My guests on this episode of Talking Taiwan are Gary Reloj and Bonnie Chan, co-founders of the PPE Relief Initiative (PRI). I had Gary on as a guest previously in episode 79, only a couple of months into the COVID-19 pandemic. He talked about his own personal battle with COVID and the PPE Relief Initiative’s crowdfunding campaign. Since then, the PPE Relief Initiative has surpassed its goal of raising $30,000, and has also been selected by GoFundMe to be a featured campaign on their COVID page.

When asked about the mistakes they’ve made and lessons they learned, Gary responded that he’s not afraid of failure and embraces it as long as there’s something that can be learned from it. Gary and Bonnie talked how they’ve tweaked things since phase one of the crowdfunding campaign and shared some of the work productivity tools that PRI uses. Bonnie offered some general advice for people interested in doing crowdfunding for a cause. The two also shared a lot of exciting updates.

Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

What’s happened with the PPE Relief Initiative (PRI) since we first interviewed Gary about it
Bonnie’s role in creating a strong brand identity for the PPE Relief Initiative
How the PPE Relief Initiative got selected by GoFundMe to be a featured campaign and what it means for the campaign
The PPE Relief Initiative’s next fundraising goal is $15,000 to support an additional 1,000 healthcare workers
How the PPE Relief Initiative has grown and recruited new volunteers
How the support that the PPE Relief Initiative is not only supplying healthcare workers with PPE but giving them emotional and moral support
Some of the biggest challenges they faced in trying to reach their initial fundraising goal of $30,000
The failures and lessons learned during phase one of the PPE Relief Initiative’s crowdfunding campaign
How some of the healthcare workers that PPE Relief Initiative has worked with who have had to resort to wearing garbage bags, bed covers, and men’s old clothing as PPE
How important it is to have the right team of people working together to achieve goals together
What they did when contributions to the GoFundMe Campaign plateaued and stalled
How they tell and capture the stories of healthcare workers through their “Stories from the Frontlines” videos
The note that went viral – written by KP Mendoza, a healthcare worker featured in one of PRI’s “Stories from the Frontlines” videos
The shift from first focusing more on individual donors, to phase two in which they are planning to focus more on partnerships with e.g. community organizations, businesses, and student groups
Why Gary embraces failure
How PPE Relief Initiative learned from the mistakes it made during its first phase and has improved its processes
The work productivity tools that PPE Relief Initiative uses
The importance of organization and setting up an infrastructure
The goals of the second phase of PPE Relief Initiative’s Go Fund Me campaign
The difference between GoFundMe and GoFundMe Charity
The Promise Society, fiscal sponsor of the PPE Relief Initiative
General advice for anyone interested in running a crowdfunding campaign
The importance of email campaigns and data to PRI’s fundraising campaign
PPE Relief Initiative’s plans to partner with a local politician to hold a virtual roundtable with healthcare workers giving testimony on their experiences
PRI’s plans to make an impact on policy regarding healthcare worker protection