Philanthropitch Impact Story: PelotonU

Budget grown from $300k to $900k.

Degrees up from 13 to 80.

Students served from 60 to 235.

Earned income is up from $18k to $200k.

These impressive numbers belong to 2017 Philanthropitch Austin Finalists PelotonU. In just 3 years - Jan. 2017 to Dec. 2019 - this education non-profit has done an incredible job of scaling their work and serving their community. Created to help nontraditional students find and finish college degrees with little to no debt, PelotonU is committed to helping working adults achieve their educational goals. So it was no surprise that Philanthropitch was a natural fit to help them reach more funders, supporters, and students.

“Philanthropitch was a key inflection point for PelotonU. We had validated our outcomes, but didn't yet know if they were a result of the model or team. Growing to two locations forced us to articulate fidelity measures and taught us unexpected and invaluable lessons about how to best serve working adults,” explained Hudson Baird, Executive Director of PelotonU.

They were dreaming big in May of 2017, pitching to open their second location. “It [Philanthropitch] was pivotal, and since then we've opened two more, taught folks in eight other cities how to do the same, and clarified the value proposition of community and study space - a critical component to adult degree completion we didn't fully appreciate at the time,” Baird shared with us.

We’re thrilled to see that PelotonU is scaling to more cities, more schools, and more communities. Keep track of their great work at pelotonu.org, and to find out more about Philanthropitch Austin, head to our city page here.