Through the holiday season, as Madison starts feeling the strength of winter weather and biting winds, UW-Madison tries to help students meet their needs with a little generosity — with a modern spin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is partnered up with Purposity to match students up with donors to help meet their basic needs. Purposity, an Atlanta based philanthropic fundraising service founded in 2016, developed a platform for school systems and local non-profits to match community members with donors. With the holiday season well near its end and winter sets in, students are asking for the means to be warm.
Purposity’s name comes from the words “purpose” and “generosity.” Its CEO, Blake Canterbury, was inspired as a child to find a way to give back to the communities he was in but saw a lag between how tech has grown and how we can help each other.
“The hope is that you would simply help your neighbor if you knew they were in need,” Canterbury said. “Maybe a kid walks into a classroom with holes in their shoes. We think there’s thousands of people that would buy that kid a pair of shoes if they only knew he needed it.”
When Canterbury was a child, he saw a friend’s family almost get torn apart by not being able to afford repairing or replacing a broken refrigerator. As he got older, and moved to bigger cities with larger financial disparities, he saw that the issue was larger than he could have imagined.
He thought there has to be a way to help other people. When Purposity was later launched with Atlanta Public Schools, Canterbury met a homeless student who was the valedictorian of their high school.
“We held a press conference and a student who was deemed homeless was the valedictorian of a high school in Atlanta and had gotten into Duke University,” Canterbury said. “These are students who are trying to better their lives. They’re trying to get a college education and they’re putting a lot on the line. Some of them are working multiple jobs.”
Purposity decided to set the student up with everything they needed for their first semester. Through the experience, Canterbury came to the realization that college students are struggling to meet their basic needs.
“There’s college kids all over the place that you just assume… are well off, and most of them are eating ramen noodles in their dorm room,” Canterbury said. “I think we live in a world right now that can really use neighbors helping neighbors.”
The platform is not like your typical crowd funding options like GoFundMe where anyone with any issue can come to try to get funds without being vetted. On those platforms, there’s no promise of follow up, that the goal will be reached or that the funds are necessarily reflective of what the recipient needs.
Purposity facilitates one-on-one funding, where the donor gives the whole amount needed for an extremely specific item. The item is fulfilled through the partnered team and the recipient receives the item in 48 hours. The intention is to give the tangible feeling of making that little bit of difference in someone’s life – typically a student.
But as much as good intentions can make a difference, the hurdle behind seeking out help is a constant struggle.
UW-Madison intentionally keeps a small team of three working with Purposity to help keep students anonymous while helping them get access to basic needs they otherwise cannot afford.
“We’re a pretty small team in terms of who received that information,” said Assistant Director for Student Engagement Kasie Strahl. “Part of that is pretty intentional, because sometimes making those asks is pretty vulnerable, saying that I have this need.”
On the university’s Puposity page, students are asking for minor things like a warmer jacket, a blanket, laundry detergent, soap so they can clean themselves — general run of the mill things that the rising cost of living and education has prevented them from being able to obtain.
Strahl said it’s taken about two weeks on average for needs to be met. Around the holidays, that time can be accelerated as the season of giving is in swing, but the outreach has been mostly limited to departments around campus, Strahl said.
Donors can visit UW-Madison’s Purposity page.
