“We provide solutions to local communities with both affordable and no-cost access to technology.”
Our mission is to empower small businesses and nonprofits to thrive in the digital age by providing innovative products, solutions, resources, and support to overcome financial constraints and knowledge gaps. We aim to be the foundation upon which local companies and society can build their digital expertise, harness emerging technologies, and navigate the dynamic landscape with confidence and adaptability, ensuring they seize future opportunities and achieve their goals.
Bridging Technology and Communities
Today, we need to leverage various approaches using different tools to optimize our operations, enabling us to concentrate on our core mission. That’s precisely why Bridgetoengage was established—to connect technology as a pillar for communities, empowering them to amplify their visibility, stay engaged, and thrive in the digital realm.
The Story
As a newcomer in town, I struggled to find essential services without local recommendations. My initial online search revealed a surprising lack of local service providers within a 10-mile radius, which seemed quite unusual for the town’s size. It wasn’t that these services didn’t exist; rather, they lacked an online presence.
Eddi – founder
Over time, I began to connect with local residents, and conversations increasingly revolved around the challenges small businesses face, particularly due to COVID and inflation. A common thread was their lack of a professional website to promote their services, often because they couldn’t find an affordable solution.
Drawing from my digital technology background, I witnessed numerous businesses dissatisfied with their websites, whether free or paid. Some had even invested significant sums in websites that were nonfunctional or untrustworthy. From my experience, I realized that businesses without professional websites were less likely to succeed. This led me to the idea of Bridge to Engage, which aims to support not only our neighbours but also small businesses, communities, and non-profit organizations. I firmly believe that mutual support is the key to empowering local enterprises.
The No-Cost Model
Our journey led us to a crucial realization: giving away isn’t new, but making it sustainable is the challenge. We’ve worked hard to ensure that our own investments, along with donations, can keep this project going.
We understand that not everyone can contribute financially, and that’s okay. As small businesses and local groups experience the benefits of our work, we believe they’ll naturally want to support us in their unique ways, like spreading the word or sharing success stories.
Instead of charging fees for digital transformation, we’ve chosen a donation-based approach (or volunteer contribution). This allows us to offer free services to everyone who needs them, fostering a community where people and businesses collaborate to empower local enterprises and enhance their online presence.
Infrastructure
As mentioned in the vision, we will have many initiatives. Qualitative initiatives might not require many resources apart from skills and knowledge, but quantitative initiatives might pose a problem, and this is where we need the most funds. When you create a new website, unless you only provide the design, you will need servers and hosting providers. We want to go beyond that by sustaining cloud servers, using a DXP platform, data servers, or other technologies to enable digital transformation. This is real and needs to be maintained somehow.
We deliver tangible outcomes by not only supporting but also offering infrastructure for free. And this is what we are aiming for. It’s about providing the entire supply chain at no cost or at a very low cost.
Growth Success
What do we do when a business is successful? I’m not sure if it really happens. Success isn’t a one-time event; it’s a continuous process of sustaining that success. However, once we feel the business can fly independently, it’s time to release it strongly into the market. We back up our clients, making sure they continue to thrive. But as they thrive, we may be unable to support them through our free scheme. However, when we look at it from an ROI perspective, the business would be able to invest in its digital presence as they earn more money.
What about communities? Communities are different; they need constant support, and we will continue to support them long into the future.