FundU 3 Minute Pitch

Turning everyday commerce into a fundraising engine - FundU

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Inspiration

Fundu was inspired by two problems I experienced firsthand. Growing up in a single-parent household where my mom ran a small business, I saw how difficult it is to generate consistent customers and how much financial stress comes from slow months. At the same time, I’ve been part of organizations that struggled to raise money, often relying on repetitive fundraisers or donation drives that lead to donor fatigue. I realized these two problems could actually solve each other if there was a system connecting them.

What it does

Fundu is a marketplace that enables organizations to raise money by selling products and services from local businesses. Organizations can browse business-backed fundraising offers and launch campaigns in minutes, while businesses gain access to new customers through purpose-driven commerce. Payments are handled securely through Stripe, with automatic revenue splits between businesses and organizations, and a small platform fee added on top for supporters.

How we built it

Fundu was built using a mobile-first approach with a React Native frontend and a Django backend, supported by a MySQL database hosted on AWS. Stripe Connect is used to handle secure payments and automatic fund distribution. The platform is designed to support dynamic campaign creation, organization onboarding, and vendor offer management, with future plans for POS integrations through APIs and webhooks.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was designing a system that works for both organizations and businesses while keeping the experience simple. Balancing flexibility in profit splits and fulfillment methods with a clean user experience required careful planning. Another challenge was structuring payments and payouts correctly using Stripe, especially when handling different types of organizations and ensuring secure, scalable transactions.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

We’ve successfully built a working foundation of the platform and validated strong interest from both organizations and businesses. We’ve onboarded our first business partner, Paint and Sip Depot, and secured pilot commitments from organizations like Queen City Robotics Alliance and The Boost Pad. We’ve also completed meaningful customer discovery across multiple student organizations, confirming the need for a more scalable fundraising solution.

What we learned

We learned that fundraising isn’t just a financial problem, it’s an infrastructure problem. Organizations don’t just need better tools; they need more options and repeatable systems. We also learned that businesses are open to participating in fundraising when it drives real customer demand, especially if the process is seamless and doesn’t disrupt their existing operations.

What’s next for FundU

Our next step is launching our V1 marketplace in early May with an initial group of local businesses and organizations. From there, we will focus on scaling supply and demand within local markets. In V2, we plan to introduce API and webhook integrations with POS systems like Square, Clover, and NCR, enabling automatic inventory syncing and order routing. This will also allow us to expand to larger chain partners who already run fundraising programs but lack a centralized, scalable system.

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