Community Giving Project | NPS Gives Back To The Community | B2B Vault: The Payment Processing Podcast | Episode 134

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Steve Jobs of merchant services, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about our community giving project where we picked, uh, each, uh, employee from Nationwide Payment Systems picked a nonprofit organization or an organization or business or Yeah, nonprofit or nonprofit nonprofit to support. So each one of us picked one and then we went and presented them with a big check like you see like on TV when they give you the checks. Publishers clearing, a little corny, but I thought it was— we thought it would be cool to go and do so we did it. I went to the one. Unfortunately, the next day I had some issues, so I couldn't really go and check out the other two. I wish I would have, I really do. Um, I'll get into that. Okay, the other two. But yeah, man, so let's just, uh, yeah, so you go over who we gave it to and, and how we came about.

Yeah, so, you know, we participate with charities throughout the whole year.. And we always— myself and my business partner David, we always, you know, try to participate, you know, a little bit more at the end of the year because people are trying to, you know, shore up their budget, right? And a lot of charities have had, you know, a lot of different issues during, uh, the last couple of years, you know, with COVID and everything and not being able to, you know, raise funds. So, you know, the way they used to. So we wanted to really show our support for local charities. We had a meeting, we sat down, everybody sat down— myself, Justin, Samantha, Rocky, Anna, and Dave— and then we talked about different projects that people do at the end of the year. And then what, you know, what kind of projects did we want to support. So we wanted to pick things that were like you know, the look— like, that would have local impact, you know. So the first one that we chose was this National Save the Turtle Foundation, and they're very instrumental in helping many organizations in South Florida. They're like the, you know, like, they get money and then they help a lot of different organizations that are saving the sea turtles, which is a big deal. You know, anybody who lives on the beach here has to have special lights that shine down. Yeah, so you don't shining on the beach.

So that was, that was the one that I picked. Um, since moving to South— I don't know, I mean, I've always loved to like nature and animals or whatnot. Uh, so being in South Florida, I haven't had much time to, uh, engage in nonprofit organizations like I was back in Milwaukee, where, you know, I had multiple like True School and blah, blah, blah. I could go on and on for days. But, uh, so I thought, what would be something that would affect something locally but also kind of worldly, right?

Yeah, because it's animals and it's also the environment.

Yeah, it's a lot of— the sea turtle thing, like, they travel all over. So, you know, we're lucky to have nests the beaches of South Florida. And, uh, it's a— it's very interesting to see, you know, they already do a lot of work. They close off where they lay their beds and do all that other stuff, but I'm sure they need money, right? So I thought, well, I don't know any other better way of helping.

Yeah, so it was nice. We went to their office. Rocky came. They didn't have any turtles there, but we went there, we met the people that run the organization.

Skeleton turtles were skeletons of turtles.

That was pretty cool. Yeah, but that— no, but I'm saying we got to meet the people that run the organization. They were very appreciative of the gift that we gave them.

Funny story about that is that they didn't think we were real. They didn't think that we were really gonna, uh, give them money. They thought they were being scammed.

Yeah, they didn't know it was—

that's going on. That's, that's something that kind of bothered me. Like, wow, there's nonprofit organizations out here probably turning down money because Well, no, I think that they think it's real.

No, they get phone calls from people saying, oh, we want to make a donation, but then they don't follow through. It's more of what the guy was saying, you know. So you have to follow through, you know. When we say we're going to do something, we follow through with it. And, you know, but also, you know, we wanted to pick charities where possibly we can also participate, you know. So we're gonna, you know, we, we're staying— gonna stay in touch with them, and they're gonna invite us to when they release the Release the Turtle thing, you know, and then we'll get to go to the Release the Turtle.

Did they say that they were going to invite us, or— yeah, they gave us the information to find out.

Well, no, they said they would let us know when it's going to happen.

Oh really?

So we can—

I didn't remember hearing that.

Yeah, so don't worry, Anna will probably be staying in touch with them.

And so that, that National Save the Turtle Foundation, right?

And we're going to post a link in the podcast to our page that we put on our website. You'd be able to go there, see the charities, some pictures, and links to all these different charities if you want to make a donation. The next one we picked was this Equine Assisted Therapies— Equine, Equine— Assisted Therapies of South Florida. Equine is horses. Oh wow. So it's—

I've heard it pronounced so many different ways. Wine.

So it's a really, really cool charity. I heard about this charity for a long time. So it's an organization, they're located inside of Tradewinds Park, and I guess that's Pompano Beach area, Coconut Creek. And so it's located in there in that horse stable. There's a big barn, they have a nice little building, they had a little air— that a lot of different areas for people to ride the horses, and, and they had fields where the horses can go run around. And it's an interesting charity because they take, like, they had horses there that were former racehorses, and then the horse needs somewhere to go, they bring them there. Or a horse that was used for maybe on a ranch or something, and they've gotten old. Yeah, getting older. And they bring the horses there instead of turning it into glue. Pretty much. And we also had a barn cat. That was pretty cool. And the horses were like very interested, like to see us. Their heads were sticking out of the barn thing.

Fun fact about Justin, I am terrified of horses. When I was a young man, I was petting a horse on a farm up north. I was with my aunts and my uncles on a fishing trip. My little cousin might even have been there. We were petting a horse. And, you know, they have the electric fence. I was a little guy, so, you know, my arm wasn't— you know, it's not like I wasn't very tall. So, uh, I was petting the horse, and the horse—

I—

it— the owner, the farmer, said he did that on purpose because they're smart animals, right?

Right. He—

the horse put my arm down, and I touched the electric fence, and I got— flew back about 10 feet. So after that You will never see Justin walking anywhere near a horse, talking to a horse, petting a horse, or even giving one ounce of care about a horse.

Sorry, Justin.

If I was Incredible Hulk, I probably would have knocked the horse out. But yeah, no, I mean, horses are cool animals. Like, I was watching a documentary about the horses. In Mongolia.

Yeah.

And they're actually making a huge comeback because they were down to like 3. Wow. And there's like 5,000 now. So that's really awesome. Shout out to the Wild Horses. Yeah.

So what they do—

no, but the place is amazing. They help people with special needs, right?

Special needs and veterans.

Yes. That's awesome.

And, and shout out to you. They go at those children or veterans go out there and they, you know, do do things. They learned to ride the horses and pet the horses and brush the horse and all of that.

I will say, in the pictures of the crew from Nationwide Payment Systems, everyone looked very happy. Samantha was cheesing, Anna was cheesy.

Yeah, they were trying to get hugs from the horse.

Everyone was very excited. I, I just wouldn't— I knew that I wouldn't have been a good person for that outing. Okay, but I missed the next one, which I really want because I haven't been.

Okay, so then we had two charities actually do something together. So one is called YOVE, which is Youth of Our Empowerment, which is North Miami. Yeah, it's a charity in North Miami, and they help, um, girls, young girls. So it's a charity for just for young girls. Yeah, I think it's for younger girls. Yes. And then, yeah, they were all wearing pink. And then the North Miami Police Athletic League, PAL, which does a lot of great things in North Miami. They provide, you know, the YOVE provides also, you know, a lot of guidance and leadership skills, empowerment, self-powerment, teaching people about self-esteem and things like that.

All the young youth need that. Yeah. Especially considering what the—

and Cal does the same thing, you know, teaching kids about sports, and they provide tutoring services and, you know, things for, for the kids in the, in the neighborhood. So it's a very, very, very good organization, you know, very needed, very needed.

You need more of those types.

So those two did an event together where each child um, got $100 gift card.

Nice.

And got to go in TJ Maxx.

Very cool. Bye.

And those are kids that are, you know, from families that probably can't afford to get them $100 worth of clothes.

Friends of my daughters, not related, but back where I'm from in Milwaukee, um, a community organization and the Milwaukee Bucks did the same thing in my A friend of mine's daughter was able to go with the Bucks, Milwaukee Bucks, to go on a shopping spree at Kohl's, actually.

Yeah. So we have— so a lot of companies, a lot of people participate in this, participated in this. But we, we did a very big participation, and my business partner went out there 7 o'clock in the morning. They opened the store before. Oh, they opened it up early, early for the kids. And there was probably several, a couple of hundred kids that got to go shopping.

That's super awesome.

So that was a really awesome gift that we were—

shout out to Yov in the North Miami Police Athletic League, right?

And then we helped Chai Center Chabad, which is something that I've been involved with for like 16 years.

This is the one I wanted to—

I really want to take you a trip out there to the Chabad. So we went out to go see Rabbi Bronstein and his wife Connie, and they have, you know, they came to Coral Springs and they started the synagogue, and then they built a building, and, you know, that they bought a building, and then they developed a preschool, and the preschool got very big, so they decided to add on to the building. So we gave funds that's gonna help. I already had dedicated the lobby, and so we gave additional funds because now they expanded the lobby. So we're helping the— helping the synagogue. And the rabbi and his wife help many young families out in the Coral Springs area so their children have, um, educate— you know, get education. And the education there, you know, I was telling Justin about it, is this special curriculum that the rabbi's wife learned. Yeah, that's from Switzerland.

And she's from Switzerland?

Yeah, she was born in Switzerland.

That's cool.

Yeah, her dad is from New York and her mother's from Argentina, and they ended up in Switzerland. She was born in Switzerland. It's interesting. Yeah, so yeah, and I've known the rabbi's mom.

Her mom is Argentinian and Her dad is a New Yorker, right?

And they moved to Switzerland, live in Zurich, Switzerland. Why did they—

Hello everyone, we'd like to take this time to thank our sponsors Nationwide Payment Systems and NPS Printer. We'd also like to shout out the listeners and everyone that subscribed to our YouTube channel. Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to reach Allen or myself, head over to B2BVault.info, where you'll find two forms, one to contact us and another if you're interested in becoming a sponsor. If you'd like to sign up for a merchant account, click the Apply Now button located at the top of the page of B2BVault.info, where you'll answer a few questions, and you'll be on your way to processing payments in no time. The podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other popular streaming networks. Thanks again for listening. Who's that place?

That's, you know, they're, you know, Chabad sends people all over the world. Oh, to, you know, develop a chat. They don't convert anybody to be Jewish. They basically reach out— Chabad's mission is to reach out to people who are not affiliated with a synagogue. Okay, maybe they're, you know, maybe they, you know, didn't— people that aren't affiliated, you can be at any level of religion to go to Chabad. They're accepting of everybody, you know, no matter what you— your level of learning is. Okay. They provide a lot of educational programming, but they do a lot for the kids. You know, I watched the rabbi over the years, you know, people needed to— sure, child needs to have a bar mitzvah, people want to send their kids to preschool, and they try to You know, they provide an affordable preschool. That's awesome. You know, because it's not— well, it is—

school isn't cheap.

Well, while it is a business, it's, you know, they're there. They don't look at it as a business. Right. So, yes, you know, it helps that they basically do a lot, all types of education. Preschool, bar mitzvah lessons, you know, life cycle events.

So the bat in the— is for a woman and then the bar is for the males?

Yes. Okay. So they do, you know, so—

but they do both, right?

And his wife developed a special curriculum at the school. One of the things like everybody notices when they go to the school, it's very quiet, the kids are very well behaved, it's not like a rowdy scene because of the They try to have this like calm atmosphere at the school. And then we also participated with the Chabad of North Miami, where there's a rabbi who I think he's been there for a little bit in North Miami. And, you know, he's trying to develop a congregation there. And he's, you know, so we gave funds to him to help him with his educational programs.

Very good.

You know, and it's important to participate in, you know, to participate. We find it's important that we participate in the local community. Like, we're— like I said, we're invited to go to a sea turtle hatching. The, the horse— the Equine Assisted Therapies invited us to come out and, you know, like, we could spend a day out there with them and learn about the horses and step in horse poop, help them clean up the trails. No, they had some guys out there that were cleaning the poop, cleaning the, uh, stalls out and all that.

It's a stinky job, but somebody's got to do it.

So, you know, and, and Dave participates a lot with the Police Athletic League, you know, with the kids. Pow! And so, you know, I don't know why I want—

every time I see the word pow, like pow pow, I just want to say, hey, what's up, pal?

No, so it's important that, you know, these organizations are providing You know, the, the youth of today, with the youths, the youths, like the youths, like the movie, uh, My Cousin Vinny. My Cousin Vinny. What's a youth?

Excuse me?

The guy from Herbie.

You know, the youths.

Yeah, the youths.

No, I don't know, sir.

He pours them— can you approach the bench? No. So it's important for us to have community involvement and, you know, stay active in the community, and we always reach out to, you know, we're always assisting with different things in the community. And it's going to be nice this year to, you know, see if we can stay connected to these, to these different groups and participate with them.

Yeah, the horse place, they sent us a very nice letter that said that we should come back and observe the way that they— Yeah, help the community.

Yeah, we want to go out there and see like what they're doing.

I'll do it from afar.

You can do it from afar. You don't have to get close.

That's what I'm saying. Back far, stand back.

Horses, you know, I mean, I know it—

give—

given the chance, I think Samantha and Anna might want to ride a horse. I mean, the heads on the horse, they're like— it's pretty big.

And that—

they had some pretty big horses out there because it's not like this, because it was like a racehorse, Justin. There was a couple of racehorses and they were pretty big. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty big. One of them looked like a Clydesdale.

That's what I was going to say. I'm pretty sure there was a Clydesdale that pushed my arm down because that horse was the biggest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Like, I'm telling you. So we also developed a product for nonprofits.

Wrap it around full circle. Let's bring it all together here.

Bring it all together. Well, we developed the product. You can visit the website and you can see to— it's actually free to nonprofits. They can set up a giving portal probably take them less than an hour. What do you think?

Uh, yeah, less than an hour. I mean, really quickly if you're, you know, technologically, you know, equipped. Uh, but otherwise, you know, take about an hour.

It's just, you know, 30 minutes, 30 minutes to an hour to get set up, get approved, get— go in, load up your pictures. You can set up.

And this guy, he said he'll help you if you need some help.

Who? This guy right here. Oh yeah, we'll help you. So It's not that difficult.

What's your name?

Allen?

Yeah, Allen said he'll help you.

Don't worry, we have guys at tech support also.

Yeah, I'll be able to help you too.

Maybe tech support if I like you.

No, I'm kidding. Of course I help you.

So that product is designed to help nonprofit organizations run different types of campaigns. And then we also offer like a free 30-minute consultation where we can explain to you how to use this product so you can increase your donations. Because I try to tell people, you know, a lot— some people will give like a general donation. You know, we, you know, I try that, but some people find it difficult to give a general donation.

What does that mean?

Well, general donation is like, oh, you're giving the money, but you don't know what it's going for. It's just general to the charity.

Oh, yeah, no, I don't think it's going to give—

I'm going to give $100 or I'm going to give $1,000, right? It's going for this. But I think most people like to know what the money is going for. So that's kind of what this platform does. It lets you run like a campaign. So I'll give you an example. Example would be toy drive. Yeah, you need toys for your preschool. So you want to have a toy drive and raise money so that you can buy educational toys for the kids. You need to raise $5,000. You create the— you create a milestone. Yeah, you can put a milestone in there so people can see if you're reaching that milestone. You can take the event, you can take that particular— we call it a cause— you can take that particular, you know, uh, event that you're trying to raise money for. Then you can put it in an email, put it in Facebook. People don't have to go to your website, they don't have to search for it. You just give them the link. So it's really, really cool. Or let's say you're having an event and you're using like a text messaging platform, you could just tell people to text to a phone number. Yeah, then they could receive the link back and then they can make a donation. So you can do a lot of different things with the software. You need to run an end-of-the-year campaign and you have a goal, it lets you— it tracks the goal, or it doesn't track it. You can pick either one.

I like the way that the platform works.

But let's say you have an emergency. Oh, we need to raise $3,000 to fix the air conditioning. You can create it quickly, boom, send it out, and people know what the money's going for. People want to know, like, oh, my money's going—

yeah, it's not the link that from PayPal, you're not affiliated to pay. There's no affiliate, it's just your organization, it's all branded with your organization. That, that really is appealing to me when I, you know, when I go to a For instance, you know, there's a couple of organizations that I'm still affiliated with, so I check on their website every once in a while, and they still are using the same old dated technology. And, you know, a lot of people aren't donating to your cause because of that. Because— and then also this thing that also has the— you could continuously give, right?

So yeah, you could have a one-time gift, or you could do a continue— you can do a recurring monthly recurring, right?

So that's a great tool for these nonprofits. Yeah, and it's free.

That's the best part. You just put a button on, link it to your website, or like you can create as many campaigns as you want, you know, giving campaigns, and you can have them all on your website so that people can choose what they're going to give money to. And it makes the person feel— it makes the people who want to donate, makes them feel better because they've become connected to a project. Yeah, like, oh, I'm giving to the book fund. I'm giving to the playground fund, I'm giving to the toy fund, I'm giving for the book drive, giving for the scholarship fund, winter coat drive for needy children, right? So whatever it is, or if you have a dog charity, oh, this is going for food, this is going for this vitamins and medicine, right? So people feel more connected to your nonprofit, you know. That's why we pick—

we try to pick When I mean, come on, man, like, just think of that. So each nonprofit, so like, so say one person goes and they're like, well, I don't really want to give money towards that part of them, you know what I mean? But they have all these different projects, and I, I really think that you guys should check it out. Like, nonprofits are— you're losing out by not using this platform.

Yeah, so it helps, it helps people feel more connected to your nonprofit because they know what the what they're participating in. Right. And that's what people want to do. We see, we see people who use our platform.

You can do up to 3 at a time, right?

No, you can do as many as you want. You sure? Yeah. Well, it comes with 3, but if you want more, you can add.

Oh yeah, you got to call us.

Yes, call us and we can activate more. But you can— comes with 3, but you can delete one and then put it at another one. You can change it, you know, you're done, you can change it, boom, boom, boom. Or you want to leave it on the website because you want people people to see that it was a successful project, you know. But it works great because people want to— people want to know. This is why we picked certain charities that we picked. We know what the money's going for. We know what they're doing with the money at the turtle place, at the equine. We know what they did at the Police Athletic League and, and Yov. And we know what they're doing at the Chabad. Yeah, they're— you know, those programs are going for—

it's transparent.

It's transparent. This is what— and this is what people, people like to do. They want to know where's the money, where's the money going? So it enables you to get— have a more direct connection with your donors. And you never know, you might find somebody might see your post on Facebook and go, oh, they're raising money for a playground, right? Yeah. And that person's like, oh, I like to give to playgrounds. They might have no connection with your charity at all. See it.

That was my point. That's what I was—

oh, I'm going to give my— I'm going to give them $1,000. You never know who's going to do that. But if you, you know, that's why I give a free consultation, because I've helped various charities run campaigns and help them increase their donations by using this software. So we've helped many charities like increase the amount of money that they're getting because they're using a more targeted approach.

So check out b2bvault.info. You're gonna hit the Apply Now button. It takes you over to Nationwide Payment Systems, and you can fill out the form for your net—

your nonprofit right there. Click the nonprofit at the top and go in, fill everything out, and get started. And we'll post a link to the Giving Project that's on our website. You can take a look at that if you want to help out any of the charities that we helped out. Feel free to click on the link and, uh, give them a donation. Yes, sir. So that's our giving project, uh, community giving project. I was happy to participate. I mean, everybody that we gave money to was so happy.

Yeah, they were very excited.

Yeah, yeah. And very, very happy. The kids were happy that they got clothes. The rabbis were happy. The people at the horse place, we were happy. We were happy that we're able to that we're blessed that we're able to do something nice, and we look forward to participating with these charities in the future. Absolutely. And, you know, next, at the end of 2023, well, maybe, you know, we'll see what's going to happen at the end of 2023. Well, maybe a new list or maybe the same people.

I definitely think we should try some new people.

Yeah, you know, it's always— every year it's always something different. —yes, sir—and a few the same, depending on, you know, our connection with those, you know, with those places. So enjoy your holiday season, you know. So we had our— we did our gift of giving.

Check it out every Friday, FinTech Friday, 3 PM, right, where we will answer live question and answer.

Absolutely. You know, so everybody, happy holidays, happy Hanukkah. Hanukkah gnomes. Happy—

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy holidays! Wishing everybody a happy and healthy, prosperous New Year coming up for 2023. Happy holidays! And watch for more podcasts. We have some exciting stuff coming up soon. Peace! Peace out!