What are we doing?

MeForYou is selling good quality, fashionable backpacks on a buy one, get one model. Actually, our tagline is Buy One. Bless One. What does that mean? For each backpack we sell, we are going to donate a backpack full of school supplies to another student in need in and around the community it was purchased. The research shows that when kids can start school with the right supplies: test scores rise, absenteeism drops, disruptive behavior diminishes and kids feel better about themselves.

Our goal this year is to help 1000 students in our area who are currently living in poverty. Now, in order to help 1000 students get school supplies, we are going to need to sell 1000 backpacks. Our campaign goals will cover our start-up inventory costs so we can launch MeForYou.

Now, MeForYou is not just a new one-for-one concept. It is a new concept based on student leadership. MeForYou is run by students and for students.  

We want to provide volunteer and, in the future, employment opportunities to students in our community at a business where the bottom line, isn't necessarily the bottom line. The students will be involved with everything from creating backpacks, t-shirts and advertising to selling, packing and delivering. Students will learn important, hands-on life skills that they can take with them into the future they are creating. 

How will we go about it? 

Our team of student leaders will be talking at churches, fests and festivals, schools, and social media sites to sell our backpacks and T-shirts and explain how and why MeForYou works. People will be able to buy our backpacks, t-shirts or just donate right on the spot. 

Here’s what’s great: the cost of the backpack and school supplies that we are donating is built right in to the selling price of our backpacks. (10% of the t-shirts we sell will also be donated too!) We will take the revenue generated from the sale of our backpacks and purchase the donated backpacks and school supplies. The end result will be a student in need will get a backpack filled with a notebook, crayons, glue stick, pens, pencils, eraser, highlighter, folders - most of the core items kids need to start the year.

We have contacted our local YMCA, Salvation Army and other local programs that work with people in poverty. We have identified over 500 students in our town, Mankato, and over another 400 students in surrounding towns that have children who currently living under the poverty line. We want to help them this year. 

To be a successful student-led business, we know success takes time. True success takes thought, commitment, perseverance, and adaptability over time. We are ready to make it happen. 

Our Tipping point of $3500 will allow us to help 200 students

$2600- Purchase 200 Backpacks (average wholesale cost $13)

$300 - Purchase Labels/tags per backpack

$600 - Website 

$3500- Total Tipping Point

If we reach our total goal we can help 1000 students 

$13,000- Purchase 1000 Backpacks (average wholesale cost $13)

$1000 - Purchase Labels/tags per backpack

$14,000- Total Goal 1000 backpacks

Each of these backpacks that will be sold will allow us to generate money to buy the backpacks and school supplies to be donated to the students in need. The remaining profit will be used to cover promotional costs, website, student enrichment and to be able to reinvest back into MeForYou to make it a self-sustaining organization. 

MeForYou has a great business plan, t-shirts, website, promotional materials and lots of needy kids who need our help. So we have a great start, With your help we can raise the start-up funds needed to launch MeForYou. We have done the research and met with enough people to know that our idea can and will work. Help us launch MeForYou so we can continue with what we’ve begun.