You are reading 3Bits & Change, Joseph's email about building a direct to consumer social venture business on the internet with an occasional Web3 issue. Today’s email was written to some Mr. Mayer albums. Dang that guy can play.
Good afternoon,
Vivront has made its first payment to a school district meal program for debt reduction efforts! It felt so good!
We have shipped over 100 orders, found a partner Nutrition Director at an Independent School District and it was time! Wahoo.
Thanks for joining us in our efforts. This is your win too!
Bit #1 • Why $366?
$3.66 is the amount the USDA pays schools per lunch at full price during non-pandemic times. They pay $3.26 for subsidised lunches. The families pay the remaining $0.40.
We thought we would start with something meaningful like a 1:1 program - a lunch per sharpening order. With debt accrued $0.40 at a time, it turns out each order often covers more than one lunch worth of debt. It can actually be nine lunches and some change.
Bit #2 • We have a pilot fundraiser!
We received word from a district that they are going to do a fundraiser to pay down some school lunch debt with Vivront before the school year is out. This will materialize at minimum as a code to be used on vivront.com and at maximum with centralized distribution of sharpening boxes and lots of communications. We’re really excited.
Can we make a dent? Yes! It’ll take 1000 orders at 10% of revenue going to pay debt in this city of 20,000 households to pay off the average yearly debt in this city. That’s achievable.
We want your fundraising wisdom. What fundraisers have you been a part of that were great and what made them great?
Help. If you have, or know someone that has, fundraising expertise that could help us in this pilot we want to meet them. Please reach out. We’re “learning on the fly.”
Bit #3 • It felt so good
Some 7 months ago I formulated this notion of a 1:1 for school lunch debt and a kitchen knife sharpening service. As far as we know it’s the first of its kind. At one point I had come to believe there was no debt. Afterall, the Gov as paying for all lunches during the pando. Then I went to the national conference, learned a ton and found years worth of debt on the books. Now, not only do we know the debt is real we have paid some off, together!
With luck, introductions, connections, partnerships and persistence that is just the first of many payments we’ll make together. It felt so good to send it from the company account. We’re really on the way to building a system that generates cash for a problem we can solve.
Sum
Thank you!
Thanks for being on this journey with your subscription to this email, with any orders you’ve made and with all the introductions you’ve made when sharing Vivront with your friends, family, colleagues and beyond.
I hope this moment feels good for you too!
Thank you!
Follow @josephrueter on Instagram or Linkedin. Follow Vivront.com on Instagram and Facebook.
Order your knives sharpened, or a subscription so a package just shows up on a schedule, at Vivront.com.