Simplur launches with big plans to change democracy

by Christine Schmidt
July 9, 2014

[ibimage==28705==Large==none==self==null]Four months before Colorado’s next general election, Craig Wilcox believes his startup, just launched this week, can make a ripple in the ocean of heavily funded political campaigns and causes.

By allowing users to pick the causes they want their groups to support, Wilcox’s newly-launched, Denver-based donation management platform Simplur—short for “simple pluralism”—aims to connect similarly-minded constituents who don’t have millions of dollars to spend on elections, but still want their dollars to make a difference.

Simplur, singlehandedly founded and funded by seasoned entrepreneur Wilcox, allows users to contribute to pluralized funds in an effort to make small donations have a tangible, targeted impact.

“We’re non-partisan, but we probably are more populist,” he said. “The end goal for this would be to make sure that the playing field is level for all people, regardless of income.”

Inspired by a 2008 article in The New Yorker, Wilcox said he came to the realization that keeping money in politics has advantages—despite the fact that isolating the two is nearly impossible: “There’s very little that can be done by the individual who doesn’t have a million dollars to give,” he said.

After reading the article, “the idea just occurred to me that there has to be a way for users who don’t have a lot of money to gather up their resources to put around goals that they want to see in policy, and to make those decisions as a group rather than individuals.”

On Simplur, users are matched to groups based on their interests in their profiles when they sign up, and the money donated by users is accumulated in what Wilcox calls pluralized funds.

“These are similar to mutual funds in that a portfolio manager picks the causes that the portfolio manager thinks is going to do the best job achieving the goal," Wilcox said. "We want to have the most flexibility to have as many possibilities in the system to achieve that goal."

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Another way Simplur strives for flexibility is by incorporating more than 1 million non-profits such as the organization Literacy Chicago and the Boulder Food Rescue, in addition to political causes and campaigns. But don't call this crowdfunding.

“With other crowdfunding sites and campaigns, it’s usually the cause or an individual or the company who is trying to get something funded, and then they try to go after support from the general public," Wilcox said. "With Simplur, it works kind of the other way around, where individuals gather up with each other and say this is what we want and they find the cause and it has to deliver on that. In a way, it’s kind of reverse crowdfunding.”

Since the site just launched, Wilcox acknowledges it will take some time to grow into the force that he originally envisioned. He aims to have millions of users within four to five years and is planning on launching a seed round by 2015. In addition, he hopes to recruit celebrity bloggers to raise awareness of the change that can be enacted by users’ spare change on the site.

“People really can create without having to go through any sort of administrative process such as forming a new non-profit, forming a 501(c)4, becoming a lobbyist—all of those things have really never been possible to do what this does," Wilcox said. "And this can really just be done in a few minutes."

You can use the launch code "builtincolorado" to join at Simplur.com.

Jobs at Simplur, Inc.

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