Greetings Piryx Friends!

On February 4, 2011, Piryx received the Reed Award for Best Online Fundraising Tool from Politics Magazine. We want to extend our thanks and gratitude to the judges and Politics Magazine for granting us this award. Most importantly, we want to thank all those who have chosen us as their fundraising solution.

The Reed Award is certainly an honor and recognition of our hard work, and we will continue working towards creating the best online fundraising tools and experience for political entrepreneurs across the globe.

Offering a dynamic, and easy-to-use fundraising platform, our fundraising solution was the go-to choice for thousands of causes of all sizes in 2010, and political entrepreneurs in particular. We wouldn’t be here without our loyal user base, and we’re going to keep pushing forward to empower causes across the globe.

Be on the lookout in 2011 as we help change the world. You can read more about this award here.

Thank you,
Tom Serres
Piryx Founder and CEO

The weekend of January 14-16 was an exciting one for us as we had the opportunity to support charities participating in National Give Camp. We had our support troops on call during the event, fielding questions from both developers and charities.

One of the organizations we worked with was the non-profit St. Vincent de Paul Pro-Life Homeless Inc. The non-profit serves as an advocate for the homeless, and strives to increase public awareness of homelessness and its social impact. Read more about them on their site.

Founded in 2007, the Give Camp has provided benefits to over 150 charities. For charities looking to revamp their online presence and technical needs, Give Camp is the place to go. If you’re a developer looking to participate, visit their site and look for your city.

For our first Charity Spotlight of the year, we wanted to feature the Saint Mary’s High School Scholarship Fund. Based out of Phoenix, Arizona, they’re using Piryx to raise funds to provide tuition assistance to students with a demonstrated financial need, as well as provide funding for capital improvements, and assist faculty and staff of Saint Mary’s High School.

Saint Mary’s High School is a Roman Catholic, co-educational high school, and they serve the greater Phoenix area. It is the oldest Catholic high school in Arizona, and has been around since 1917. According to their website, they entered the 2009-2010 school year with 713 enrolled students, and emphasize spiritual, academic, social, and personal growth.

We look forward to the growing number of causes that use Piryx for their Fundraising initiatives. We want to wish Saint Mary’s School the best of luck in their efforts. Please visit their website to learn more about this cause, and how to support their scholarship fund.

Happy 2011! We’re starting the year off with a bang by partnering up with GiveCamp. This year they’ll be throwing a National GiveCamp initiative that brings together non-profits from across the country, and an army of engineers donating their time and talent. The National GiveCamp will commence January 14-16. This will be one passion (and Red Bull) fueled weekend that’ll make a huge difference for local communities. Other GiveCamp partners include Microsoft, PepsiCo, and O’Reilly Media.

Developers, designers, and project managers will work with each charity to build websites, custom software solutions, and other web tools. The only requirement is that projects must be completed by the weekend. Piryx will be on hand to provide support as developers get their hands dirty with our API, and integrate our fundraising solution. We’ve helped charities all over the world with their fundraising efforts, and are stoked about this event.

GiveCamp has fourteen chapters that will be participating, included below:

• Atlanta, Georgia
• Austin, Texas
• Birmingham, Alabama
• Colorado Springs, Colorado
• Clayton, Missouri
• Dallas, Pennsylvania
• Dallas, Texas
• Fayetteville, Arkansas
• Houston, Texas
• Malvern, Pennsylvania
• Nashville, Tennessee
• New York City, New York
• Phoenix, Arizona
• Redmond, Washington

Founded in 2007, the GiveCamp program has provided benefits to all types of charities. Want to participate in an upcoming GiveCamp? For charities looking to revamp their online presence and technical needs, GiveCamp is the place to go. If you’re a developer looking to participate, visit their site and look for your city.

We want to congratulate the Fundraiser 7 team for taking the top prize in a recent Start up Weekend San Francisco event. Working around the clock, the Fundraiser 7 team came out top among 70 ideas pitched. Fundraiser 7 is an app built on the Piryx online fundraising platform. Check out this video from the Fundraiser 7 team about their win!

Startup Weekend is a non-profit based out of Seattle, WA, and they run weekend-long brainstorming sessions for entrepreneurs around the world. To date, they’ve brought together 15,000 entrepreneurs from 100 different countries.

Fundraiser 7 is an event-ticketing solution that simplifies the event registration process for donors. Free to use, you can promote it through Facebook, blog, website, and more. Keep your eyes peeled for integration with OAuth, allowing for users to sign up for Fundraiser 7 via their Piryx account.

We want to bring attention to another recent Piryx customer, the Estria Foundation, an organization that aims to reinvent people by working with them to reinvent the spaces they live in through public art projects that involve local communities. We had the opportunity to catch up with Development Director Maggie Utgoff, who was gracious enough to shed light on their work. We learned of the foundation’s mission, the artist himself, and some of their projects.

While the foundation was recently established in September of this year, Estria himself has been painting murals for over twenty years in various parts of the world. From Honduras to San Francisco, his murals have inspired folks to paint their own murals, and create work with empowering messages that serve their surrounding communities. His work is at the heart of the foundation’s mission. As stated on their site, they strive to “shift the social consciousness on critical human and environment issues through education, art projects and community events globally.”

One of their up and coming projects exemplifies this mission. For the next 12 months, the foundation will be working with communities to create 10 different murals in 10 different cities focused on the issue of water. These works will be open to the public, and incorporate local culture. The idea is to engage communities across the globe in a dialogue on water and its future.

“We want bring people and communities together on this issue,” said Utgoff. Be on the lookout for this ambitious initiative in 2011.

Prior to the Estria Foundation, Utgoff worked for Twitter for two years, and most recently worked on the Jerry Brown for Governor campaign. Her business background coupled with her passion to enact change compelled her to take part in this special cause. Please visit their site to learn more about their work, latest projects, and how you can help. We want to thank Maggie for sharing her time with us.

The diversity of Piryx users has grown tremendously over the course of the past year, serving political campaigns, PTA clubs, alumni groups, and personal fundraising efforts. For this edition of our Charity Spotlight, we want to feature a student film project that recently signed up for our service. The film is South of Black Drink Crier, and is directed by University of Missouri student Kenneth Wheeler. In our interview, he discussed the inspiration behind the film, their fundraising efforts, and future exhibition.

Wheeler came upon the idea for the film while researching 19th century history in Missouri. The facts that ground the film include an incident that occurred in Osceola, Missouri on September 21, 1861. Union troops raided the western counties of Missouri, reducing the town to ashes in less than 24 hours. While justified by the Union as a means to prevent supplies reaching the Confederate Army, many of those who lost their home had no affiliations with the Confederacy. The story itself revolves around a woman named Evelyn, disguised as a Union soldier looking for her missing father.

“As far fetched as it sounds, there was a startling amount of women dressed as soldiers during the Civil War. Whether it was to accompany their lovers into battle or escape the monotony of domestic life during war, it seemed an interesting scenario to depict throughout the film,” said Wheeler.

The project is in the process of raising funds to portray some of the more intricate scenes of the film, including the burning of Osceola. Once completed, Wheeler hopes to showcase the film at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek 10th anniversary. The event anticipates more than 3,000 re-enactors and a huge crowd of spectators.

The biggest fundraising challenge Wheeler has faced is generating word-of-mouth buzz. However, as he mentions, “once people know what you’re trying to accomplish, especially as something intriguing as a Civil War student film, people seem willing to donate their time and money.” As part of their fundraising drive, they’re currently using the Piryx Cause Donate Tab on their Facebook page.

We want to wish Kenneth the best of luck on the film and his future endeavors. For more information, please visit their site.