Donate in a snap

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Rising Hoover High School seniors Allie Booth and Morgan Diggs slide into their chairs to taste cupcakes at a local bakery. And after being handed their receipt, they are able to do more than just throw or stash it away. The girls can snap a picture and immediately ensure a donation is sent to a local organization or cause of their choice. Snappfund, a new fundraising mobile application, makes this action possible. The application allows residents to donate to their favorite school, recreational sports or other needs-based community organization through everyday dining and shopping.

The application is the brainchild of Hoover resident Brian Booth, who has coached recreational teams within the Hoover Community over the past several years and experienced the evolution of fundraising first hand. He recently noticed a shift in the traditional fundraising model, recognizing that methods such as selling coupon books, hams and gift-wrap were beginning to lose their appeal with the millennial generation and both merchants and parents were overcome with requests.

 “We have also seen a social divide over the past several years between traditional fundraising programs, parents and their kid’s social and economic interest,” said Brian. “Traditional fundraisers are still very much one-to-one and rarely relevant to a parent’s need or interest at that given point in time.”

After years of hearing about the challenges from parents and merchants within the Hoover Community, Brian decided to partner with long time friend David Macleod and work with a local software development team to take the idea from concept to reality. The solution is a mobile application that seamlessly connects organizations of all types to its supporters and those supporters back to participating businesses that will donate a small percentage of what user spends back to the organization of their choice. “There are a lot of programs out there being offered by merchants to organizations. The problem is how to you easily connect parents and kids to these opportunities and enable the event itself and donation. We believe we have designed the right solution”, said Brian.

“As an alternative to traditional fundraising programs, we now provide parents and children with a free mobile app that will allow them to more easily locate, shop and dine with Hoover area merchants that are willing to fund their various causes with point of sale contributions,” said Brian.

Merchants are not required to donate until users spend money with their business and our users can raise funds spending money on things they really enjoy and need. It is true win/win within the community.”

Residents can download the Snappfund application from the Apple Store. When residents are at a participating business, they simply snap a picture of their receipt and that businesses donation is made to the organization’s the user supports. The Snappfund technology platform manages all the administrative functions for the organizations and merchants and has social media integrations that allow its users to socialize merchant deals with friends and family to accelerate fundraising for their cause.

“Our end-to-end solution removes the administrative burden from organizations, users and businesses and turns fundraising into an everyday event,” said Brian.

In June, Snappfund signed a partnership agreement with the Hoover City School Foundation to introduce the free mobile app to its 16 schools, over 500 clubs and organizations and parents and kids. Prior to the beginning of the new school year, Snappfund expects to continue adding local Hoover merchants. 

 Brian added, “We want to make sure that everyone has opportunity to get involved and fund the sports teams and/or causes that are important to them and their kids. We all have to put gas in the car, eat and shop somewhere. This gives everybody an opportunity to give back and feel good about it.” 

Brian hopes the application will catch on with the younger generation that is hyper-connected through social media and smart phones.

“I like it because it is easy to use and (through my social network) stay connected to retail stores and restaurant deals that allow me to raise money,” said Brian’s daughter Allie.