This Sunday marks the Martin Luther King memorial dedication that will be attended by President Barack Obama, civil rights icon and Martin Luther King’s chief lieutenant Andrew Young and his son Andrew “Bo” Young III. Bo said that he is excited to participate in the unveiling of the memorial as well as the “March with Martin.”
Young is currently the CEO of the website GiveLocally.net and is currently on the road going across the country to promote this website. The idea for Give Locally originally came from Silicon Valley lawyer Brad Newman who was sick of galas and charity events and wanted an organization that gave directly to the individual and his or her cause. Brad and Bo met each other through a mutual friend. They discussed the concept for hours with contributions from both Bo and Brad. Impressed, Brad recruited Bo as the CEO of the website.
Bo also contributed to the site with the idea of an education tab that is specified for families who are struggling to fund their educational needs. Bo says a young woman who attended his local YMCA, who was accepted into Georgetown University on a full scholarship, inspired him.
She was not too confident in attending because she could not even afford toiletries or new clothes for school. “This was tough to swallow,” says Bo, “this girl had the intelligence, but couldn’t take a pair of pants to school because her sister needed it… How do you put a price on confidence and self-esteem?”
In this economy, with the unemployment rate at 9.1 percent, and families experiencing foreclosure, people are on edge and are struggling for a solution as to how they will pay their mortgages, rent, their electric bill, how they will be able to send their child to college or afford books and clothing for their education. Give Locally helps those people find relief in the situation and proves that people genuinely do want to help each other.
Give Locally.net is a website in which those who are struggling financially post on the website what it is they need and donators provide that money and it gets sent directly to that cause. Candidates are pre-screened in order to prevent fraud. For instance, a mother of five needs to pay off her electric bill and needs $85 today; she will post her concern on Give Locally. A member of that person’s community or from another part of the country and that money will go directly towards that woman’s landlord or electric bill.
Brad says, “These are not Bill Gates or Warren Buffets, but working class Americans who want to help the community.”
The site also has a GL Fund, which is an emergency fund that is used when the recipient needs the money now.
“There are no restraints on who we can help and why,” says Bo, “The more donors we have the more people we can help… our community can come together to help families.”
Bo and Brad say that you can donate to the website with “100 percent confidence” the recipients are pre-screened and they interact with the donors through the site by writing testimonials and thanking them for their donations.
Give Locally has been running successfully for over a year. “It is no one’s fault for being poor,” says Brad ” You just can’t hate Give Locally.”