In 2022, The Fintech Times posed the question: ‘what sets a ‘fintech for good’ company apart from the rest?’. This year, we wanted to hear directly from global fintechs that align themselves with the ‘fintech for good’ ethos. Why do these companies perceive themselves as agents of positive change in the industry?
Today, Cheddar Up‘s CEO Nichole Montoya sheds light on the company’s perspective as a fintech for good and its commitment to empowering communities through impactful partnerships.
Nichole Montoya, CEO and co-founder of Cheddar Up
Introduce Cheddar Up
Cheddar Up helps group organisers collect payments and forms online, for free. Organisers can create a page in minutes for almost anything…membership fees, HOA dues, tuition, spirit wear, troop dues, group gifts, after-school programs, events, fundraisers and beyond.
The purpose-built platform has features group organisers need, including robust tracking and reporting, fundraising and ecommerce add-ons, messaging, forms, waivers, sign ups, point of sale, easy hand-off and more.
Why do you think your company is a ‘fintech for good’?
Cheddar Up’s purpose and mission illustrate its focus on doing good. Its purpose – empowering communities to streamline their work and advance their missions through beautiful, flexible technology – sums it up.
Cheddar Up does this through its commitment to providing easy-to-use tools that help group organisers collect payments and information so they can save time and do more for their communities. Cheddar Up works with more than 100,000 groups, organisations and non profits to help them easily collect payments and forms.
In addition, Cheddar Up has a growing number of partnerships with Girl Scout councils across the country – the Girl Scouts of Northern California, the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles, the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta, just to name a few. It has over 20 partnerships in place with more launching ongoing.
Cheddar Up is passionate about empowering young females and works to do its part by making financial management easier (and free) for Girl Scout troops. When Cheddar Up partners with a Girl Scout council, it offers discounted fees for cookie sales as well as its highest monthly subscription plan for free in perpetuity to each individual troop within that region. This is over $400/troop/year multiplied by thousands of troops that Cheddar Up gives away for free.
How do you measure your impact?
Cheddar Up measures its impact by the number of nonprofits and groups it serves and what they’re able to do as a result of its platform. For example, Cheddar Up serves more than 100,000 groups and nonprofits who have created over 225,000 online collection pages on Cheddar Up and collected over $350million for everything from spiritwear sales to troop dues to fun runs.
And, of course, Cheddar Up also measures its impact by customer feedback. Cheddar Up takes its users’ feedback seriously and credits it to its success to date. Cheddar Up also has a 4.9 rating on Capterra, a leading vendor marketplace within the software industry.
What more can be done to make finance more ethical, transparent and accessible?
In the world of finance and fintechs, a lot can be done to make the ecosystem more ethical, transparent and accessible. When focusing on the fintech platforms and services themselves, these platforms can be more transparent and concise as it relates to their fees, products, and risks associated with them. Fintechs can also play a big role in financial literacy and inclusion by creating products that serve a wide tech fluency (and age range).
This is one area where Cheddar Up excels – with every new feature, Cheddar Up is designing with extreme ease in mind to enable all groups and non-profits to move online (and collect more) even if they are not technology or finance savvy. Its goal is to create highly accessible technology – available for free – with little to no instruction or education to get started.
The same applies for inclusion as it relates to hiring in the finance workplace. The finance industry has long been known for lacking racial and gender diversity and there is more work to be done here. The benefit of doing so can lead to better decision making and help address biases and foster inclusivity across the industry.
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