About COVID Mobilize

Turning vision into solution

How it started

When the COVID-19 pandemic began to ripple across the United States, Matthew Nederlanden felt compelled to help. As a Foster Parent who actively shares the majority of his profits with his staff and community, Matthew is the kind of guy who can’t sit idly by when surrounded by struggle. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work to support those in need.

Luckily, as the CEO Security Camera Warehouse, an Inc. 5000 Company specializing in security software and equipment, Matthew is also no stranger to tackling complicated projects, with direct personal impact. So, he did what any compassionate problem solver does; he jumped into the situation to investigate potential solutions.

After making several phone calls and multiple offers of assistance to area leaders, Matthew still felt frustrated about not knowing how to get involved. The level of need was massive, but there were very few ways for locally-owned companies to engage. So he reached out to Emily Breedlove, another local CEO, and Government Relations expert, to figure out how to bring business resources to the table. Emily had also witnessed the disparaging gap in the ecosystem, so the two of them gathered a small group of CEOs in Asheville, NC in an attempt to mobilize leadership, talent, raw materials, and more.

Connecting the Dots

Aimed at rallying Founders to connect with frontline groups with urgent needs, like most other groups around the country, the team started a Slack channel, WordPress directory, and Airtable database. Within hours their makeshift system was flooded with far more requests, shares, questions, and nonstop communication than they could manage. In the midst of all the noise and chaos, the team of CEOs identified a few important things:

1. There’s more need than we can see
2. Everyone is overwhelmed and in Crisis Mode
3. The response requires more than Nonprofits & Governments are built to handle
5. Companies can help, but there isn’t a way to get involved
6. We need to build a better way to tackle this

After witnessing the inadequacies of the system compared to the growing level of urgency, the team at Nomadic Software stepped forward with an idea; to leverage technology to immediately matchmake those who have resources with those who have needs. They offered to build a web app; a simple solution to a massive challenge.

Empowering the community

The team quickly pivoted and dove into the next evolution of the project. With 3 weeks of intensive construction, market research, late nights, dozens of discovery calls, UX design, and the most dynamic collaboration between companies that the team had ever seen, the COVID Mobilize platform was born.

Now releasing and evolving with the phases of the pandemic, the team was recently accepted into the inaugural cohort of MISSION-R Accelerator through the Research Triangle’s RIoT. They are continuing to support this work in the ways that Private Enterprise is built for; Innovation, Iteration, and Production. The team is treating these efforts as a Social Enterprise joint venture, with all immediate fundraising directed towards the maintenance and development of the platform, to ensure that COVID Mobilize can remain a free and accessible platform for all American organizations ready to engage.

We believe that businesses play a necessary role on the frontlines and that together, America can rebuild quickly. This web app was built to save lives and save jobs. Please join us in the COVID Mobilize effort.