Dear Tomek,
It is not easy to put your work out there for others to review, I think it takes even more courage to share this personal story and venture when it has even more immediacy to the wellbeing of your learners. I send you a warm virtual embrace.
Your 1 minute pitch was definitely more marketing oriented, rather than geared to an investor market. However, given that in your environment, funders may not really understand what you are trying to do, giving them an example of what the beneficiaries will hear and how they might be feeling might give investors something more tangible. I also loved the imagery and voiceover. I thought your metaphor of a bamboo forest and other students being in the same place a sense that they were not alone. It was peaceful and meditative. At about 0:54, you might want to change the line about Bamboo Dan leading them to another way or the light, it felt a too focused on Bamboo Dan being the only answer.
How it works. Appreciate that you have an example in the Good2Talk site. It gives me a clearer picture of what you are trying to accomplish. However it also seems like you are trying to do a lot more than counselling, you are also trying to be a place for learners to engage with professors about homework. I wonder if you might be doing too much and then your customer doesn’t know exactly how to engage. Also because of the professor presence will that confuse the anonymity of the site?
You might want to consider just focusing on one aspect, it will help you focus your campaign and allow others to understand how they might fund or volunteer with the project. If you have too many things going on you will have less time to vision and steward all of the different areas; perhaps grow each section in different phases.
Costs. I see that you have lots of volunteers and people that want to support the initiative. This is great, the momentum in crisis brings a lot of energy to the mission. I wonder though about how you make this sustainable. Who are paid? Who volunteer? What are your fixed and variable costs. You should start breaking this down. Also as a Not-for-Profit, you can calculate volunteer hours as in kind contributions and show funders in dollar amounts how much they are saving by having volunteers.
Wonderful initiative Tomek! I wish you every success in this project! Let me know when there is a Donate Now button on your site.
Sincerely,
Briar
