Hello Simbi Community!
We’re excited to send our first regular monthly update about Simbi’s progress! Our most exciting news:
Simbi is now a registered non-profit!
That’s right, Simbi is now an IRS-certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization! This gives us a lot more flexibility in terms of getting volunteer help, fundraising, and creating a great community-building experience, all while helping members grow personally and professionally through skill-sharing. Read on to find out more!
Optional Simbi Supporter Badges
As part of our journey towards becoming a nonprofit, we introduced the Simbi Supporter Badge to enable voluntary financial support of Simbi’s mission. Simbi will always be free to use, but those who are willing and able can now support us financially for those things for which we cannot trade skills, such as paying for web hosting. You can see all of our regular monthly expenses on our Operational Expenses page. Because we are now a nonprofit organization, we are able to provide tax receipts for any donations!
Nonprofit & Professional Organizations can now have Simbi Accounts
Nonprofit representatives and professionals who operate under a brand can now set up additional Organization accounts — like Facebook “Pages” — to represent their work!
Nonprofit Organization accounts are entirely free (but are reviewed for validity by Simbi’s team), and provide big simbi credit budgets to help them get the help they need from volunteers in the Simbi community — who, in being helpful to charities, grow their skill set and earn simbi credits to get their own wants & needs met.
Professionals can also set up branded account profiles to represent their businesses by creating a Pro Organization and making the Org a Simbi Supporter. This creates a mutually beneficial relationship, as Simbi can use the funds to keep the Simbi community growing, while professionals get extra visibility that will directly help to grow their brand and business. As always, your contributions as a Simbi Supporter are tax deductible!
Have a big project to complete?
Organizations, Nonprofits, and Simbi Supporters can now create groups of requests called Projects on Simbi, assign a simbi credit budget to the project, and break that project down into individual chunks. As each chunk of a project is completed, the simbi budget will be updated across the project.
Become a Simbi Expert!
Simbians can now gain Expert and Top Expert badges for their experience sharing skills on the platform.
To get the Expert badge, complete 5 or more deals with unique Simbi users and maintain an 80% Expert rating in the category of their expertise, as measured by a new question that service recipients answer during the rating process. You’ll also need to maintain an overall rating of 4.5 or more.
To get top expert status, maintain a 90% Expert rating for deals in your category, and a 4.8+ overall rating.
Simbi is OFFICIALLY a registered non-profit organization!
Simbi operates as a volunteer-led California nonprofit corporation, and on April 28th, 2021, Simbi was granted 501(c)(3) non-profit status by the IRS! We deeply appreciate those Simbi Supporters who choose to support the platform financially—they help us keep Simbi’s servers running! Now, all Supporter contributions (all the way back to January 8th, 2021, and in the future) are tax-deductible!
Our transition to an IRS-approved non-profit, volunteer-led organization also means we can utilize the talents of volunteers to keep the community growing, and we can also pursue grants only available to registered nonprofits. These grants can help us keep the lights on and continue to pursue our mission towards a kinder, gentler world where we help each other become the best we can be by sharing our skills and knowledge with one another.
We are so excited to keep growing the community, helping our members grow their skills and make friendships—and keep you informed of our progress along the way.
Become a Monthly (or yearly) Simbi Supporter today!
Your donation is tax deductible!
Not ready for a monthly commitment? Make a one-time donation, also tax deductible.
Can’t make a financial donation? Consider helping the Simbi mission by becoming a volunteer! Say hello in the volunteer channel of our new Discord Server and let us know how you would like to help!
Stay tuned for next month’s newsletter, and reach out any time with questions or ideas at hey@simbi.com!
Newsletter written by Mariana Abeid-McDougall, volunteer Simbi freelance writer.
Mariana Abeid-McDougall is a freelance writer and a long-time member of the community. She’s thrilled to be a volunteer writer for Simbi. You can read more of her writing at www.marianamcdougall.com, and check out her Simbi offerings here.
