They say that the sky's the limit, but Zaniya Lewis, founder of #YesSheCanCampaign believes that young people can climb even higher. Founded in 2016 during Lewis’ first year of university, the #YesSheCanCampaign aims to prepare young people facing adversity or lack of resources with college readiness and career development support. The nonprofit organization has already helped over 3,000 students in the U.S. prepare for university study and enter the workforce.

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Lewis, now a second-year law school student at Rutgers University, says she was inspired to action by the many nonprofits who helped her military family as she was growing up.

“I’ve always had a passion for community service and social justice,” she said. “I faced a lot of adversity when it came to applying for colleges, scholarships and jobs, and I wanted to help make a difference for other young people facing the same challenges. I wanted to make sure that young people have tools, knowledge, and training they need so that they can reach their full potential. In this organization, we believe that opportunities and resources should not come with a price tag.”

Before finding out about Zeffy in the summer of 2022, #YesSheCanCampaign had been using GoFundMe for its fundraising needs. However, the costly platform and transaction fees proved to be far too expensive to sustain in the long term.

“They take a huge portion of the donation amount away from the mission. For us, every dollar counts and we need it to go toward helping our students.”

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In addition to wanting to find a free online fundraising platform, the organization wanted one that would allow payments to be processed securely in order to reassure donors that their personal data would remain safe. Further, #YesSheCanCampaign was looking for a platform that would allow tax receipts to be automatically generated, which was more convenient for both donors and the organization.

#YesSheCanCampaign is now using Zeffy to collect donations for its many programs that help students and young professionals climb higher in their careers and beyond. To date, the organization has raised over $100,000+ in monetary donations and grants to helped students facing adversity and injustice reach their educational and career goals. 

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 In addition to supporting driven young people, #YesSheCanCampaign also hosts programs, conferences, and provides volunteer internship opportunities. The students who intern with #YesSheCanCampaign gain valuable work experience in everything from grant writing to day-to-day operations. After switching to Zeffy, the organization was quickly able to save enough on transaction and platform fees to be able to pay for its education platform DISSCHOLARED for an entire year.

Some of Lewis’ favorite Zeffy features include the ability to generate automatic tax receipts and its intuitive user interface.

“There’s no platform out there quite like Zeffy,” she said. “It is so easy-to-use and it is completely free. These are two major things that other fundraising platforms just can’t compete with.”

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Furthermore, Lewis said she really appreciates the responsiveness and positivity shown by the Zeffy customer success team.

“As soon as I created an account, someone from Zeffy reached out to see if I needed any help,” she said. “That meant a lot to me, that I knew I could trust Zeffy to be there to respond to my questions. There aren’t many customer service departments that are like that, especially in the online space.”