A Labor Day letter from Put Me In!
Put Me In! is a nonprofit that increases access to sports for children of incarcerated parents. In this letter we share our results, look ahead, and ask for your support.
Greetings!
Since our last update in February, we’ve been working hard to enroll and distribute financial aid to our first cohort of children. As a reminder, Put Me In! provides recurring annual financial aid packages of $1,000 per year to children of incarcerated parents (“CIPs”) to increase their access to sports. Our financial aid automatically renews each year through 12th grade, provided the child remains in school.
We are excited to update you on our progress, share direct feedback from the parents/caregivers of our 2021 cohort, and present our near-term plans. If you are inspired by our mission and progress, we ask for your support. Please consider a tax-deductible donation to Put Me In! (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit CA public benefit corporation).
If you’re learning about Put Me In! for the first time, the three LinkedIn articles below, this interview, and last year’s press release provide more background.
An Update on Our Progress
First Cohort Enrolled! The 2021 Put Me In! cohort consists of 10 children of incarcerated parents, averaging 6th grade at enrollment . This cohort represents $71,000 of long-term financial aid commitments by Put Me In! (funded in advance and reserved on our balance sheet).
Clear Use Cases Identified
Our financial aid distribution process is centralized (we purchase equipment and ship it to a child’s home, pay league fees directly, or reimburse travel expenses with proper receipts), we track every dollar we invest in our cohort. This visibility helps us identify core use cases for Put Me In!’s financial aid (four so far). These include:
Level Up! Participation Fees. Accessing more competitive leagues and travel teams. R., grade 5, joined an elite travel soccer team with Put Me In!’s support.
First Time Access Participation Fees. J., age 8, is learning swimming and karate for the first time in well-coached, formal programs. Look at his flex! In aggregate, participation fees (for any type of league) are 39% of funds distributed to date.
New Equipment and Gear. M., grade 9, upgraded her softball gear — cleats, travel bag, bat, and glove. 29% of funds distributed to date.
Travel and Transportation. These soft costs quickly become hard dollars , especially for children with blossoming athletic careers. With Put Me In!’s support, two talented track athletes, A. and A., grades 3 and 7, traveled with their mother to state and regional competitions, and ultimately, the Junior Olympics in Houston this summer. 32% of funds distributed to date.
“Thank You!” To Our Partners
Put Me In! identifies and enrolls children through referrals and recommendations from partners (a channel model). At present, our partners include Project Avary, The Place4Grace, Friends of the Children, Ultimate Impact, the San Francisco Public Schools, and the caregivers of our enrolled children). A goal is reinforcing the missions of our partners through our impactful investments in the children they serve. We think that in the long-term, this partnership-based model will broaden impact and bring efficiencies.
A Laser Focus On Net Promoter Scores
We’re proud to report that our Net Promoter Score with caregivers is presently 100 , putting us in elite company (a small base, admittedly). We believe the caregivers and parents of the children we enroll are both our customers and our partners. Every interaction is treated with respect and care. For example, when we introduce Put Me In! to a child and caregiver on Zoom, we tell them that “Put Me In! isn’t a charity , this is an investment in you.”
We think that, over time, referrals from the caregivers of our enrolled CIPs will create a unique channel, with some network effects. Enrolled caregivers referred 20% of the CIPs we enrolled in 2021 and this pipeline is growing.
Feedback From Parent/Caregiver Interviews, 2021
“Coaches really care about these kids, genuinely…as a young boy growing up…for me as a single mom and him not having that male figure in his life …this is huge for me as a parent . N. might not realize all of that, but it’s so much more than just football…it’s so much more than sports. He’s learning legitimate life lessons about how to be a team player, show up with right attitude, positive mindset, that you have to have determination, that you have to put in work to see the results.”
L., Mother of N. (Grade 4)“I didn’t think that there would be a program like this that could help with something like this , that there are people that see families like ours, that understand how important it is that kids like R. play sports…I’m getting to know other parents, making friends with them , they are helpful too, it’s allowing us to experience new sports, new people . It’s not only helping us, it’s giving us experiences we wouldn’t have as a family and meeting people we wouldn’t have otherwise met.”
M., Mother of R. (Grade 5)“…he enjoys being busy. We’re not just at home, he’s not just playing video games. I feel like my son is super mindful of how much things cost, and says “I don’t want to do this, it costs too much money” - with the support of PMI!, he’s open to trying new things. He talks about sports a lot more with Put Me In! - he’s proud and happy.”
M., Mother of R. (Grade 5)“…when I was younger, these opportunities weren’t around and I got in a lot of trouble, I didn’t have anything to keep me out of trouble and keep me focused, build those types of long lasting relationships. M. has a couple of friends that she’s played with since elementary school. It keeps her focused on other things and she doesn’t have time to get in trouble like I did when I was her age.”
J., Mother of M. (Grade 8)“You know — M. was so excited that she could pick the bag she wanted, the bat she wanted, the glove — she’d been asking for two years for now for that white glove…she was excited that she didn’t have to say “can we afford this” — she was pretty excited about that. It helped with confidence…she really takes pride in the equipment she’s received.”
C., Mother of M. (Grade 9)“It’s helped me, first and foremost, it helps me feel seen. That is huge — it’s priceless, to know that I’m not alone, that I’m seen, and that we are seen and we are supported; that there are others out there just like us who have overcome, who want to help and support us. Secondly — just knowing that it’s a long-term commitment — a lot of time, there are programs…we can’t always rely that it will be there from one year to the next — budgets change, priorities change — the long term commitment [from Put Me In!] is something that will be there for a while.”
L., Mother of N. (Grade 4)
Key Near Term Initiatives
Building Mobile Applications for Efficient Growth
Launching during the pandemic taught us to build relationships with caregivers and CIPs through digital channels. At inception in 2020 our team aligned (over Zoom, naturally) on building a distributed, tech-enabled business.
To expand in California, to Boston, and nationally over time, we are building software to become a technology-enabled nonprofit. We’re building to solve a serious need: we must become more efficient as we grow. Managing caregiver relationships with email, text, and phone call spaghetti quickly becomes inefficient with growth. We couldn’t find an existing solution that served our (reasonable) user needs and feature requirements. The front-ends didn’t have/connect with the back-end we needed; the back-ends didn’t have/connect with the front-end we needed).
We are building mobile software applications to:
Enable an individual program manager to efficiently distribute financial aid to many hundreds of children each year through our software.
Connect efficiently with the caregivers of our enrolled children through providing them with a well-designed and straightforward UX/UI, a simple and usable interface for requesting financial aid, tracking funding/disbursement history, and tracking balances over time. Includes messaging capabilities (we already communicate mostly over text/email to arrange sports league payment logistics, clarify equipment requests, receive receipts and proof of school enrollment, and just check-in).
Construct profiles that track disbursement histories for every child we serve.
Establish a centralized database, dashboard, and tracked metrics / KPIs.
Centralize capture of program data and CIP content to measure impact and support targeted fundraising campaigns.
Highlight and share case studies, documenting every penny of impact with data and precision to support targeted fundraising campaigns, over time.
Deliver backable, transparent performance for impact-focused and forward-thinking philanthropists.
A stellar team collaborated during the spring and summer, including:
Alex Horvitz, our first team member in 2020, at Harvard Business School. Alex led our product design efforts full time this summer as Head of Product and a HBS Social Enterprise Fellow.
Ben Metcalfe, a venture capitalist in San Francisco and a former Senior Product Manager at Uber. One of our first donors and great friends, Ben is providing full stack advice on product and product strategy.
Maru Algorata, at Tarmac.IO, is an insanely talented UX/UI designer who brought our user stories and vision/sketches/spreadsheets to life this summer. Her efforts represented a generous pro bono contribution from my friend and high school football teammate Brent Kastner, co-founder and CTO of Tarmac.
With mobile applications as a cornerstone of our expansion strategy, a long-term business model and flywheel become clear. Think of four reinforcing areas of focus, executed and continuously improved, each year.
Build collaborative partnerships for referrals of CIPs, including channels with network effects (i.e. referrals from enrolled caregivers).
Obtain referrals, screen, and enroll qualified CIPs, based on financial capacity.
Distribute financial aid and communicate with caregivers through a mobile app and digital channels. Centralize all communications and compliance. Capture data at all points of service and interaction. Provide a great user experience and interface , software that’s “powered by empathy.”
Raise capital from ROI-focused donors and philanthropists against our results, impact, case studies, and efficiency. Leverage data and insights from our applications. Identify improvements and use this capital to return to 1. above and repeat the process the following year. Become stronger as we get bigger.
Expanding to Boston in 2022
Boston is an intentional next step for Put Me In!, contemplated since inception. We are blessed with incredible board and team members in Boston, including my co-founder and our Chairman Robyn Glaser, Julian Edelman, Tim Dibble, Alex Horvitz, Ike Nnadi, Andrew Wallace, Alec More, and Lilia Kasdon.
Learning How to Fundraise: Nonprofit “Seed” to “Series A”
Because our product is money, to grow, we will need to learn how to raise a lot of it . We are blessed and well-funded for our “seed” phase as a startup nonprofit, raising over $300,000 in funding to date from individual donors, mostly with a “seed-stage” fundraising message of “this is what we’re going to do, here’s how and why.” Thank you to the 100+ donors who have supported us so far with donations from $20 to $100,000+.
We’re entering an exciting new phase, putting into action and practice what we promised, and seeing the returns forecast in our investment thesis. We’re excited to now approach you for support with a “Series A” fundraising message of “this is what we’re doing, it’s still early, but the impact and returns are high.”
Please Consider Supporting Put Me In!
As you plan your charitable giving during the remainder of the year, feel free to reach out to me or our donor/development leader, Khalid Cannon. I think our fundraising presentation is good, but it can’t hold a candle to the essay one of our enrolled children, M. (9th grade), wrote in her Put Me In! application.
“My favorite sport is softball because I’ve played it the longest and I know the game really well. It’s a really big stress reliever for me. I get to get my mind off of everything and focus on the game and what’s going on in the field.”
“All of the sports have helped relieve stress or take my mind off something in one way or another…Softball, I let all my anger out on the ball whether it’s pitching, throwing, or hitting. I let all of it on the ball and put all my power in it. Volleyball is a lot less contact, but when I’m spiking or serving I hit the ball as hard as I can with all of my anger or frustration balled up inside of me.”
One Team, One Dream
Thank you to our four terrific interns this summer - Samantha Silverman (University of Michigan), Alec More (Boston College), Lilia Kasdon (Concord Academy), and Wesley Boatwright (Choate Rosemary Hall). The sun never sets on Put Me In! - thank you TresVista in Mumbai for pro bono support: Abilash, Dhruv, Niranjan, Uzair, Rupali, Nandini, and Vanshika. And thank you to Kate, Brandon, Mary, and Murray at Morrison & Foerster for outstanding pro bono support.
Thank you for your support . Let’s Go!!!
Matt Blodgett
Founder & Executive Director, Put Me In!
San Francisco, California
