Over the past few months, we’ve noticed an amazing trend on WePay.com. Not only are people using the service to send bills and sell tickets, but they’ve started using it in a totally new way – to collect donations for friends, family members, and complete strangers in need.

We’ve seen people collecting money for a newborn child suffering from a life-threatening congenital kidney defect, nonprofits like the Idaho Food Bank, and genetically deformed kittens.

You can see hundreds of donation campaigns on WePay Giving

After witnessing the spontaneous generosity of WePay users, we knew that we wanted to make giving a fundamental part of our company culture.

With that in mind, we recently decided to raise money for four families in financial need. We’re calling it our Help Families in Need Initiative.

We are excited to introduce you to The Clays, the Alaneses, the Bandelarias, and the Rodriguezes. They have suffered setbacks like cancer, homelessness, domestic violence and unemployment. We encourage you to read their stories and learn more about them.

Each family has an account on WePay to accept donations and a WePay debit card to access the funds that they collect. These accounts will be “open,” so that anybody can view them. This means that anybody can log in and view the account balance and transaction history at any time – not only where the money is coming from, but also where it’s being spent.

We look forward to posting updates about each family’s progress.  Make a donation, watch how the money is spent, and come back once in a while to show your support.

Special thanks to Compass Family Services for partnering with WePay to make this initiative a reality. Compass helps low-income and homeless families break the cycle of poverty and homelessness. Compass serves more than 3,000 parents and children each year.