Dear friends and supporters,

I want to take this opportunity to wish you a magical and blessed 2019 💫

I’ve spent the past four years building the foundation for UpEffect in both a part and full-time capacity and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the consistent love and encouragement you’ve shown since our launch in 2016. We’ve enjoyed monumental learnings, successes, growth and positive impact. From awards and accolades, creating and delivering exciting new services, to forging amazing partnerships, the last two years have been filled with celebratory moments. One thing that has remained consistently true is that building an impactful business is no small undertaking – making a dent in the universe depends on a long road of small wins and we’re so thankful to have a gracious community to share this journey with. I store all of your personal thank you notes and kind messages in a special digital safe that I’ve lent on many occasions. Your words are our guiding light when things at times have not gone to plan which is often when delivering on a bold vision.

So what exactly have we been up to? We’re a small team building technology to launch products addressing today’s biggest problems including social injustice, climate change, global poverty, illiteracy and more. We founded UpEffect to eliminate the biggest problems plaguing the $2B crowdfunding industry: low success rates and harmful products. In the last two years, our company has become the go-to platform for entrepreneurs who are driven not by how much money they can make, but how many lives they can impact.

We’ve got an exciting year ahead but before we share our plans, we want to take a moment to celebrate some of our wins with you 💖:

• • • We’ve worked with over 30 social impact clients in varying capacities from 14 countries including UK, US, Uganda, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, New Zealand, Denmark, Pakistan, India and more

   

• • • We’ve helped 17 companies successfully raise £291,152 from thousands of ethical backers

   

• • • Our companies have shipped over 1,520 ethical products worldwide

   

• • • Our work has been recognised by Forbes, Financial Times, Thomson Reuters, Fast Company, TIMES, The Guardian, Huffington Post and more

   

• • • UpEffect became the world’s only crowdfunding platform with a 100% funding success rate

   

• • • We maintain a 100% reward fulfilment rate

   

• • • We built a profitable tech company without any investors, debt or external financing

   

• • • Awarded Business Woman of the Year by the Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in front of over 5,000 attendees and thousands tuning into the live stream

   

• • • Finalist: Entrepreneur of the year, Asian Achiever Awards and Asian Women of Achievement

   

  • • We’re the first crowdfunding platform to offer the choice of 200 currencies to campaign backers, marking the first step towards a truly international crowd. With this new update, entrepreneurship and financing now know no borders and they’re able to seamlessly facilitate cross border trade

   

• • • Named to Financial Times ‘Top 100 most influential BAME leaders in UK Tech’, Computer Weekly’s ‘Most Influential Women in Tech’ in 2017 and 2018 and Asians in Tech’s ’Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech 2018’ and more

   

• • • Spoke nationally and internationally on crowdfunding, ethical finance, sustainability and social entrepreneurship at GIES, Ernst & Young, LSE, London Fintech Week, NESTA, DazzleCon, Skoll World Forum Marmalade, Pfizer and more

   

• • • Guest Lectured at Warwick Business School, UCL, and University of Rochester

   

• • • Opened the London Stock Exchange with Masschallenge UK

   

• • • Won the SOCAP Scholarship

   

• • • Commissioned to write expert guides on sustainability, water conservation and hydration

   

• • • Launched Social Impact Reports

   

We’re excited for a big 2019 😍:

• • • UpEffect is hosting its first event – a live conversation with American Social Activist, Hoda Katebi, the voice behind JooJoo Azad, the radical, political fashion online publication hailed from BBC to VOGUE to the New York Times, and author of the book Tehran Streetstyle. The evening will highlight the impact of capitalism, fast fashion and consumption on our land and product makers and we’ll be discussing how we can build a financially equitable world with conscious capitalism. Tickets available here!

   

  

• • • A big passion of ours has been to increase efforts for supporting companies creating dignified economic opportunities for low-income households and we’re thrilled to be working with 4 new clients delivering on this promise. More details to follow soon!

   

• • • We’re working with a number of clients in the health, food and sustainable fashion industry with exciting new products

   

• • • We’ll soon be launching our UpEffect Film which shines a light on the campaigns we’ve worked with to address large social and environmental issues

 

• • • Join the UpEffect Community on Slack. Whether you are building or supporting solutions to social injustice, climate change, global poverty, illiteracy or you’re simply wanting to learn more about this brave world of heroes, our community is the place for you to share ideas and connect with like-minded people
      

 

• • • We’re launching resourceful directories on ethical companies, accelerators and investors

 

and much more!

We hope you’ll continue to support us in the years to come.

With love and gratitude,
Sheeza
CEO at UpEffect

 

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