SA entrepreneurs only Aussies picked for Seattle accelerator
An Adelaide business working with more than 30,000 people and spreading its platform to the United Kingdom has been selected for a prestigious accelerator in the United States.
An Adelaide CEO and her business partner are heading to Seattle in early May after being selected for Social Entrepreneur Accelerator (SEA), a combined Amazon Web Services and Deloitte initiative.
Dr Roxane Foulser-Piggott is the founder of Adelaide-based social enterprise FreddyMatch, a platform that matches volunteer vacancies with actual volunteers across Australia. FreddyMatch is currently the only Australian program selected to take part in the SEA.
Dr Foulser-Piggott, who will travel with her business partner Tega Nuki, says she was surprised at how big FreddyMatch had grown in its six years. The platform now works with about 300 charities across SA, with about 30,000 registered volunteers.
“I had no idea that it would get this big,” she said.
“And we are still growing. We also operate now in the UK as well. But yeah, when we started, we started out with 10 charities on the Gold Coast, and a handful of volunteers. So, yeah, it’s grown quite a lot more than I probably initially thought.”
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Dr Foulser-Piggott, who has a PhD in seismic risk in earthquakes from Imperial College in London and undertook doctoral research at Cambridge University, also spoke about the importance of FreddyMatch to charities.
Its foundation came after the loss of her first child Freddy, who lived for just 16 days after he was born in May 2017.
Wanting to make the most of her background and abilities, Dr Foulser-Piggott found it was difficult for volunteers to find good and rewarding work.
“Volunteering is in decline, and we’ve seen that regions that have started to use FreddyMatch have seen that decline reverse, and numbers start to come up again. So we’re an effective solution for kind of reinvigorating volunteering. One of the things we want to increase is the incentives for volunteers to engage with FreddyMatch and to keep on volunteering.”
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Recently, FreddyMatch developed a project on volunteer gamification, and this led to the invitation from AWS and Deloitte.
“This is a custom built set of tools that includes, badging and levelling up,” she said.
“Everything’s got gamification, right? Your Apple watch, every app you use. So this is just another way of encouraging volunteerism. AWS funded us with credits to do that development, and also with access to Solutions Architect. And then, because of that, we were invited to apply for the Social Entrepreneur Accelerator, and we got it. We’re the only company in Australia to be going, which is awesome.”
She also spoke about the potential benefits of SEA, as well as FreddyMatch’s ongoing relationship with Amazon Web Services.
“We’re really keen to not only develop some of the ideas that we’ve got but be able to better service the charities that are our members through improved features that we can now build because we have the support of AWS. I think that’s one of the challenges, we operate as a not for profit but that doesn’t mean that we are cutting corners.
“Operating the software is an expensive business, and through the support of people like AWS, who have a commitment to organisations that are trying to do good, we can do more.”
SEA will take place from May 4 to May 8 at AWS Skill Center in downtown Seattle. These dates coincide with the first ever SA Giving Week, which Dr Foulser-Piggott says FreddyMatch will also be presenting at.
“We’re doing a presentation at one of the events, and that’s to encourage people that it’s not just about giving money, it’s also about giving time.”
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