Tula Software to Organize Support for Living Beyond Breast Cancer’s 25th Anniversary Yoga Fundraiser

I’m excited to announce today that Tula Software will be helping to organize support amongst our customers for a fantastic organization, Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC). We’ll be coordinating with our customer base to participate in LBBC’s Reach & Raise fundraising event, which will be held nationwide September 17th and 18th, 2016. 

Founded in 1991, LBBC is a 4-Star Charity Navigator nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect people with trusted breast cancer information and a community of support. National conferences, monthly webinars, regional community meetings, the Guides to Understanding Breast Cancer, award-winning blogs, and a toll-free Breast Cancer Helpline are just a few examples of the services that are provided, always at little or no cost.

Our aim is to engage as many of our customers as possible, implement what we refer to as a “full stack donation system” and activate our collective networks to participate in LBBC’s nationwide yoga fundraiser, “Reach & Raise on the Road.” 

In addition to a free month of software use, we’ll also be working with a host of other companies to offer promotions and incentives for you and your students to participate.

We’ve been thinking for some time about an idea we’ve had that we internally refer to as a “credit for a cause”, which I’ll write a separate post about later, but this gives us the perfect opportunity to begin working on this “full stack donation system” while also supporting a fantastic event and bringing our community of studios together for a cause.

Here’s how it’ll work:

  • LBBC is holding the nationwide yoga fundraiser the weekend of September 17th/18th
  • Tula Software will encourage studios that use Tula Software to participate in this event by offering them a free month of software use by participating
  • Studios reach out to their respective communities to get students involved and purchase the credit for a cause (the cause in this case being LBBC).
  • Students purchase a credit for a cause pass.
  • This credit will be the first credit used at their next class attendance.
  • We suggest instructors forego any incentive pay for anyone redeeming their “LBBC credit for a cause” pass.

We think it’s a beautifully simple idea, and that this full stack donation system allows everyone in the community to participate and contribute, all while relieving any single participant from carrying too heavy of a burden. 

We can do this from a technology standpoint by using Tula Software and making a few customizations. The studios that use our software will be able to accept donations via payment forms that are already sitting on their websites and iOS apps, and the donations will be able to be made by students who already have credit cards on file with the studios they go to. Then, these donations will be sent directly to LBBC.

From a technical standpoint, it works like this:

  • We’ll deploy the same pass type to each participating studio.
  • Their students can then purchase the pass. 
  • The pass will then be good for 30 days.
  • The money used to purchase these specific pass types goes to the recipient(s) stripe account - which in this case, is LBBC.

We met the LBBC team for the first time at the NamasDay festival in Philadelphia. When we learned about their Reach & Raise fundraiser, we thought credit for a cause would be a fantastic way to support them. 

We’re looking forward to working with LBBC in the months ahead, and we’ll be reaching out to studios that use our software to encourage participation. And of course, if you’re a Tula customer and want to be a part of this coordinated effort, please email us at [help at tulasoftware dot com] or just get in touch via the support channel in the software.

We’re looking forward to seeing just what we can do with your help for this wonderful organization!

Tula Software has Acquired The Minneapolis Yoga Conference

I’m excited to announce today that Tula Software has acquired the Minneapolis Yoga Conference! We’ll be producing and promoting the 2017 Conference, which will take place at the Hyatt in downtown Minneapolis on March 3, 4, and 5, 2017. With this acquisition we’ll have an opportunity to connect more closely and more deeply with our customers than ever before, while also being able to expand the offering to the Minneapolis yoga community. 

For those unfamiliar, Tula Software has been a big sponsor of the Minneapolis Yoga Conference for the past two years, and we’ve made many new friends in the Minnesota Yoga community as a result. Our intention is to make the Minneapolis Yoga Conference the premier yoga conference in the nation, while also continuing to sponsor and support the numerous independent conferences we already attend, and new ones we plan to support in the future. 

Our aim is to honor and highlight the conference’s roots, where the depths of yoga are embraced and celebrated, and where it sits at the fore-front of the Yoga Therapy movement, while also bringing a new and exciting energy to the conference that only Tula Software could bring. 

Each year, students, instructors and studio owners from around the world will have an opportunity to connect, support and learn from each other. We will welcome, honor and respect everyone for where they are on their yogic path, and express gratitude for each person and what they bring to the larger yoga community. 

Over the past couple of years, one of the primary ways we’ve spread the word about Tula Software has been by sponsoring and attending various yoga conferences. And while the raw business results of these efforts are somewhat difficult to measure, I have felt firsthand how valuable and important these conferences are to me personally. I took it as a given that over time, they’d be an important part of our growth, even if it wasn’t something I could measure directly.

After so many positive conference and festival experiences, we had started to think about what a conference produced by Tula Software might look like, primarily so we could have a context whereby we could meet and interact with our customers over a long weekend, and importantly, where they could all meet each other. 

As it turned out, the universe aligned a few things and an opportunity to acquire the Minneapolis Yoga Conference presented itself, and we jumped at it. 

We’ll now be able to both expand the conference for the people of the Minnesota yoga community with whom we’ve become friends, while also have a place where we can invite our customers so we can meet them in person, get to know them and their businesses more deeply, and encourage and support everyone who is helping to spread the wonderfulness that is yoga.

In the weeks ahead we’ll be launching the new website, sharing the schedule, introducing some presenters and give everyone a glimpse of what we’ll be putting together. To the handful of people we’ve already spoken to about this announcement, we can’t thank you enough for your words of encouragement and support.

Thank you