Ep. 29: Building Briiidge: A Digital Platform for Giving & Receiving Help | with Debbie Gray

Today our expert guest is Debbie Gray, COO of both STRIVR, Inc. and Briiidge. We’re really excited to share her story, and how her apps are giving users the opportunity to both ask for help and help others – without the social constructs that make asking for help difficult. These apps are currently being used on college campuses and in businesses throughout the country.

Everything Debbie has done throughout her career has been about figuring out how to put the pieces of a puzzle together; finding the right person or tool to solve a difficult problem. She continues to help people solve problems today, but on a much greater level, by giving organizations and communities these digital platforms they can use to help each other.

The unfortunate reality is that, at some point, everybody needs help with something… but asking for help doesn’t make you feel good. On the other hand, giving help makes you feel great on a physiological level. In fact, when we give, we receive all of the positive benefits of receiving.

Debbie’s first experiment with a help request app revealed some interesting results:

• In 2010, the beta of STRIVR was launched for the students at Lehigh University. It was only for iPhone, and 70% of students with iPhones were using it.
• Over six semesters, a remarkable 90% of requests on the platform were fulfilled!
• It did not seem to matter who was requesting help; people across many different communities and social groups were willing to help each other when given the opportunity.
• Users were given the ability to form private groups or be anonymous, but very few people used these options. Over 90% of requests were public and went to the entire community.
• People wanted to help, but there was originally no way to offer help without a request, so the users started offering help through a request for help. They added an offer feature, and that made up 10-15% of total activity in the beta.
• By the end of Spring 2016, there were over 100,000 requests and offers for help on the app – and the offers to help outweigh the requests 2:1.

After the beta test, STRIVR started focusing their resources on an enterprise product. The end result is Briiidge.

How does Briiidge impact organizations?

• The app encourages Organizational Citizenship Behavior, or when a person voluntarily helps someone within an organization in a way that is outside of their normal job description. This behavior increases trust, productivity, and profit within an organization.
• Employees waste nearly 23 hours per week searching for the people, information, and data they need to perform their job. Briiidge cuts that time down by using matchmaking algorithms that connect employees who have questions with the right people at the right time with the right information.
• In “The Neuroscience of Trust,” former guest Paul J. Zak writes about the positive effects of building trust within an organization.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“You really don’t know what the impact of your behavior is on another person… You don’t understand the power that you have when you give to someone, and the impact it can have. It really changes our environment, our towns, our companies, and our families. It’s a really well-kept secret that we’d like to start shouting from the rooftops.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more about Briiidge: thebriiidge.com | Facebook | Twitter
• “The Neuroscience of Trust”