Plan Narrative

The first step on the path to Smiles.. seed funding

A large portion of my music efforts over the past 20 years has been devoted to working with children... From my success in this field, I have discovered my passion in life has been and continues to be performing for children in need.. Whether due to a medical ailment, financial hardship, family issues or socio-economic condition there are countless children in our world today that simply need to smile...and their parents along with them. Many are facing economic hardships brought forth by the overwhelming adversities that a family illness can bring with it. At my hundreds of events and benefit concerts annually I have witnessed first hand the uplifting spirit of what music can provide and the power of the smile it delivers. I feel very strongly that there needs to be a focused effort to make this happen as often as possible by bringing together spirited musicians with these children and their families. Like make-a-wish grants wishes to children...Songs for Smiles hopes to not only create smiles, but also in doing so, use this pool of musical resources to help raise money for families with children in need. Live music can connect emotionally to an audience like no other medium and there are 1000s and 1000s of musicians across the country, that can help to spread the smiles...with a professional, organized platform . Nothing exists quite like it today. My goal is to make it happen with Songs for Smiles. Those of you that know me, know my work ethic is relentless and I will not quit until I have achieved a goal. As an Entrepreneur I have launched and run many successful companies. I know what it takes to launch and succeed in a Startup. I plan to work tirelessly and with the utmost professionalism to make Songs for Smiles a success...continuously filling the air with music for children in need...creating smiles in times of uncertainty and hope in time of despair. I know this will present some interesting challenges but I am ready to work hard and work through all the adversities... The combination of my music background, empathy with the target audience and business/technology experience and expertise put me in a unique position to achieve success. This is not just some random idea...it is a well thought out and carefully structured business plan including marketing, crowd funding, social platforms integration, traditional fundraising and Public Relations along with innovative mobile technology integration. In order to launch we need seed funding or pro bono help in the following categories Legal/Attorney... Videographer/Photographer... Social media campaign director, Fundraiser... Web/mobile app developer with strong DB expenses and Meeting and General operating expenses. Our initial fundraising goal to launch is $100,000 or a combination of monetary funding and pro bono contributors equal to the same. I will take on the responsibilities of running the organization. Once we achieve this "runway funding" we will continue our fundraising efforts on a larger scale. All of the contributions will be tax deductible initially through our Fiscal Sponsor - Fractured Atlas (fracturedatlas.com) and eventually through our 501(3)(c). The goal of our initial fundraising effort is to provide sufficiant startup captial to be able to fully launch our operations within a 12 month period. I truly understand that these are difficult economic times and our road will not be an easy one, but I am confident that the music will lead the way to success. Initially it is my intention to create awareness and hopefully with that, the funding/help will follow. To that end I would appreciate your spreading the word of our mission by directing your friends and family to our website and they may be able to, in turn, proliferate our dream to others. *Fractured Atlas is a world renowned non profit organization for social issues and the arts. Part of our initial fundraising effort is to pay for the application and legal costs of becoming a non-profit. In the interim we have applied to and been accepted by fractured atlas to provide fiscal sponsorship for our project allowing them to handle all of the transactions to be exclusively directed to our cause and fully tax deductible to our donors.

Fitting all the pieces together...

Outline of how it will all work when completed --- the "nuts and bolts" of the operation.

At it's core Songs for Smiles is building a community of musicians, hospitals (referred to throught this document as hospitals but essenitally any facility or oganization working with children "in need"), families with special needs and the general public. Technically we will be building the DB infrastructure to securely and confidentially assemble all the relevant data for the parties involved... Musicians, Hospitals, Families and The General Public. We also plan to maintain a DB of facilites (ie concert halls, schools libarites, ect.)where we may be able to coordinate benefit shows.
Our technology will be able to coordinate all of the requirements and logistics of each party to keep the live music playing as often as possible. The Musicians with be curated and vetted, The Children's Hospitals will be researched, contacted, communicated with and setup in our database with their unique needs and requirements. Families with children that have special needs will have their own private access to our site and the General Public will have accsss to all the exciting News and Public Events on a National and most importantly, their local level.

Each party (other than the general public) will have a secure login user name and password. Musicians will have access to their account information, calendar, blog, song and video uploads, merchandising and secure communications with their local hospitals. Hospitals will have access to search and communicate with our musician database, input their facility requirements, application processing, Events Calendar, and Blogging tools. Families with specail needs will be able to privately submit fundraising ideas and requests as well as blog about how our music shows have impacted their lives and their children. The General Public will have be able to ready about the exciting events and News of the project, buy merchandise, listen to Artists, view their local calendar of events and most importantly make donations... the lifeline of our project. Using IP filtering and zip code analysis we plan to give them the abilty to view national AND local news.

Social media will play a major role in our project. Complete integration with Facebook and Twitter will give us the opportuinty to grow exponentially. We will focus a great deal of our funding and personnel expenditures on keeping the message alive! We will be developing innovative mobile technologies to make that process even easier to capture special moments and Donate instantly whenever the music and smiles may move you.

Mobile will also play a large role in our strategy. All of our application tools will be available via a computer and/or any mobile device. We want everyone to be able to use any of our tools, information or to make donations via their mobile devices.

Our goal is to make all of the tools easy to use to make a seamless and frictionless environment for everyone.

I am currently working with highly skilled developers in Brazil, that I have close personal and business relationships with from my technology business, to formulate the structure and the code to make this all happen. Our current site has been setup to procure our seed funding which will help the site evolve as described above.

Sample Startup Budget Projections.
Please contact us for Detailed Budget

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