The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 64 – Jacob Wells

Episode 64: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Jacob Wells, co-founder of the Christian crowdfunding platform Give Send Go, discusses the company’s faith-based origins and its mission to meet both the material and spiritual needs of its users. He explains their unique “generosity model,” where the platform charges no fees to fundraisers, instead operating on optional tips from donors.

Wells recounts the company’s journey from a small, bootstrapped startup to a prominent platform, highlighting its role in high-profile, controversial campaigns for Kyle Rittenhouse and the Canadian Freedom Convoy. The conversation concludes with Wells describing the company’s subsequent efforts to bolster security and build a more resilient, censorship-resistant technology infrastructure.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. You can see this show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, wherever you get your podcasts. Please go to your favorite podcast provider and leave a positive review that helps it come to the attention of a lot more people. And we want it to be coming to the attention of more people because on this show are major thought leaders from many fields of influence showing how our worldview changes everything.

Well, you have heard of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. Well, our guest today co-founded a platform that charges no fee on the money that’s raised. It helps people raise money for missions, trips, medical expenses, churches, and more. And you have heard about it because it was in the center of media attention recently and we’re going to get into all of that and what it’s like when you’re under attack and how to stand strong. Please welcome Jacob Wells to the show. Jacob Wells, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Jacob Wells (01:06):
It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:08):
Listen, I’ve been excited to have this conversation. When I first saw that you were going to be at the National Religious Broadcasters, I thought, I really want to connect with that guy, but there’s so many people there and everybody’s heading off in different directions that we’d never got a chance to cross paths. I did see you across the room, however, so at least that was a start.

Jacob Wells (01:28):
Yeah, it was. And we made it here, so we’re good.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:30):
Yeah. Well, I want to hear about, there are so many things we can talk about about your crowdsource, crowdfunding platform, give, send, go. And a lot of people know about this without realizing that they know about it because of something that happened in the news just a few weeks ago. We’re recording here in April of 2022. So we’re going to get into that a little bit. But first of all, Jacob, tell us a little bit about the platform and why you did it. I’m really excited about it and I just can’t wait to hear you tell. What’s the vision?

Jacob Wells (02:07):
Yeah. We use the pinky and the brain example of, what are we going to do tomorrow? We’re going to try to take over the world, being a pinky. Our goal is to be the leader in donation fundraising around the world. We’re in 40 countries right now. People are using us everywhere to raise money to make a difference in their community. And that looks like a lot of different things, which is part of the reason why we’ve blasted onto the scene is we’ve allowed our platform to be used in a very free manner. We’ve got to allow the law to set the boundaries for what it’s used for.

But we started back in 2014, just with a vision for building a platform that recognized that money will help meet our material needs, but it does not meet our immaterial needs. And everybody has those. No amount of money that you give to someone that’s just lost a child in a tragic accident is going to, like, it’ll pay for the funeral expenses.

(03:12):
It will not fix the hurt that a parent is going through and grieving. And we knew, and we believe as Christians, is that Jesus is the hope in those hopeless moments. And so we needed a platform that was more than just, “Hey, let’s raise money.” That’s good. It’ll go so far, but it doesn’t meet the whole scenario. And so we need a platform that engages both sides of that and how can we do that? And I started the company with a couple sisters in 2014. And then in 2015, one of them had to drop out just because of life situations. And then, so my sister Heather and I have since then co-founded it and been walking it out.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:54):
Jacob, one of the things that caught my attention immediately when I first heard about your platform was that you offer the fundraising service for free. And a lot of people don’t know that depending on which site is gathering the money for whatever cause, they might be taking a bite out of that, of five to 10% of the money that’s raised they take just off the top. So there’s not much altruism behind a lot of these platforms. That’s a business model where they sort of take advantage of people’s compassion to skim money off the top. Maybe that’s an unfair way to say it, but that’s one thing that really drew my attention with your platform.

Jacob Wells (04:36):
Well, and it’s how we’ve led in this space and how we’re going to continue. Our vision initially was like, okay, we’re stepping in this space. We have real costs like any business does, organization does. GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Indigogo, they are charging five to 10% of any donation that comes through. So if you’re raising money and someone gives you $100, you’re only getting about after, because there’s processing fees, payment processing fees, MasterCard and Visa and they charge independently of even platforms like ourselves. We can’t get around that.

But these platforms were charging 5 to 10%. So people were getting maybe 90% of their donation. And at first we stepped into the market saying, “Well, let’s just be cheaper. Let’s be a little less costly to people. So we’ll just charge less.” And after about three months, this is back in 2015 when we had just launched, we really felt God stirring inside us to say, “Listen, we’re asking people to step out of their comfort zone to engage their community and meet financial needs for people and believe in faith that God is going to provide for them.”

(05:44):
So we should be stepping out in faith with our own business venture that God’s called us to. So what we said was, “You know what? We’re going to go off of a generosity model, which is we’re just going to believe that as people use our platform, they can give to us if they feel like they’re able and willing and led to give.” And so we did that back in 2015 and now a couple other sites have emulated that process. We run on generosity.

And so givers, when they’re giving to a campaign, they can give a little bit extra to give Sango to keep us free. It made sense that instead of taking money from the person raising it, who needs that money, that’s why they’re raising money. Instead of taking it from them, why don’t we see if the givers who have money, that’s why they’re there.

(06:32):
They’ve got money, they’re givers at heart, why don’t we see if they’re willing to give a little bit extra to keep us free for those campaign owners? And sure enough, they were. They’re generous. They’re givers at heart. And so we found that, wow, generosity as a model really works. And so we’ve led in that space over the past several years and now many other platforms have started to adopt that model as well.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:54):
I’ve noticed a lot of the organizations that are involved in fundraising and sharing generosity have changed their models based on what you’ve shared. I think that’s great that you let out in that way. Dig into, I didn’t want to just get to that point by missing the significance of what you said earlier, that you want to help meet the deeper needs of people. It’s not just getting the money.

Like you said, getting the money solves some of the problems, financial problems always complicate heartache. So you can take care of that, but you mentioned that you really are more concerned about the whole situation. And talk about how your platform engages people at that level.

Jacob Wells (07:36):
Yeah. So that’s something that we’ve really wrestled with as a technology platform. It’s like, how do you deliver this hope message to people? And so one of the just base level ways was everything that we do on the platform is going to revolve around God’s word because we know that God’s word brings life.

And so if you go to any page of Give Send Go, it’s just going to have His word written throughout it. And that’s on the receipts when people give, that’s on the thank you emails that go out. It’s literally all throughout your campaign dashboard. You’re just getting little messages of what God’s words say about that feature. And so we infiltrated the platform with God’s word just to give life to people as they use our platform. And then we introduced something back in like 2016, 2017, which was a pray now button.

(08:28):
You won’t find it on any other crowdfunding platform, but on Give Send Go, we have a pray now button. So what we realized is there’s real power in prayer that God bends his ear as scripture says to our petitions and that we wanted a way for people to be able to show not only their financial support, but also their prayer support to people.

So we added this prayer button where campaign owners could list prayer requests on their campaign page and that people could pray into those things. They could click on the pray now button and you can actually write a message, a note of encouragement, a prayer for the person that has the campaign and you don’t have to give in order to do that. So you may not have money, but you do have, as a believer, you have a God that’s got everything at his disposal.

(09:18):
And so your prayers mean something to him so you can pray into something for a campaign owner. So that was like step two. Let’s create this pray now button. At first it was just a counter where it showed how many people were praying and now it’s got, you can send a message to the campaign owner.

And then just about a year and a half ago, our first real team at Give Said Go was a prayer team. People were in isolation. The pandemic was hitting everybody at all fronts. People were being told, “You can’t go outside, you need to stay in your house, you need to isolate from everybody.” And we’re like, “Man, how do we break through? We want to be better at engaging people. People are suffering right now because of this isolation.” And we said, “You know what?”

(10:01):
“Let’s hire some people that are prayer warriors and let’s pay them to call every campaign that comes on to Give Send Go and pray with them about what they’re fundraising for.” And so that really took off. It’s been an amazing thing. So people that set up campaigns on Give Send Go, they actually get a phone call. As a tech company, they get a phone call from somebody from our company that says, “Hey, I’ve read through your campaign. I know what you’re fundraising for and I know that there’s God out there that cares intimately with what you’re going through.”

And what we’ve seen as a result of that is absolute amazing testimony after testimony. I mean, you’re talking about people that, situations that are really, really say sad, sad, tragic situations where somebody’s lost their child to suicide and on the verge of committing suicide themselves have a gun in their lap and our prayer person calls them right at that moment, God just orchestrates the situation.

(11:08):
So that was another way where we just started to say, “How can we engage better?” And so we set up this prayer team and they call, and amazing things have happened from that and we’re still saying, “What can we do more? How can we do more?” And so we’ve started our little spotlight podcast where we’re trying to engage campaign owners and yeah, it’s a journey and we’re walking it out and saying, “How can we use technology to engage with people better, share our hope?”

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:40):
I’ve heard a lot of people say there are three ways you can give your time, your talent, and your treasure. And it sounds like the way you’ve set this up, people can engage at all of those levels to not only affirm that they’ve been able to do something that’s valuable to an individual that can be life changing, but you just inspire a generous heart overall financially and in terms of time and in terms of the abilities. But those are incredible stories. It is hard to imagine. I mean, you’re not going to get a phone call from Google. How can we pray for you today?

Jacob Wells (12:24):
One of the cool aspects of that too is Give Send Go is not just for Christians. I mean, we literally have people of all faiths using our platform, all situations, just because of where censorship has moved in our culture. And so what this has done is it’s opened up the door for us to really reach into people’s lives that we really impact them in a real meaningful way that aren’t even from a faith, a Christian faith background.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:53):
I want to, in a few minutes, get into what happened with the Canadian truckers and the spotlight that you were instantly under. But before that, it occurred to me that, if I were a 20 something listening to this, I would wonder, how do you even start something like this? Like you’re not a bank. How do you raise the money? Where does the money go? How’s the accountability? How does the technology work? I mean, you don’t have to go into all the detail about it, but I’m just really curious how something like this even gets off the ground.

Jacob Wells (13:31):
Well, I think the writer of Hebrew says it in Hebrews 11, “Without faith, it’s impossible to please God.” It takes a lot of faith. One, you have to have a good idea. And when I say good idea, people think that they have good ideas all the time. Good ideas are usually vetted by the good people around you that you have in your life.

And so nothing ever done well happens in a vacuum. It happens because you have a community of people that you’ve involved in your life to help navigate the complexities of life. And this is Proverbs like 101, Proverbs two, watch out who you hang around with and surround yourself with good people. And so for people that are walking out a journey, you may think you have a good idea, make sure that it’s vetted by the people around you that you engage with.

(14:18):
Make sure you have good people around you. That’s one of the first things that … We had this idea and we tossed it around and it was like, “Oh no, this is a really good idea. I think that there’s a need for this.” And so we stepped out.

The fascinating part is both my sister and I, we don’t have a background in doing any of this. Neither one of us had a bachelor’s degree, neither one of us were qualified at any sense of the word that you would think would need to be qualified to do what we’re doing, but God put, birthed something inside of us. I think you also have to carry a vision for your purpose and the value that you have. I think in Hebrews 12, Jesus endured the cross because of what he saw in front of him for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

(15:13):
And I think the cross oftentimes in the entrepreneur, there’s a lot of difficulty in building a company. It has ups and downs. It is relational pulling. It’s all of these tensions and you have to have something in front of you that’s calling you towards that. And for us, we saw that and it was inside of us, a vision and a purpose to engage the world.

And then there’s just hard work ethic. It’s like the grind, getting it done, sitting late, late nights, being creative, thinking how to outsmart the competitor. When you don’t have any money. I mean, my sister and I, we bootstrapped the company. We’re not the typical startup type of company where you borrow millions of dollars to fund yourself until you’re profitable, whatever. We said, “You know what, God, we’re not going to go in debt over this.”

(16:12):
“We’re just going to walk this thing out. ” And so we started it and as we scrambled to get campaigns on the site. And we did have a little benefit. I’m one of 12 children and so we had a big army of ambassadors for Give Send Go. A lot of them are in ministry and doing some great things around the world. And so that was helpful.

We have a family that’s engaged with it as well, but it slowly grew. And we just grew within the confines of its growth and we poured everything back into it. And our spouses were getting sick and tired of this journey that we’re on because we weren’t getting paid. I mean, there was sacrifice. It was real sacrifice. And then finally, as we say, our Esther moment and for such a time as this, our platform was there when there wasn’t anything else.

(17:07):
And we had learned the lessons of the grind of years before, and we were positioned in a place to really engage the culture and stand up for what we feel are based principles and values in our culture, like freedom. And that’s not just an American principle, that’s a biblical ideal, like just God, God giving freedom in the garden, God giving freedom at the cross. Everything around what God has done centers around freedom.

In that, in freedom, there’s a lot of bad things that happen. The consequences of freedom are a lot of bad things. The response of a Christian and freedom is to step into the hurt. It’s not to stop the freedom. Step into the hurt and then show the grace and the goodness of God in the midst of hurt and suffering. So yeah, but it’s a journey and it’s a challenge and it’s a walk building something.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:05):
That’s inspiring. And it’s also helpful to know we tend to only notice something that happens on the day that it becomes an overnight success. So somebody could work for 10 years or 7 years in your case to become an overnight success. Exactly. And people tend to think, “Oh, that was easy. All they had to do was push a button and it happened.”

Jacob Wells (18:28):
Oh Lord.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:29):
But you used the word sacrifice, which I love and I’m kind of a word geek. The word sacrifice kind of comes out of the word sacred, that there is something sacred about setting aside your own self-interest to pursue a greater good. And that’s a powerful aspect of success in business or in ministry or really anything that you.

Jacob Wells (18:55):
Everything.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:57):
Everything. Are you willing to see setting aside your self-interest as a sacred calling because there is something better that would result than if you just pursued your self-interest like a lot of people seem to do.

Jacob Wells (19:13):
Well, that is it, in like just boiled down is selflessness versus selfishness and everything about relationships, which is what encapsulates everything in the world, everything about relationships is selfish or selfless. And when you can get engaged, and selfless means sacrifice. I mean, it’s that pouring out of yourself and it was encompassed at the cross, it was emulated for us at the very base element of what our calling is as Christians is to live selflessly while lives poured out. And yeah, I mean, that’s fundamental. It’s so, so core, so pivotal to understand.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:59):
Yeah. Man. Well, let’s talk about a moment in time where you and your company were the center. You were at literally in national, maybe international spotlight and it began, and you can fill in the details as we go here, but toward the beginning of 2022, there were a lot of people involved in the transportation industry in the nation of Canada who felt that they weren’t able to work or deliver the products and services that needed to be delivered because of government restrictions. So they converged on Ottawa in trucks.

This has happened in the United States before. It happened during the Jimmy Carter administration in the 1970s where farmers who were in distress drove their tractors to Washington DC and parked around the Capitol. In the time of Jimmy Carter, the members of Congress were like, “Why are all these people with tractors here?” So they literally just walked out of the building and walked up to them and said, “Hey, what are you doing?”

(21:01):
“Why are you here? What is it you need?” And it turned out to be a largely positive thing because people paid attention. Well, so in Ottawa, it was a very different response. It was more like the government saying, “You are intruders, this is an incursion, this is an insurrection.”

(21:21):
And you’ve got all these people in their trucks and then a lot of Americans are watching this thinking, “I bet those people are going to get hungry. I bet those people are going to get thirsty. Who’s giving them food? How are they doing?” Surely they didn’t come with all of the money they needed to survive sitting in their truck in the streets for weeks. And at some moment you jumped in and tell us why and how that all happened.

Jacob Wells (21:48):
Yeah. So I think our platform, just in its growth and its journey that we’ve come along is actually a year and a half prior to that, we were the only platform that allowed Kyle Rittenhouse a means for his legal defense. I mean, we just believe that you’re innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and that you shouldn’t be prejudged. And that was a very polarized situation. So we were the only platform that did it. So that kind of was that first thrust. We got massive, massive attacks.

So we did get the national spotlight then, massive attack because we were allowing something that every other, literally every other platform was shutting down. And so that pushed us. What it started to do is people said, “Well, here’s a company that’s not just vending to the whim of popular culture or the mainstream narratives that are being pushed.” And so our name was already in this movement of people recognizing, you know what, we’re going to stand for freedom, we’re going to stand for some of these ideals that we believe strongly and we’re not just going to bow down to whatever whim.

(22:57):
So when that convoy movement in January of 2022 began to really start, actually what was interesting is one of the guys leading a campaign in Canada, he set up a give, send, go campaign and tomorrow Leach, the kind of the de facto leader of the Ottawa group had set up a GoFundMe campaign and they were running at the same time. Hers happened to be the one that eventually gained a lot of the traction.

So a lot of funds were coming in through that campaign because it was getting into the media spotlight, but people were, GoFundMe wasn’t releasing any of the money and this guy that had his Give Send Go campaign had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and he was receiving the money daily because it’s just paying out to his account. So he’s getting all this money. He’s like, “They’re working for me.”

(23:57):
“Why the heck are you guys using GoFundMe?” And everyone on the social sphere of things were yelling as it became more and more clear that GoFundMe was going to shut the campaign down because of the delays and everything, the excuses that they were giving, people were yelling, “What are you doing? Use Give Send Go. Why did you even use GoFundMe in the first place?”

And so as that cry became louder and louder, a conversation opened up between Tamara and her team and Give Send Go. And we said, “Well, our platform’s open and available for everyone to use and you’re welcome to use it.” And they said, “Okay, we’ll set up a campaign.” Still not knowing what GoFundMe was going to do. So they kind of just had it there on the background, maybe even as a negotiation tool with GoFundMe to say, “Hey, listen, if you don’t, we’ve got this other thing ready to go.”

(24:49):
And GoFundMe did what everyone expected them to do. They ended up shutting it down and immediately they had a campaign on Give Send Go already there, already going. And the moment that they gave that announcement of, “Hey, we’ve moved over to Give Send Go,” bang, just the media explosion around it all went crazy, along with all the attacks and everything else that came along with that because it was a polarized situation and you got people on both sides and you’ve got people wanting to take us down because we are standing for these principles.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:36):
Tell us, Jacob, about some of those attacks.

Jacob Wells (25:40):
Yeah. Well, so initially, right after the campaign, it became, the announcement was made by the convoy team that they were setting, that their Give Send Go, GoFundMe wasn’t going to do anything, and they had this gift send go. Within a couple hours, we saw a massive influx of bot attacks and DDoS attacks. And the whole purpose behind that is to knock your servers offline and make your platform incapable from regular people to get on because you’re so inundated with this bot traffic.

And so these malicious actors came after us to try to overwhelm our servers. And so we spent those next two or three days completely, almost in the dark. It was really a miracle because the campaign raised money like five times faster than GoFundMe that it had raised on GoFundMe. In the first 24 hours, two and a half million dollars had been donated and we couldn’t even ourselves get on the site because it was so swamped, we couldn’t log in.

(26:51):
Our tech team was obviously fighting to keep things going and somehow donations continued to keep coming and really just an incredible moment. And over those next couple of days, we were able to put better defensive measures from a DDoS attack, the bot attack structures in place. And at the same time, we had other malicious actors looking to exploit other vulnerabilities.

And so unfortunately, about a week after we actually experienced a hack, a horrific thing from our perspective in the sense that we do everything that we can to try to protect and preserve and have a safe place for people to donate to. And thankfully it wasn’t credit card numbers, so it didn’t affect your card, but the intent behind it was let’s expose everybody that donated so we can dox them and make a public issue.

And it seemed somewhat nefarious because the public person who came out and admitted to doing it online and went crazy in a video about it, he actually has connections to Canadian Intel, having worked for them in the past, part of the anonymous hacker group.

(28:14):
And so it’s like, okay, was this coordinated by the Canadian government? There’s just a lot of big question marks around how it came out because then they go into, “We’re going to freeze.” I mean, they went full on dictatorship, we’re going to freeze bank accounts and we’re going to do, and Justin Trudeau. I mean, the whole response by the Canadian government was absolutely horrific that as the truckers came in the first place into Ottawa, they were in communications with the city of Ottawa. Everything was on the up and up. There was no, they were in coordinating efforts with them.

(28:54):
The way the mainstream media tried to paint this absolutely, completely different than how it actually played itself out. Justin Trudeau went into hiding that first 10 days, said he was sick and disappeared. I mean, the response of a leader, when you have people that have a complaint, to run from that, which is exactly what he did, is just absolutely disgusting. I mean, you may not agree with what their complaint was, but you at least engage and hear.

And that’s the way, I mean, how do you, as a parent, you know this. If I’ve got my child that’s coming because they’ve got an issue and all I want to do is ignore them or throw, it’s only going to make the matter worse. It’s just that you have to engage, you have to talk it through, and they didn’t do that. They didn’t act in any semblance like leaders should act.

(29:51):
And then they called us before parliament, so we had to testify. I didn’t have to, but we decided we’d testify a couple weeks later before parliament Or, and they wanted to lay it at our feet. And it was like, no, no, no, no. Everything around this is because of you. Like your policies, your people are upset because of you. This has nothing to do with us. Some people just use our platform to raise money. And all of the people that gave were just normal, less than $100 average donation from general people like you said, trying to help me to need, pay for some fuel, pay for food and housing and stuff. Wow.

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:28):
Wow.

Jacob Wells (30:29):
Crazy, crazy situation.

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:29):
There’s so many aspects to that attack. It is. And we know as a Christian, I know that behind any physical attack, there’s always a spiritual attack. I get that. There is a spiritual world that it’s real, that our weapons are not of the flesh, but their spiritual weapons to the tearing down of strongholds is the way the apostle put it.

But you saw the first attack was a technological attack and then a hack and then a government, one of the Canadian government, the national government. Coming after your little company for trying to help people. And the way you’ve described it just now, I was trying to think if there’s any media report that I heard that portrayed it in that way, that instead there was a personal attack on you and on the company and trying to shut it down, trying to intimidate those who were donating. It all seems so malicious.

Jacob Wells (31:45):
Yeah. Well, I think when you operate, it was complete evil. I mean, it was a fear. When you operate out of fear, which is how the governments have been operating, it’s all couched in this. When you operate out of fear, you use that same fear that you operate out of to then instill submission from the people around you. And so everything is fear mongering. It’s a power struggle.

And governments know full well that fear is a great motivator. And if you can instill that in people, then you can control them. And that’s what they’ve been doing. That’s what they’ve been doing since the beginning of time. I mean, when we had to testify before parliament, it was all under this couching of terrorist activities. And I’m like, the biggest engagers in terrorist activity throughout history have been governments amongst their own people. I mean, just study history for a second.

(32:40):
It’s rarely rogue individuals. It’s usually governments that have just overreached and abused their authority. And we see that time and time and time again, just hundreds of millions of people killed by their own governments. And in this scenario, it’s the same thing. A government that’s just unwilling to engage with their own citizens as a byproduct of what their own citizens were dealing with was like, “I can’t feed my family. I can’t work if I am not vaccinated, if I don’t take a forced shot to save myself from a disease that 99% of people actually survive.”

I mean, and these are just the base numbers. And that’s all they were saying, “Listen, I’ve got families. I’ve got a family I need to feed and I’m on the road by myself 99% of the time in a truck. How is this fair?” And the government just, you know what? They didn’t want to hear from anybody.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:47):
Yeah. How did that end for the people who were involved in the convoy?

Jacob Wells (33:53):
Yeah. So Tamara, who, like I said, kind of defacto, because this really was a grassroots type of thing. This wasn’t like a massively organized thing. This was just truckers coming from all over Canada, hearing about it and just jumping in. But because of the notoriety of the crowdfunding campaign that raised so much money for Tamara and the situation around it, and the organization that they set up to try to handle those funds and the people bought on.

A couple of those people were actually arrested and put in prison. Tamara has since been released on charges of like nothing. I mean, they let worse offenders by far out on probation without any jail time. Like, “Okay, yeah, you can be out on bail during whatever.” They didn’t. They put her in jail for almost three weeks or a month and a couple other people. I believe there’s still one person incarcerated as a result of it.

(35:04):
I know that they’re still wanting to stand for freedom in Canada as individuals and as people there, that are saying, “Hey, the government is moving too far in the space of our personal freedoms.” And this was reiterated by, so they had a charter of rights that was created back in the early ’80s and the last founding member signer of that charter of rights that helped put it together is still alive. And this details a lot of the rights that Canadians have and he’s appalled and he’s actually spoken out against the government.

(35:45):
Because they’re using the things that they wrote up and he was one of the signers of completely not in the manner in the meaning behind what they put him in place for. And so he’s been speaking out, advocating against it. And so, hopefully what this did is pull the veil off of the rottenness at the core of some of this and we hope for change.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:12):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know we’ll see in the coming months, but I sense the same thing. I sensed a lot of people in Canada who pretty much just went along and were pretty chill about all of life are now enraged to see the abuses of this government that was supposed to protect their freedoms. Now, free speech is not the same thing in Canada as it is in the United States. It never has been.

Jacob Wells (36:44):
Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:45):
But to see these abuses was a sacrifice on the part of some people to bring out the true nature of what was happening in that country so that people have the opportunity to rise up. Whether they will or not, I guess remains to be seen. How about Give Send Go? What have the last couple months been like for you?

Jacob Wells (37:05):
Oh man, they’ve definitely been full. We’ve hired a bunch of people. We are hiring people. We’ve brought on some great security technical people to help bolster that whole side of our platform. You can hire like white teams, red teams that come in and they test your site to see. So we’ve hired out companies to do that against our site. So we’ve done a lot just to strengthen the site and its security measures.

I mean, there is a, if you just do a Google search of companies that have been breached over the past couple of years, you’re going to see everybody in the sun. Technology is this moving target and this is why you’re constantly getting an update for your phone, just because they realize that there’s a bug or there’s a vulnerability and a way to exploit it. And we’re not perfect people, so we don’t write perfect code and there’s breakdown in it.

(38:14):
And so you just have to be vigilant and on top and we’re ramping up to do that. So, we hired a lot of people around this. We’re building out the platform better. One of our core thought processes, okay, we know that there’s, any businesses, its greatest weaknesses are its dependencies. And if I have to depend on X, Y, and Z in order for my business to run, and I don’t have backups for those if those go out, then my business is done.

So how do I solve that problem? How do we build our own servers? How do we build our own bank? How do we build our own payment infrastructure systems? And so we’re approaching all of those things. We’re having amazing conversations with people that are in that same frame of mind, building better technology that has a heart of freedom to it, not for a malicious purpose, but for the understanding and the recognition that it’s only in freedom that everything good that we have actually rises.

(39:18):
You don’t have love, joy. You don’t have goodness if you don’t have freedom. It’s like it’s gone. So you have to fight for that. And that’s what we’re building out the technology. We’re helping lead in that space of technology to have platforms that keep that alive.

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:36):
Yeah. I can see how that’s going to have an impact far beyond gives and go. As more and more companies seem willing to curtail the freedom of people whose viewpoint they don’t agree with. And at some point in every day, we have to decide, am I going to be fragile today or am I going to be resilient? Thanks for your story. Thanks for everything that you’ve done. Thanks for sharing it with us here on the show today. It really means a lot.

Jacob Wells (40:07):
I can’t say thank you enough to you for having me on. I mean, I looked at your past lineup of people and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, he’s had some amazing people on this show.” I’m like, “And I get to be a part of this. This is super cool.” Yeah, very excited.

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:22):
Very cool to have you. Thank you to my guest today, Jacob Wells, for joining the show. You can visit givesendgo.com to find out more about what makes this crowdfunding platform different from the others. Jesus said where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Let’s find ways, like Jacob Wells has discussed and give sin go to invest our treasure and our time and our talent and things that last for eternity. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next week.

Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show. It’s a podcast from Summit Ministries, summit.org. Summit is a nonprofit ministry that exists to equip and support the rising generation to embrace God’s truth and champion a biblical worldview. For nearly 60 years, Summit Ministries has been training students and those who work with students to develop, deepen, and defend a biblical worldview through life-changing conferences, thoughtful church, homeschool and Christian school, curriculum books, free online resources and more.

(41:28):
If you want to live out a biblical worldview in today’s world and you desire to instill a lifelong faith in the rising generation, visit summit.org/thedrjeffshow for more information. Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place for your listening enjoyment. You can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share this show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review, if you would, on the site where you download the show that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.