A brief introduction

Gigoit, Inc.® is an established 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit and provides a free nationwide resource for people to give their unwanted but usable items to neighbors in their community. Think eBay® for free stuff. Gigoit has had over half a million unique visitors since it became publically available on January 1st of 2007. Items are easily posted with geographic location, category, title, description and optional images. Our upcoming service, Local Reuse, will provide an advanced search engine, Android & Apple OS (iPhone/iPad) applications, custom RSS feeds, Facebook application and Google Integration. To get an idea on what Local Reuse is all about, check out the following three real world examples.

Example #1 :  Bobs old bike

Bob gets a new bicycle for his daughter who has outgrown her old one. Bob posts the old bicycle on Local Reuse. Jane comes to Local Reuse and requests to see all available items within 25 miles of her location. Included in that listing is Bob's bicycle. Jane contacts Bob to request the item. They communicate via email and arrange a pickup time. After Jane picks up the bicycle, Bob sets the status of his post to "Taken" so he no longer receives requests for the item from other members.

Example #2 :  Jane spots couch

Jane is riding her new bicycle around the neighborhood and spots a couch someone has put out on the curb with a "free" sign. She takes out her smart phone and snaps a picture using the Local Reuse mobile application. She enters some brief information about the item and submites it to Local Reuse. Kevin, is browsing Local Reuse nearby and sees the picture of the couch. The site gives him driving directions to go retrieve it, which he does gladly... one less thing in the landfill.

Example #3 :  Kevin donates printer

Kevin, sitting on his new couch, hears a knock at the door. It's the delivery man with the new all-in-one office printer he needed so his business could make copies and fax. Kevin now has an older, but perfectly good plain old printer, to find a new home for. He wants to make sure the printer goes to a good cause, and uses Local Reuse to find a charitable organization nearby. A nonprofit shows up in the listings on Local Reuse as being in need of a printer for their office. Kevin offers the printer to the organization and receives a tax deduction for his donation to their charity.

Executive summary

Our business

Several tons of reusable items have been posted by members, universities and charitable organizations. While using our service they have requested many additional features. These include worldwide coverage, connecting donors to charitable organizations and facilitating reuse on college campuses. We are currently researching the best method of implementing these features and are working with organizations and universities to better understand their unique needs.

We have two primary competitors: the free section of Craigslist and The Freecycle Network™. Our market research has shown that both are experiencing high turnover for many reasons. While each service has its own flaws, there are many they share. For example, each service only supports large cities. If it is not on the list you cannot use their service. When posting an item to either service anyone can contact you, for any reason, at anytime, even after the item has been taken. To this point, you do not know the credibility of those contacting you because there is no member feedback system or method to rate your experience with other users. Our application has been successfully tested by tens of thousands of users and proven to address all of these issues.

In order to measure our results all site activity is represented in a database enabling up-to-the-second accurate statistical analysis. We have created a reporting engine that allows staff members to view registrations, demographics, total items posted, items by category and weight, marketing return on investment and other useful information.

Local Reuse has successfully partnered with technology leaders in order to build a more sustainable organization. We have been awarded the in-kind advertising grant from Google™ and have a $10,000 per month advertising stipend to bring new users to our site. In addition, we have secured a partnership with the award-winning hosting company, Media Temple™, whose clients include Sony®, Starbucks® and NBC. Media Temple will provide Local Reuse with a dedicated server and the flexibility to scale our services as needed.

Our plan

We have established an open line of communication with our members and are being requested to develop additional features to enhance our service. The most requested feature is the ability for our members to find local organizations that accept charitable donations. We have been given access to the IRS database that provides up-to-date information on over 1.5 million non-profits. This will allow our members to easily find the charitable organizations closest to them.

Organizations and universities have expressed an interest in a way to improve and promote their reuse efforts. Our system will allow them to find a local non-profit where they will receive a tax deduction for their charitable donation. Charities will be able to provide information regarding the types of goods they accept. Our updated service will prevent landfill waste, reduce tax liability for corporations and increase material donations to all kinds of charities, from battered women shelters to educational causes.