Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Blomquist. Them and their team share their story with us below:
In 2016, Going Places founder, Katie Blomquist, was a first-grade teacher in a low-income elementary school. She had a 6-year student named Jawan who wanted a bike for his birthday and it shocked Katie to learn he had never owned one. She wished she could buy him a bike, but that wasn’t possible on a teacher’s salary. It was something that Katie couldn’t get off her mind knowing Jawan was growing up without the joy of riding his own bike.
As Katie started to ask around her class, she realized that most of the kids had never owned a bike. Remembering her own childhood filled with joyful memories of riding her bike all around her neighborhood, she set out to change this sad realization. Katie had the idea to buy all 650 students in her school a brand new, high-quality bike by starting a GoFundMe campaign. With the help of a local Charleston custom bicycle shop, this idea became a reality.
Katie’s campaign went viral and some of the top news outlets in the country reported on it including Good Morning America, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, ABC World News, Time Magazine, USA Today, Post and Courier, and The Steve Harvey Show. The story behind Going Places was catching on fire throughout America. On March 30, 2017, she surprised every student at Pepperhill Elementary School with a brand-new bike. After this successful event, Katie now had an even greater vision.
Her vision was to create a nonprofit whose mission was to bring Joy to children in need. To make that a reality, Katie would have to focus her efforts full-time on this new venture, which meant stepping away from teaching. In June 2017, she got to work on building the dream of Going Places, which involved rallying the community around her cause. It was important to Katie that her supporters understood why there was a need for Joy in these children’s lives.
Numerous organizations focus on providing the basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter, yet one thing often overlooked for children in need is their social-emotional need for Joy. For many kids living in poverty, it is when they get home from school that the real stress begins.
These kids can live in less-than-desirable and unpredictable circumstances and a bike provides them with a sense of freedom and escape. It also builds self-worth by being the first item of value they can call their own. A bike can restore the innocence of childhood that many have taken away.
A person may have all of the basic “needs” in life, but what kind of life is one without Joy? What kind of adult will a child grow up to be if they have lacked Joy?
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There was definitely a struggle when transiting from “a teacher doing a nice thing” to an “established nonprofit/business” in the way the public reacted to it. I assumed it was the same flooding of donations as I had experienced with GoFundMe. Boy was I wrong. I was a teacher that had no network, just my friends and the teaching community. I had to figure out on my own how to get this out there and fast because I had already quit my job so I had to make this work.
Like anything in life, there have been major highs and major lows with Going Places. Times I felt like the world was out to make us fail and other times I felt like we were on top of the world. It was through those lows that I knew I had to push extra hard- never miss an opportunity to bring us exposure, never miss a networking event, push on social media, get on the news, and get advice from anyone in the nonprofit world that would give it to me, etc.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am an entrepreneur at heart. I always struggled to find what I was meant to do, never feeling like I was particularly “good” at anything, and was always sort of just hanging on to jobs by a thread. Once I started teaching I knew I was good at it but on literally, day 1 I said, “oh I can’t do this for the rest of my life” and I burned out really fast, as most teachers do.
I like to think that I specialize in “spreading joy”. Going Places’, what I call, “our wow factor” is that we give NEW, CUSTOM bikes, locks, helmets, and bike pumps (we change the name and color every year) to EVERY child in a low-income elementary school, so 400+ kids at once.
I also have an online, membership-based academy with my business partner called the Nonprofit Entrepreneur Academy where we teach people how to start and grow successful nonprofits through video lessons accompanied by worksheets and templates. I have the unique expertise of having actually had feet on the ground doing the work and have figured out what works, what REALLY works, and what doesn’t. I have very much become known for nonprofits so starting this company was a no-brainer.
I also have a social media marketing company called, The Social Collective, where I help companies grow their social media presence, exposure, and business.
Lastly, I teach social media as an adjunct professor at the College of Charleston.
What sets me apart from others is my craving to always do more, start something new, create, and help others.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I LOVE Charleston! I have lived all over I grew up in LA, CA, went to undergrad at The University of Colorado, Boulder, lived in Chicago, IL, and then moved to Charleston, SC and everyone always ask me which place was my favorite and my answer is, each was perfect for that time in my life but I wouldn’t want to go back and live in any of those cities again. Charleston is my forever home. It’s the perfect combination of a big city and a small town.
The best part of Charleston is the true sense of community. Had I still lived in Chicago and tried to do the same GoFundMe, maybe it would have gotten some attention but the city is too big with too many people doing too many good and too many bad things that get reported on. In a small city like Charleston, the media and community members really rally around people trying to make a change.
I love the unique and beautiful layout of Charleston but the series of islands and peninsulas connected by bridges with, for the most part, only 2 ways on/off of it can cause some very bad traffic, especially when there is an accident.
Contact Info:
- Website: goingplacesnonprofit.org, thesocialcollectivebykatie.com, nonprofitentrepreneur.com
- Instagram: @going_places_nonprofit , @nonprofit_entrepreneur_academy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoingPlacesNonprofit
- Youtube: Going Places: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzAChggA7WIg4vPQM8t3-a5zRbr1Osb8P, Katie Blomquist LL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz7PA_S8PX0vNwU43R6KVig
