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So when I was a kid, Carol, Yes, and I needed to raise money for you know something at school. We did walk a thon's for charity. We did school trips. I did it the old fashioned way. Okay, this was the nineties. Keep that in mind.
Okay, yep.
I went door to door with a clipboard. I ranked doorbells. Actually wore rollerblades so I could do it.
Quicker, so I could go to the nineteen nineties.
So southern California, nineteen nineties. I should have skateboarded. Actually, well, it was, of course before smartphones. Kids these days have other options, such as the one developed by our next guest, Cole Morgan, the founder and CEO of snap Mobile. It's a digital fundraising tool that high schoolers can use to raise money for schools, teams, clubs, and more. Colds here with us in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Cole, good
to have you with us this afternoon. I should note you raised seven hundred million dollars for one hundred thousand plus groups and teams a lot.
It's a lot of money.
Yeah, we're talking about some serious money here. Talk to us a little bit about the platform. And also I'm interested in the business model here and they take great.
Yeah, so we h. So I would just say thank you for having me wuck. When I called my mom and told her the idea for the business, I told her we were going to raise a million dollars for schools.
How old were you?
I was twenty eight at the time, thirty eight now and now and I we're actually approaching about eight hundred million dollars giving back to school so far.
Wow.
So yeah. So we've we started a few years, started ten years ago. We're in about half the schools in the United States. We focus on financial transparency in schools and helping groups of people raise money for a common cause. Where a lot of the crowdfunding platforms online focus on individuals raising money come in quickly sign up. We help
groups of people with that require oversight. So the school, you're a club organization, you know, where somebody actually needs to oversee the final antles of the of the group. We helped that group raise money and so the money goes directly to the organization or to the school, or to the nonprofit or whatever it is, rather than the individual.
So how does it work?
Kids log in, they send send out emails, text message, social media. January first, we're launching mobile apps. We'll have over a million kids download our mobile app next year.
So there's no mobile app up to now.
No, it's all been a web app. Wow, because of web apps. Really a web app was faster. But we had we actually had a mobile app and we very first started. But it would show up. You'd try to get all these kids to download a mobile app. It would take too long. But that was ten years ago, and kids weren't.
They kept thinking they were down Snapchat.
That had happened. That's happened. Yes, yeah, so they so they now they log in, they download the mobile app, and they go through the flow. You know, they send out their emails to friends and family. I'm sure you guys have actually probably gotten an email from a niece or nephew to donate to a a Finity program.
No, no, So it'll take you to a site that shows you that it is Snap Mobile.
It's yeah, we'll show you that so that that part of the platform is called Snap Raise, and it'll take you to that. It'll actually take you to that kid's fundraising page, because what we know is that people want to support kids and the causes that the kids care about. So it's not about supporting the actual football team directly, it's about supporting the kid who's a part of the
football team. So it actually will take you to when my son starts using the platform, he's only two, it'll take you to Luke Preston Morgan's you know football page, and you'll Luke will have a goal, and then the team will have a goal above that. So it's a hierarchical structure that allows the team to raise money. So all one hundred kids on the football team are raising money at the same time for the same cost.
You do live in Texas. You're already thinking about football and your kids only two.
Yeah, yeah, well I played football. We live in Texas. This is the whole company is surrounded by it.
It seems so logical. So what was it that what was the idea initially that you said, Okay, we've got something here.
Yes, it's very simple ideas. It looks more simple on the surface than it actually is underneath. So we have an entire organizational database that connects school administration all the way to the communities in which they live and that support them. So there's a lot of data and infrastructure, financial transparency, oversight, security compliance. But on the surface, it
was really simple. I was selling discount cards and cookie dough in schools after I got done playing football, and a coach said to me, we love that you're here, but we hate why you're here. So there's got to be a better way. This is the honest to goodness story. It's on our website. I said, what do you mean, He said, our kids. You know we need help. We need to raise money, but we don't want to do the things that you're making us do, which is sell
these things. The school doesn't like that we take cash. The kids don't want to sell things, the parents don't want to buy things. They just want to support. So I said, okay, just like my whole life, have taken coaching. It's like what do I do? So I looked around the school and I saw every kid on their phone, and I started asking friends and family and people at bars and restaurants. I said, do you care about supporting kids? And they would say yes, And then I would say,
do you have cash in your wallet? And they would say no, and I would say do you have your phone? And they would say yes. And I would say you have your credit card and they would say yes. And so I just put together the idea of the phone, the credit card, and kids asking politely for community and family support.
So what's your take rate?
Our take rate is twenty percent?
Wow, Yeah, that's very high. That's much higher than I thought it would be. So of every dollar that is donated, Yeah, your platform takes twenty percent. Yeah, I was expecting two or three percent.
Yeah, it's a it's a high take rate for what we'd for, you know, what you think of in the world of crowdfunding. But if you look at, you know, some of the other individual platforms, they just tacking on in a different way. We don't do that. There's a service based model for us. So we help organize, coordinate, promote, maintain,
and manage the entire online fundraising event. So we're not the cheapest thing in fundraising, but we are the cheapest thing in school based fundraising, which is a very different thing because when you sell discount cards and cookies, you're only making fifty percent.
That's one hundred and sixty million. I was just doing some calculations here, one hundred and sixty million dollars.
But that's a big difference because you think about yeah, you know, whether it's girls scout cookies or what have you. You're saying that the kids only get fifty percent, Yeah, sometimes less, sometimes less?
Yeah, are you because there's a product involved?
Sometimes yeah, But you can hide behind the you can hide behind the fact that the product is there.
But I'll be honest with you, having done that for nieces and nephews and buying wrapping paper and stuff that I really don't want, I'd rather have just given them money. But that's not the way it was set up. Are you going to only stay with schools?
I don't mean only, but no, we were were I mean we are the largest, you know, youth organization fundraising platform as well. Yeah, it's just our main focus is schools, but we grow into the We grow into the youth side as well. One of the other things that we provide for the twenty percent take rate is financial oversight and compliance for every dollar that comes into your school.
So there's a school actually locally that an athletic secretary absconded with some of the money and because they were a Snap client. This just happened a few weeks ago. Because they were a Snap client, they were actually going and have a full audit trail of every one of the donations and the dollars that came in, and they were able to, you know, help find out that what that athletic secretary had done, what happened?
Are you profitable?
We are not.
Where are you spending all the money you've raised eight hundred million. I've eight hundred million dollars has gone to schools, which means one hundred and sixty million dollars has come to you. Guys, if we're getting you in twenty percent, where's the money.
Going investment into the technology. We've acquired a couple companies as well. We've acquired three businesses, so are We've also raised capital as well.
Ninety million dollars in a series B led by the investment group that owns the La Dodgers. Yes, Algrige twenty twenty one.
Yep, yeah, yeah. So we've we've hired, we invest in hiring outside salespeople. So our salesforce we have one hundred and fifty boots on the ground that actually serve the communities in which they live.
So is that your highest overhead or is it that in technology?
It's that in technologies. We've also scaled up our technology team as well.
Thirty seconds left. Here's the what's the endgame? Is it to go public?
The endgame is to build the transformative platform that supports teachers and students. It's teachers and athletic directors and coaches the way that they support their kids. You know football background with me, so I focus on the process. If we build a great company that serves the needs of all of our customers, then who knows what happens.
But you say you're going to stay within like helping for the US part schools or kenn it expands.
Schools, youth organizations, colleges. Yep, yeah, it can grow quite a bit.
There's a little bit of a growth runway there.
It's a big market for us.
And imagine a mode too with getting the schools signed on. That's a hard party.
It's incredibly hard, and it's one of the reasons you have to invest the way that we're investing.
Come back and let us know how things are going. I promise really interesting. Cole Morgan, founder and ceof Snapmobile, joining us here in our Bloomberg Interactor Broker Studio. Good Luck'll talk to you soon again.
Thank you.