Americans All (AA), a program of the 35-year-old, nonprofit People of America Foundation and for-profit Americans All Benefit Corporation, is a community-outreach program that specifically benefits and connects students participating in non-academic school activities and small businesses/service providers by using a unique storytelling tool and turnkey revenue generator. We have a website where people and groups can
create and publish stories that can be easily stored, updated and permanently accessed. What makes us unique is we include
historical information, much of it in
timeline formats, to provide context for these stories and the experiences, observations and accomplishments reflected in them. Stories can contain up to 2,000 words (part can be privacy protected), and can be augmented with images, hyperlinks, audio-video and music links and be published in
multiple languages.
Years ago, we were one of the nation’s first education organizations to provide
schools ( sold resources to more than 2,000 schools and libraries nationwide) with diversity-based, supplemental social studies
classroom resources as well as activities for English-Language Arts programs. However, because of our nation’s extreme political polarization and our desire to create a program that will be accepted by as many schools and reach as many students as as possible, we aim to stay clear of all curriculum and academic programs, and instead, focus on two of the major components of Americans All—our
Heritage Honor Roll and
Legacy Partner landing pages—to help benefit students and achieve our foundation’s goals.
We also offer
Legacy Partner (LP) landing pages where viewers can see all the individual stories published on the Heritage Honor Roll that are associated with their school, team or club. Schools and their clubs and teams can create as many landing pages as desired. For example, landing pages could be created, on an annual basis, for each sports team, academic, social, community service or special interest clubs. Each landing page has a short summary about the team or club, an image and the stories written by its members.
Local businesses, cottage industries and professional service providers can join AA for an annual fee, which is paid in two installments of just $49 each. They receive free LP homepage(s) on our website—one for each location and in multiple languages, if desired—to share information about their business, industry or practice. They are listed on AA’s
Discounts page to advertise discounts on goods and services daily, if desired, to AA members. This will be extremely valuable to minority business owners and those that hire people of color. For example, a restaurant could offer AA members a free non-alcoholic beverage and/or an appetizer or dessert at reduced price (like happy-hour). This would save the member more than their monthly subscription fee, and be an inexpensive marketing tool for the restaurant, thus making this process a win-win.
Our storytelling tool is free for individuals, education organizations and nonprofits. We also offer our members an optional, subscription
upgrade ($4/month) after a free trial period to continue to receive business partner discounts and future program benefits. By sharing stories, especially those of immigrants and underserved populations, we recognize the contributions of
everyone, reinforce the value of diversity, and promote tolerance and acceptance. Storytelling also helps students further their knowledge of history, strengthen their communications, research and writing skills and helps prepare them for success in our democracy and workforce.
Investment Details
Our current website can handle all new individual member and business registrations. The program has no significant overhead, inventory or fixed costs. However, to implement and document procedures during the pilots and to begin developing other markets, we seek an interest-bearing $195,000 start-up loan that will include equity. The loan will carry a 6 percent rate of interest rate and will also enable us to update our website platform (the decades-old
Drupal 7 platform will soon be unsupported), build out the payment mechanism to transfer revenue to schools and counties on an automated basis (this feature was not needed earlier), and create the implementation model to be replicated nationwide. All operating expenses for Year 1 are covered by the investment loan.
The start-up loan will be repaid from gross membership and subscription fees, not profits earned. As the financials illustrate (see page 7), all distribution categories are based on gross revenue received, thereby simplifying the accounting function. As revenue is generated, the lender will receive the first 20 percent of all distributions until the loan is repaid.
As part of the repayment process, the lender will receive 2.5 percent of the gross revenues, which represents 25 percent of the equity distribution to the managing partners. Once predetermined financial benchmarks are achieved by the development/management team, the lender will have the right of first refusal to purchase the Americans All Benefit Corporation, which currently receives 7.5 percent of the gross revenues. Regardless of the success of the program, the purchase price for the Benefit Corporation and its 7.5 percent equity in the program will be $600,000. The Benefit Corporation will continue to manage the program, and the content of the website will be managed by the nonprofit, 501 (c)(3) People of America Foundation.
Importantly, 80 percent of the revenue generated by the Americans All Social Legacy Network membership fee and business Legacy Business Partner subscriptions will be donated to participating schools and their communities. However, revenue generated by the Americans All Benefit Corporation not directly related to the mission of the People of America Foundation will not be automatically subject to this distribution requirement.
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