way of processing student debt to alleviate the burden it places on our nations young adults. At $410B annually, US charitable contributions are large enough to not only reduce the $70B growth in our national student debt each year, but also the resulting 2% decrease in national GDP this is expected to make over the next decade.

problem

Student loan default rates stand at ~11%, and are among the leading reason 250K students abandon their pursuit of higher education each year. In addition, 36.9% of charitable contributions are currently lost to overhead, and benefactors often receive little confirmation of how donations are spent. This leads to a lack of trust in giving, and decreases aid provided to vital areas of need.

INSIGHT

Students and graduates are passionate about supporting the same social and environmental causes as our current charities and non-profits; however, contributing funds could increase debt, and volunteering could take time away from their extra career efforts. They also can’t start asking for donations toward their education without diverting money from the causes they care about. What they would be willing to do; however, is contribute more time volunteering if they weren’t so burdened by their debt.

OPPORTUNITY

Create a fin-tech service that enables benefactors to connect with like-minded students and graduates, and donate directly to their student loan debt in exchange for their volunteer service to a social or environmental cause of a similar interest. In doing so, benefactors can double the altruistic value of their contributions by helping the same social and environmental causes they care about, while reducing national student loan debt at the same time. In essence, up-cycling the value of the dollar.

Competitive Analysis

The first step to founding CandidWorks was to evaluate the existing solutions on the market. Where we found several initiatives such as the AmeriCorps, Federal Perkins Loans, PeaceCorps, HRSA, and PSLF - most were only applicable to individuals who met specific educational or career criteria - and none shared the same business model as CandidWorks. The most similar competitor we found; however, was the Shared Harvest Fund [SHF]. The SHF enables students and graduates to provide volunteer work in exchange for student loan repayment; however, generates revenue by selling $1-2K memberships to charities, $20 memberships to students, and advertisements ranging from $250-3K. This makes them a short head company - appealing only to small populations at higher costs. Directly managing their volunteer efforts also reduces overhead efficiency, and limits their geographic reach to areas where they've partnered with charities/non-profits. In addition, regional opportunities aren't visible to the public until paying for a membership.

Market Discovery

To begin market validation, we started with quantitative research. This provided valuable in discrediting our early assumptions that major benefactors such as the 'Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation' were primary sources of donations in the US. In doing so, we found ~70% of all US donations actually came from private individuals, rather than tax-deductible corporations.

With these insights in mind, we re-positioned our discovery efforts to focus on the most important benefactors - people like you and me. With a more refined target, we conducted a double blind survey of over 100 individuals with and without student debt. This revealed 65% of all student borrowers would spend significantly more time volunteering for even minor debt relief, and 84% of all benefactors would contribute more if they were able to better see their funds put to action.

Consumer Insights

After identifying an unmet need in the market, we conducted a broad range of in-person interviews with students/graduates, corporate and private benefactors, and existing charities/non-profits to get to know them better. Among the most unique insights came from both corporate benefactors, and large-scale charities and non-profits.

Benefaction

Though private benefactors continue to remain our primary target market - when interviewing corporate benefactors, we were surprised to find a relatively even split among those who were primarily motivated by tax-incentives and those motivated by the impact they made. With this insight, we segmented our corporate benefactors into two groups: 1., impact benefactors motivated by better controlling their donations, and 2., reciprocal benefactors primarily motivated by tax-relief. With changing tax-law in mind, we narrowed our early stage target market to impact benefactors, and set our long term goals on developing a donor advised fund where reciprocal benefactors could make large-scale, tax-deductible donations that would be managed by us. Taking this approach would also allow us to better capitalize on the long-tail of the market - processing larger quantities of transactions at a low rate - not captured by the competition.

Volunteerism

Among the most surprising of all insights came from interviewing veterans of the charity / non-profit sector. Under the assumption that many would be opposed to the idea (as it may encroach on their funding), we were surprised to find many were very supportive. With this insight, however, came another: nearly all of the charities / non-profits we talked to had a different reason to embrace the idea, but advised to keep our distance from formal contracts with them due to the red-tape that would all but kill our mission of reducing overhead. Among the top reasons they embraced the idea was the ability to recruit younger volunteers over retirees. In addition, conducting interviews with smaller scale volunteer efforts revealed a need for non-formal relationships on a case-by-case basis. With this insight, we set our sights on eliminating our responsibility for mitigating volunteer efforts for large scale organizations, and making a P2P network

Unique Value Proposition

After confirming an unmet need in the market, we narrowed our objective to creating a model that reduces overhead costs, provides validation to benefactors, and allows all individuals to freely participate. With this, we created the following three value propositions:

overhead

By creating a digital platform that allows users to create and manage their own campaigns, we are able to reduce our operating cost to 5%. This reduces the average overhead of the traditional charity by 31.6%, all while doubling the impact of every dollar by helping support an individuals education, and the social / environmental causes a benefactor cares about at the same time.

100% TRANSPARENcy

When completing a volunteer project, students and graduates check-in by taking a brief video of themselves beginning, and ending their service, then provide photo and video updates along the way. This enables the benefactor to better see their contributions put into action, and better connects them to the causes they care about while re-instilling their trust in giving!

GREATER CONTROL

Allowing all users to easily access, and contribute to existing campaigns avoids taking the "middle-man" role by mitigating who - and for what purpose donations are spent. This allows each user to better control their own interests by creating individual campaigns, publicly crowd-sourcing funding, and contributing funds to users on a transactional basis without sign-up fees.

TRANSACTION MODEL

Benefactor VALUE

For private benefactors, this increases the control and visibility of how their donations are put to use, while creating a personal connection to their impact. For corporate benefactors, this provides the opportunity to gain greater brand recognition and loyalty from their donations. In advertising, the strongest brands are those that connect with their market on deep, personal level. By contributing to a social or environmental cause through funding student debt, they not only make a lasting impression on the student or graduate they support, but also the network of connections they share with.

CIVIC VALUE

By enabling all users to create and manage their own campaigns, volunteer organizers can better generate awareness and support for their areas of need. For established organizations, this brings highly skilled, empathetic, and motivated support directly to their front lines. For small-scale efforts, this similarly helps solicit quality support for projects which may not have the capability to budget full-time work or contract services for.

STUDENT VALUE

For students and graduates, this provides the ability to gain intrinsic fulfillment by contributing to their communities without the burden of student loan debt holding them back. In addition, this provides students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in social and environmental sectors they may have otherwise not been exposed to, and provides graduates the ability to source financial support for debt that may have been otherwise unmanagable through refinancing, or alternative options such as abandonment or bankruptcy

BRASS TAX - FINANCIAL MECHANICS

MARKET SIZE

MARKET CAPTURE

YEARLY REVENUE

Currently operating at only 5% overhead, we are able to sustain our MVP with only $1,200 in donations to user loan debt each month. While this is relatively conservative in terms of profit, it's also closely aligned with other crowd funding sites such as GoFundMe, Uber, and Airbnb. In addition, expanding to capture only 1% of the total charitable market in the US would result in $205M in profit, while reducing national debt by $4.1B. Learn more about our financial planning below!

QUANTIFYING THE MISSION

Contributions are currently made on a case-by-case basis as a design consideration for the future creation of a deductible model; however, we created a ‘Suggested Contribution Value’ to assess the impact that could be made using a standardized rate. To do so, we combed the IRS’s value of one hour of volunteer time [$25.43], with the average 36.9% of contributions lost to overhead through the traditional charity, and arrived at $34.81 per hour. At this rate, the average user could reduce their $280 monthly loan payment to $15.42 by providing 2 hours of volunteer service a week – or a total of 8 hours each month. In addition, volunteering at this rate over the average 4-years spent in college would not only alleviate 33% of a user’s loan debt before graduation, but also reduce the duration of loan repayment by 9 years based on the reduced interest accrued in deferment.

From Concept to Business

In late 2019, we were awarded seed funding by the VCU da Vinci Center to continue development of CandidWorks, as well as a scholarship to begin developing an MVP through the UnStuck Labs Business Accelerator in Alexandria, VA. Through countless commutes to Northern Virginia and remote work sessions, we worked together to determine a transaction and brand strategy for the company (previously named ChariTeam), and successfully launched our MVP in Q1 of 2020.

After completing our MVP, we were gifted funds from an anonymous benefactor (surprisingly, - one who had never experienced student loan debt) to begin repaying the monthly debt of four individuals for pilot testing our project. Among the four individuals selected for our pilot were an elementary school principal, a teacher, an instructor of the blind, and a professional recruiting agent. Together, this team has pledged a monthly 32 hours (8 hours each) into their communities. To learn more, read their profiles below:

Carrie, EeD

COREY, BS

CHRIS, MS

Johnny, bS

Carrie is the principal of a rural elementary school, and Doctorate of Education. As a mother of two, she's found it increasingly difficult to balance the responsibility to her loan debt with after school activities, and recently began working nights a pizza restaurant. With relief; however, she's able to contribute an extra 8 hours to her community a month.

Corey is a Bachelor of Science, and works in an under-privileged school system. Corey is well respected by his community and has devoted volunteer time to the “Call Me Mister” program for several years. Due to his student loan debt, he's found it difficult to continue volunteering without relief, and has recently began contemplating his work.

Chris has a Master’s in Special Education, and works as an instructor of the visually impaired / blind. As a skilled carpenter, he frequently volunteers for projects that help the disabled and elderly. Due to his student loan debt; he recently began replacing his volunteer time for contracting, though he seeks to provide his time to Habitat for Humanity.

Johnny has a Bachelor of Science and works at a large IT staffing firm. Johnny worked his way up to his position, and understands the hardships this creates for others. Due to his student debt; however, he has found it difficult to provide after-hours career assistance and rehabilitation services to the homeless and others in need.

AGILE Development

After completion of our pilot this quarter, we plan to manage expansion in Agile sprints. This will allow us to evaluate, and refine the function of our MVP while reducing wasted overhead that may come from traditional waterfall technique. Turning the leadership over to students and graduates who are passionate about social and environmental improvement, we intend to make this a learning experience as much as a business as we grow our service and market. Among our main objectives in the coming quarters will be to: 1., develop a donor advised fund that enables corporate benefactors to make large scale, tax-deductible donations, 2., use content from our pilot to begin early stage investment, and 3., expand our API/GUI so that it can be easily used by the public (browse some of our business model documents below).

For More Information, or to learn how you can be a part visit candidworksllc.com or write candidworksllc@gmail.com