Vollar

I'm a social and technology entrepreneur, passionate about using technology to build a world where every person can escape poverty. In 2011, I left my job as a computer graphics artist in film and advertising. Desiring to do something meaningful with my life, I went into mission work where I found a gap between those needing help and those offering it. 

To solve this problem, in 2013, I co-founded my first technology company, VOMO, a volunteering platform in the USA that's making it easy for anyone to meet the needs of their community. Inspired by the work at VOMO, in 2018, I moved back home to South Africa to start Vollar. 

I founded Vollar with the idea that by rewarding volunteering, disadvantaged people could access basic work and income, and in doing so, provide a solution to unemployment that improved the community. 

According to World Bank, 734 million people live on less than $2 a day. In South Africa, this level of poverty accounts for 55% of the population. Despite billions of dollars invested annually towards social development in South Africa, poverty is on the rise (StatsSA), leading to social issues that plague local communities.

If we reframe how we think about these issues, they can become opportunities for local volunteer work. By rewarding people with the Vollar virtual currency (Vollar) for their participation, we can create alternative work opportunities that empower millions of people and solve community problems.

The Vollar is backed by local currency, that is funded by organisations using our platform, and distributed through the Vollar app. What makes Vollar unique is once someone earns it, they can only spend it at small businesses, who can cash out back to local currency, empowering the local economy.

South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates globally (28.5%) and the highest youth unemployment rate globally (56%, World Bank). As a result, 31.7M people live in poverty.

Both the public and private sector in South Africa is focused on job creation through business development and education, as the primary interventions to address poverty. Despite billions of dollars invested annually, poverty and unemployment are still on the rise. Finding ways to increase the effectiveness of this funding is paramount to combatting poverty.

Vollar is an online platform that enables organisations to create monetary rewards in their social development programs. These social development programs could be volunteer work or educational programs.

The organisation funds each reward, to incentivise people to achieve a goal to earn it. For example, a neighbourhood watch might offer a R100 (~$6) reward for every person that completes a patrol. The organisation indicates on the Vollar platform when someone completes the patrol, and the earner immediately receives the monetary value assigned to the reward. However, they receive this monetary value as our virtual currency, Vollar, which can only be spent at pre-vetted small businesses, who can cash out the virtual currency back to local currency.

Through this process; development programs achieve better outcomes, participants have a way to support their physical needs, and small businesses have an additional source of income.

Vollar is impacting the lives of disadvantaged people in South Africa. The platform is providing them with a new way to access work and money so they can support their families. Vollar works with organisations that are already active in communities since they already have a deep understanding of the local context. Additionally, we regularly engage with the recipients of Vollar to understand how it affects their lives.

One of the recipients of Vollar, Janine, who took part in a pilot run in 2019 recalls, "It made me feel like I was a more involved member of my community. Because of that, I got to see my community in a different light. Generally, people don't engage with one another. Many choose to stay inside because there is nothing else to do, but this gave us the opportunity to come outside, get together and get to know each other while contributing to the community."

Wilma, a local small business owner who benefitted from Vollar, told us that, "Vollar gave people chance to take care of themselves and solve their own problems in a dignified way, it allowed them to escape the trap of poverty while being proud of one's own achievements". 

Vollar is helping disadvantaged individuals who have been traditionally left behind. It's giving them the opportunity to develop themselves and their communities, and in return, have a dignified way to earn money so they can support their families.

In 2011, I left my job as a computer graphics artist in film and advertising and went into mission work, where I was impacted deeply by the reality of daily life for the people I worked with. I chose to dedicate my life to finding solutions that could make a tangible difference for them.

In 2013, I co-founded VOMO, a volunteering platform that aimed to make it simple for people to get involved in meeting the needs of their local communities. In 2017, VOMO was looking into how we could gamify and incentivise volunteering to activate more people. I had a realisation that if people could volunteer and be rewarded with something that they could use to purchase essentials, we could solve many system social problems. We could give people work, we could ensure they are fed, and we could practically develop the local community.

With this idea, my wife and I sold everything we owned, moved back to South Africa, and invested all these savings into starting Vollar.

Growing up in South Africa, I have been confronted with extreme poverty my entire life. Whether it was in day to day activities, or throughout my schooling in public schools, people affected by poverty have been part of my life.

As a white middle class South African, I'm blessed that my parents never tried to shelter me from the sad realities that face the majority of our country. We were raised to understand that we are fortunate and should not take that for granted. More importantly, we were raised to understand the importance of giving.

As a result, it's always been in my nature to want to uplift my fellow man. 

I'm passionate about Vollar because I can imagine what the future will be if it works and I have seen the real impact that Vollar has on the people who have used it. There was a moment in our 2019 pilot where I saw 20 people renovating their local graveyard. People who were without work or income were now full of joy. That moment has motivated me continually to keep going, because billions of people need hope and opportunity.

My background in technology and volunteering have perfectly positioned me to deliver a solution like Vollar. I have been working with technology, volunteering, and NGOs for the last eight years.

In our first pilot of Vollar, we had hired an individual living in the local community to represent Vollar and run the pilot locally. We didn't anticipate that this would create a local power struggle and lead to conflict in the community, and unfortunately, the individual had started stealing Vollar by misusing the app.

Unfortunately, the individual lost their job, but the lessons learned from the set back gave us insight that took Vollar forward.

• We pivoted our model and chose to work with local community-led NGOs instead of having a local representative. This lead to a radical shift in the dynamic of the community and the amount of work Vollar was able to empower. 
• We saw how Vollar could prevent fraudulent activities because of the data we capture. We were able to recognise that the individual had stolen Vollar and confront the situation within a matter of hours, so the loss was insignificant.

When starting Vollar, my wife and I sold everything we owned and invested the money as our startup capital, not knowing it would be a year before I took my first salary. The money we lived off was from my wife's part-time work and was just enough to buy food and pay rent. We didn't have enough money to buy a car, so we instead bought bicycles to complete the 16km round trip to work and back every day. 

We initially registered Vollar as an NGO, but by the end of our first year, we were unable to raise funding. Taking advise from an investment firm, we reregistered as a for-profit company and created a commercial model to grow the company. With our last remaining money, I attended Slush in Helsinki to find investors. For two days, I booked back to back investor meetings every hour and landed our first investor.

I've suffered from anxiety most of my life, but I realised my ailment doesn't fit my career path, so I choose to fight it. Everything in life is hard, and only if we are willing to take on these challenges, can we change the world.

Rewards and incentives have been a proven method to drive positive behaviour. While there are few others using similar approaches in social development, Vollar is unique in that:

• It has monetary value which is ring-fenced to support small businesses.
• It's data-free on all major networks within South Africa.
• It doesn't require the earner to have a mobile phone to use it, they just need to register once and can earn and pay using their account number and pin code.

Vollar provides an easy to use online platform where organisations can fund monetary rewards for their social development programs. These rewards serve the purpose of motivating beneficiaries to strive for better results, and in achieving them earn supplementary income. Organisations use Vollar's online platform to create and distribute rewards based on outcomes they want to drive through their programs.

Our short term goals are to increase the effectiveness of social development programs and to give disadvantaged people access to supplementary income.

These goals link to our long term outcomes which include: 

• Increasing household income to ensure families have access to essential products and services. 
• Increasing revenue for small businesses to allow local economies to flourish.
• Restoring dignity to disadvantaged people by giving them a sense of accomplishment from achieving a goal and earning a reward. 
• Improving the rate at which poverty is reduced by increasing the effectiveness of social development programs.

To test that Vollar can achieve these goals, we have conducted small scale pilots and academic research in different contexts within South Africa. The results showed that Vollar was able to drive change more effectively than anticipated. In a six month followup after our first pilot in 2019, locals felt Vollar created an opportunity for people to take care of themselves and solve their own problems in a dignified way. It allowed people to escape the trap of poverty while being proud of their achievements (Followup Article).

In 2019 Vollar served approximately 150 people.

By the end of 2020 we aim to serve 1000 people monthly.

In 5 years we aim to serve 100 000 people monthly.

Vollar has an ambitious impact goal of providing 10 million people with access to supplementary income within the next 10 years. 

We aim to increase the income of people earning Vollar by $30 a month. While this may not seem like much, it is a 50% increase in the monthly income of our target market, and allows us to implement Vollar in a wide variety of development programs while still complying with labor laws. We've already seen in our own pilot the profound effects an additional $30 month, has on these families and the small businesses in their communities.

To achieve these goals, we will partner directly with funders and impact investors to introduce Vollar into the organisations they are funding. This top down strategy will give Vollar immediate access to organisations that can implement the platform in their programs and communities.

Linked to this, we aim to scale Vollar to other countries, Uganda and India are currently at the top of our list based on the the amount of development aid these countries receive.

1. Covid-19 created an immediate barrier for Vollar as organisation are facing uncertainty regarding budgets. We recognise that this is only temporary and while the nature of how organisations work will change, we believe that within the next year, the need for solutions like Vollar will increase.

2. Raising investment for Vollar within South Africa has been unsuccessful.  We believe this is due to investors having a low appetite for risk and the lack of a local mature impact investment ecosystem. We have however received local grant funding and international investment which has been incredibly helpful in getting Vollar to where it is.

1. We will approach funders of organisations directly to get buy-in to our vision and approval to fund Vollar rewards within their ecosystem. We also plan to introduce Vollar into Covid-19 specific relief efforts, such a food security projects.

2. We will be registering Vollar in Europe to give us wider scope for investment and better access to funders and impact investors.

Balwin Foundation- Balwin Foundation became Vollar's first customer in late 2019, implementing rewards in their skills development and entrepreneurial development programs.

Bulungula Incubator (E2 Partnership) - Vollar started working with Bulungula Incubator in early 2020 as part of a test with E2, to see if Vollar could be included in the support they provide to other projects. Bulungula is implementing Vollar to incentivise a high school math program in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa. The goal of the pilot is to see if rewards can be used to drive students to complete the course and achieve better grades.

SAB Foundation - Vollar was one of the SAB Foundation 2019 Social Innovation Award Winners, this has given us grant funding and support from the SAB Foundation.

Bi.Nu - BiNu is providing Payper users with data free access to Payper on all major South African telecommunication networks.

Vollar provides it's online platform to organisations engaged in social development. These could be non-profit organisations, foundations, or corporate CSI departments.

Our primary income stream is from a transaction fee incurred when organisations top up their wallet with Vollar.

When an organisation wants to use the Vollar platform, they contact us and we help them setup an account. We usually do a strategy call to help them understand the best way to implement Vollar and train them on using the platform (this is moving to video tutorials). Some customers prefer to bring us out to their site to help them with setup in the community, this is billed separately.

There are also times that customers want or need more bespoke setups or integrations, in this case, the project is budgeted separately based on the customers' needs.

Vollar began in 2018 as a non-profit organisation but encountered many obstacles to raising funding. We were encouraged by an investment firm to find a model to make Vollar commercial, based on some of their past experiences with social enterprises. We took this advice.

We reregistered Vollar as a commercial company at the beginning of 2019, after raising investment from a European investor and launched our first pilot. It took a few attempts to settle on a pricing model that we felt worked for Vollar, but we landed our first commercial customer in the 3rd quarter of 2019.

Until now, Vollar has relied primarily on investment and grant funding to grow. 

We started selling at the start of 2020 to generate recurring revenue, but Covid-19 put us in a challenging position. Many deals fell through as a result of lockdowns. However, we've made it through, and are seeing renewed interest in Vollar as organisations are commencing social development programs.

Funding

2018
$12 000 - Investment from Kyle Ueckermann
$5 000 - Grant from SAAYC

2019
$57 000 - Investment from Daniel James
$40 000 - Grant from SAB Foundation

Revenue
2019: $1 000 2020: $100 000 (Projected Pre-Covid) | $20 000 (Projected Post-Covid) 2021: $200 000 (Projected) 

We are currently raising an equity investment round of $300 000 for a 10 stake in the company. We aim to close a deal by September 2020.

Our monthly expenses are currently ~$5000 per month.
Our estimated total expenses for 2020 will be ~$80 000.

Our expenses are primarily human resources for development, marketing, and sales.

Working with Solve will give us exposure and trust from international funders that are conducting work in Africa. Having these funders on our side, will provide us with the necessary network of organisations and donors to scale Vollar throughout Africa.

The expertise within the Solve community will give us access to individuals with the knowledge and experience to help us scale Vollar.

We recognise that for Vollar to scale it requires funders buy-in to the vision and trust the process. We believe that in order to build that trust, we need to document more success stories, gain recognition from influential organisations such as Solve, and acquire trusted board members with networks and influence.

Skoll Foundation - To gain partners for scaling.

USAID - To have Vollar introduced as a tool that can be included into the work they are doing.