Meet the entrepreneurs participating in the 2020 Impact Accelerator! seedership is a social impact storytelling platform to help small businesses share their impact.

Venture Name : seedership

Members: Jennifer Smithberger, Cofounder and chief seeder and Ray Smithberger, Cofounder

Venture Description : seedership is a social impact and storytelling platform to help small, local businesses differentiate and grow from the good they do to their communities. It helps businesses track and measure the time, things and money they give back, showcase and share their community story, and engage their employees in growing kindness.

Why did you apply to the Impact Accelerator?
We attended the reSET Accelerator Venture Showcase last year and were impressed with how effectively the entrepreneurs pitched their ideas and business concepts. So, we met with the reSET team to learn more and realized it was a valuable resource in connecting us to a rich entrepreneur community that shared our passion for making a positive contribution to society.

What makes you the most qualified to start this particular business?
Between the founders’ families they have several small business owners and saw how important it is for those businesses to connect with their community and employees. They also saw how much good they do in the community, but they lacked the resources to help showcase and tell their community impact story.   They set off to fix this by combining Jennifer’s communications experience at public relations agencies, a Silicon Valley startup and Fortune 100 companies, and with Ray’s expertise growing businesses and leading teams with thousands of people across the globe.   It is their passion to leverage their 20+ years careers with their passion to help small businesses grow and do more good in their communities.

How does your company create a positive social or environmental impact?
There at more than 30 million small businesses in the United States. These businesses give back a lot to the community, but unlike large enterprises with dedicated resources for corporate social responsibility programs, they aren’t always getting the full business benefits from their community investments. seedership is an easy, efficient, affordable platform to help them get clarity of what they give and engage with customers, partners and employees in sharing that story. seedership wants to help small businesses grow from the good they do, so giving becomes a more sustainable, year-round effort.

If you were to win the $10,000 grand prize at the Venture Showcase, what would you do with it?
Consumers now expect businesses to contribute positive change to society in addition creating profits, and they are influencing change by using their purchasing dollars. As a result, large corporations are attempting to provide greater transparency about what they do and more proactively share their social responsibility stories.   Small businesses have always been intricately connected to their communities. They understand their business thrives when the community is strong.   That is why they give back 250% more than larger businesses to local nonprofits and community causes and up to 6% of their annual profits.   With doing good rapidly become a new differentiator, it is critical that small businesses bring greater visibility around what they give back, and the causes and organizations they support. With the $10,000, we would build a FREE tier in our platform to allow small businesses to measure and track their total community investment.   This would enable them to create their own social impact dashboard that helps provide transparency around their giving.

Find seedership online: Website | Facebook | Instagram: @seedership | LinkedIn | Twitter

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