Beam

Beam's vision is to give all disadvantaged people access to the resources they need to be able to support themselves for the long-term. We believe that in our society this will primarily come through secure, well-paid work. Skilled training is vital, especially when so many unskilled jobs will be automated or off-shored. To provide these resources, we use technology to bring together large groups of people who can contribute a small amount of support. When hundreds of people come together, this adds up to a life-changing amount.

Beam's technology is scalable and flexible, and Beam's vision is to expand beyond homeless people to refugees, ex-offenders and people with disabilities. We will grow our community of supporters to millions of people around the world.

In 5 years, we'll have expanded our community to several countries, helping thousands of people a year into work and be saving millions of dollars for taxpayers.

The UK is experiencing a homelessness crisis. A large number of jobs in the UK are unskilled, poorly-paid and unstable, and people are struggling to support themselves. There are 320,000 homeless people in the UK, rising 60% since 2011. The majority live in homeless hostels, often for many years without support. With the UK government spending over £3 billion/year on housing them, a solution benefits everyone.

Beam is an online crowdfunding platform where the public funds training courses and professional qualifications for homeless people in hostels. Beam's flexible model removes financial barriers that homeless people face, and allows them to get skilled, secure jobs. This provides the foundations that allows them to move into their own homes and rebuild their lives.

Beam is also building new technology for homeless people which allows them to support each other and interact with donors.

Beam's Life-changing outcomes:
- 63 homeless people training up, from bricklayers to accountants
- 26 homeless people started work
- Realtime KPIs are shown on a Transparency Dashboard - https://beam.org/transparency

Crowdfunding traction
- >£320,000 raised in crowdfunded donations
- >11,000 donations with £0 marketing spend
- 100% of campaigns funded - 82 in total

EMPLOYMENT BARRIERS FOR HOMELESS PEOPLE
The vast majority of homeless people live in temporary hostels. They require a stable source of income to be able to move out and support themselves for the long-term. Most people have few vocational skills and require training in skilled work to be able to get these jobs, but have no money to afford training or related costs like travel, equipment and childcare. These financial barriers effectively exclude them from today's economy.

Beam flexibly funds these costs and empowers homeless people to train up and get into work, changing their lives for the long-term and allowing them to re-enter the economy. It also offers support and the social encouragement that motivates them throughout their journey.

CASE STUDIES
Adam was a former rough sleeper and drug user who raised £3,545 from 428 supporters to fund bricklayer training. He is now in full-time work and has just moved into his own flat. See: https://beam.org/campaigns/ada...

Regina was a homeless single mother living in a hostel who raised £3,920 from 598 supporters to fund dental nurse training and childcare. She is now working as a dental nurse during her training. See: https://beam.org/campaigns/reg...

BEAM'S STRATEGY

There are many people in the UK who are concerned at the homelessness crisis and want to help, but don't know how. Simultaneously, there are many homeless people who need help. Beam's strategy is that technology can be used to bring these people together in a way that is efficient, transparent and effective for the long-term.

This primarily happens through Beam's crowdfunding platform, where anyone can donate to pay for a homeless person's training. There is also crowdsourced social support, from encouraging messages that supporters send to Beam's service-users, and this will grow over time into other non-financial support like mentoring and work opportunities.

BEAM'S APPROACH

Beam's approach has 5 steps:
1. Each person on Beam is referred by a homeless charity or government body.
2. A Beam caseworker helps the service-user to choose a career based on their strengths and aspirations and they identify training and related costs that will allow access to that career.
3. A crowdfunding campaign is launched on www.beam.org for anyone to donate to those costs. The average campaign is £3,500 ($4,400) and 100% have funded so far.
4. Beam supports the service-user through training and into work, supporting them to apply to jobs and connecting them to employers. Anyone who donated to the campaign is updated throughout the journey via emails.
5. Once the homeless person is in stable, paid work, they provide mentorship to new Beam service users and donate to future campaigns.

All updates on Beam service-users' progress are published on our newsfeed at www.beam.org/news.

Beam is a truly innovative solution compared to the services that already exist to help homeless people into work:

GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT SERVICES - Job Centres, run by the UK government, are the main organisation that helps unemployed people into work. However, they rarely focus on the problems that homeless people have, and have limited ability to remove financial barriers that stop homeless people getting secure jobs. By providing this funding, Beam has created a new solution for homeless people above what Job Centres can provide.

HOMELESS CHARITIES - We wouldn't normally call homeless charities our competitors, because we work closely with them to take referrals! However, they are the other organisations offering services to homeless people. Their focus is usually on the hard-to-help people with complex needs (e.g. drug-dependent rough sleepers), whereas Beam focuses on providing an employment service to people living in hostels - who can often be there for years with little support. This overlooked group is not only much more helpable, but roughly 30 times larger!

TECHNOLOGY BRINGS SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITIES TOGETHER

Beam's unique online platform combines crowdfunding (e.g. Kickstarter, GoFundMe) with a community of social support, where members of the public post message of encouragement to homeless people and can follow their progress through training and into work.

The crowdfunding campaigns give donors unprecedented transparency into where their money goes, with an online budget to the nearest pound (with links to all items), details on the training course and a timeline of the homeless person's plan to move through training and into work.

You can see Beam's current campaigns at www.beam.org/campaigns, and see the latest news from the homeless people at www.beam.org/news

As Beam further builds out this platform, we want to bring in more opportunities for non-financial support - for example, mentoring and crowdsourcing of job opportunities.

TECHNOLOGY FOR HOMELESS PEOPLE
Beam believes that technology is for all. Beyond the public-facing crowdfunding website, Beam is also making groundbreaking technology for homeless people themselves - almost all of whom now have smartphones. Homeless people get a unique user experience allowing them to update their donors and encourage other people facing their challenges via a personalised news feed.

Over time, this will develop to offer a digital community where they can offer advice and mentoring to other people on the same career pathway or in similar circumstances. This is updating the powerful concept of peer support for the 21st century.

Beam's most significant social impact is in enabling homeless people to improve their skills and get into well-paid work, empowering them to rebuild their lives and be reintegrated into society. Beam publishes all of our social impact data live on our transparency dashboard: www.beam.org/transparency

Key metrics that measure Beam's achievements since launch in 2017 are:

- 82 campaigns funded, with over £320,000 ($415,000) in donations and 100% funding rate
- 31 people completed training (83% completion rate)
- 26 started work (70% job start rate)
- Of those starting work, average time out of work before Beam was 4.3 years
- Average salary for those starting work is £24,000 ($30,000) - 20% over London Living Wage.
- 19 people moved into permanent housing

The total economic impact for the UK taxpayer from Beam's work to date is estimated at £500,000 ($630,000), based on work done with Deloitte. This comes from reduced spending on housing support and welfare and increased tax revenue from Beam graduates in work.

GOALS FOR THE NEXT YEAR
Based on Beam's success in the pilot phase, we are looking to scaling up to reach many more people:

Grow number of work starts - 100 over the next year (26 to date)
Grow community of supporters - reach 10,000 people who have donated (3,078 to date)

This is alongside making sure that our first commissioned work with the UK government runs successfully.

PRIORITISING WELLBEING OF HOMELESS PEOPLE

Beam brings together the approaches of fast-growth tech start-ups and the public sector. One conflict between these mentalities is in the approach to innovating and trying new things: an organisation must not ‘move fast and break things’ if people’s lives are at stake! Beam aims to tread the middle ground between the approaches and develop an innovative approach to solving homelessness without putting any individuals at risk. We do this by:

• Co-designing services with the homeless people we work with and collecting frequent feedback from them about all aspects of Beam

• Collaborating closely with homeless charities and government partners. We designed the service with them and rely on them for referrals for homeless people joining Beam. We are not looking to ‘disrupt’ the existing solutions to homelessness in the UK - rather we want to work with them and add to them

SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH GOVERNMENT SALES

Making revenue from the government is notoriously difficult for small innovative companies. We have mitigated this risk by pursuing several different paths to government commissioning (different departments, local and central government, subcontracting from larger suppliers). In the future we will develop ancillary revenue streams from recruitment fees.

Despite this perceived difficulty, we have found that government has been extremely supportive of Beam. Beam fills a significant need, with growing homelessness in the UK and spiralling costs. Due to this, Beam has started our first commissioned pilot, with Hammersmith and Fulham council, only 18 months after launching.

PRIORITISING WELLBEING OF HOMELESS PEOPLE

Beam brings together the approaches of fast-growth tech start-ups and the public sector. One conflict between these mentalities is in the approach to innovating and trying new things: an organisation must not ‘move fast and break things’ if people’s lives are at stake! Beam aims to tread the middle ground between the approaches and develop an innovative approach to solving homelessness without putting any individuals at risk. We do this by:

• Co-designing services with the homeless people we work with and collecting frequent feedback from them about all aspects of Beam

• Collaborating closely with homeless charities and government partners. We designed the service with them and rely on them for referrals for homeless people joining Beam. We are not looking to ‘disrupt’ the existing solutions to homelessness in the UK - rather we want to work with them and add to them

SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH GOVERNMENT SALES

Making revenue from the government is notoriously difficult for small innovative companies. We have mitigated this risk by pursuing several different paths to government commissioning (different departments, local and central government, subcontracting from larger suppliers). In the future we will develop ancillary revenue streams from recruitment fees.

Despite this perceived difficulty, we have found that government has been extremely supportive of Beam. Beam fills a significant need, with growing homelessness in the UK and spiralling costs. Due to this, Beam has started our first commissioned pilot, with Hammersmith and Fulham council, only 18 months after launching.

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Beam is based and operates in London, UK. It currently has 7 employees.

TECH EXPERTISE
CEO Alex Stephany's background in growing tech start-ups is augmented by Beam's employees and advisors. Beam's Head of Engineering, Julian Keenaghan, has a Master's degree in Machine Learning and is an experienced CTO, building the core technology for several high-profile start-ups in London's tech scene (Cleo, Tastebuds).

Beam is advised by luminaries from the UK tech scene, including the co-founders of Booking.com, Funding Circle, WorldRemit and Photobox.

HOMELESS EXPERTISE
Beam's COO, Seb Barker, has 9 years' experience working in homelessness and healthcare in the UK, including working on homelessness innovation in London. Beam is advised by high-profile experts from the public sector, including Jeremy Swain who runs the UK Government's Rough Sleeping Taskforce and was the former CEO of Thames Reach, one of the UK's biggest homeless charities, and Sarah Jordan who was the former Head of Digital at Oxfam.

BRINGING TOGETHER THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
For the first time, Beam brings together the best of the public sector and the best of tech to solve homelessness in the UK. Beam brings innovation, technology and the ability to move fast from the world of tech, and the person-centred approach and social mission from the public sector. This combination can be a catalyst to solving one of the most complex social issues in the world.

Beam's model is collaborative at heart. We are partnering with:

- Over 50 homelessness charities in London who refer their residents to Beam to be supported into well-paid work

- The Mayor of London and 2 district councils in London (Hammersmith & Fulham and Southwark) to refer homeless residents to Beam to be supported into well-paid work

- Best-in-class training providers to train homeless people up in careers from plumbing to accountancy

- Employers in London who provide stable, well-paid work

Beam generates revenue through government commissioning. As each homeless person costs the government over £10,000 ($13,000) annually, Beam's service to support people out of homelessness for the long-term brings large financial benefit to the government.

The first commissioned pilots have started with a local London government (Hammersmith and Fulham). The council will refer 50 homeless people to Beam to crowdfund training and be supported into work. Part of Beam's fee is outcome based upon job starts, minimising risk for the government.

Beam's scalable approach means that Beam's costs are a fraction of the £10,000 that government saves, so the unit economics are mutually positive: Beam can be financially stable, government can save money and homeless people can get into work.

With more local and central government departments interested in working with Beam, there is a clear path to sustainable growth. Beam expects to be profitable by 2021.

If Beam receives support and funding from MIT Solve, these resources would contribute to hiring a second developer joining Beam. 

All of Beam's technology to date, including the crowdfunding platform and the technology for homeless people to use, has been developed by one developer. As Beam grows, there are huge opportunities to build more world-first technology and push the boundaries of support for homeless people globally. This includes more digital peer support for the homeless people on Beam and more mentoring opportunities. Therefore a second developer will greatly improve Beam's impact.

Beam has built the most innovative solution in the UK to foster prosperity and social mobility for the homeless community by funding employment training, including in STEM subjects such as Electrical Engineering.

Now Beam wants to grow our impact to reach more people around the world. The funding and the external recognition that the GM Prize on Community-Driven Innovation provides will increase the speed and scale at which we can do this.

Beam has built the most innovative solution in the UK to foster prosperity and social mobility for the homeless community by funding employment training.

Now Beam wants to grow our impact to reach more people around the world. The funding and the external recognition that the Morgridge Family Foundation Community-Driven Innovation Prize provides will increase the speed and scale at which we can do this.