“Our app empowers individuals to make a difference in their community while social distancing.”
Blake Canterbury
Founder & CEO, Purposity
April 27, 2020
“Purposity is the simplest way to help your neighbor in need,” Blake Canterbury, founder of Purposity, told TODAY’s Sheinelle Jones. “We live in a world where we can make a doctor’s appointment from our cell phone, but don’t know if our neighbor down the street has food to eat tonight.”
Help centers are overrun, call centers are swamped, and government paperwork can take months to grant requests from local school districts and nonprofits. Purposity functions as a hub for local school districts and nonprofits to filter, vet and post needs. Before, a social worker in a school might have to apply for a government grant to get funding for a child in need. Canterbury believes that each community has the power and resources to begin to meet their own local needs—locals just don’t know where to get started. Purposity allows locals to download the app and meet those needs immediately through donations.
It’s simple. Nonprofits and school districts take specific item requests and post it to the app. Users can search and select the item they want to donate and pay via a credit card. Items are delivered to the designated school or nonprofit where the person or family in need can pick it up. Purposity covers the shipping or shopping fees. (An optional 15 percent fee is charged to help cover those costs, if the donor wants to.)
“Due to coronavirus, the surplus of needs in our database has increased by 100% over the past several weeks,” Canterbury said. “Our app empowers individuals to make a difference in their community while social distancing.”
Purposity has been able to meet thousands of needs so far. A police officer and his six children received plenty of resources after a house fire. Kids with cancer received anti-nausea tools for their hospital stays. Homeless veterans requested, and received, simple needs like deodorant.
Whiteboard's co-founder and CCO, Eric Brown, in response to the news said, "I’ll never forget the first meeting when Blake Canterbury described the vision of Purposity. A vision to find purpose through generosity and fulfill real-time needs in communities throughout the United States. It's a vision we indelibly believe in. We're proud to see Purposity open up their platform for organizations across United States to leverage for good."
For more information check out Purposity’s website and watch the TODAY Show interview. If you’re a non-profit or school district that would like to utilize the app for your community, you can learn more here.