With a team of 20 and more than 70 clients —including such notables as YWCA, TD Bank, United Way, Girl Scouts, and Malibu Rum—29-year-old self-described “tech head” Donvil Collins already has more than a decade of entrepreneurship experience in the hospitality/entertainment field. His teenage days mentoring peers in video production eventually led to the formation of his two White Plains-based companies: Debo Media, founded in June 2006 to provide video production and website design and development for small businesses, and VeeKast, a fundraising-technology company founded in March 2013 under the Debo Media Inc. parent company. Nowadays, Collins is most proud of his ability to help nonprofit clients put on high-quality fundraising events on a tight budget. He says one key is to find sponsors to donate in as many ways as possible, noting that nonprofits often miss opportunities to raise money that people are willing to give. “They are just not asking or presenting their needs in a way that demands natural desires to want to help,” he says, “and VeeKast provides a unique tech service that does that really well.”
Wunderfacts:
• Key to Success: “Success for me is having your name associated with making an impact in some way, shape, or form on something. When people can associate my name with providing a technology that helps so many nonprofits or boosts a company’s impact, that’s success.“
• Received the Business Council of Westchester’s 40 under 40 Rising Star Award in 2015
• Collins has been doing volunteer work since he was a teenager, mentoring younger kids in video production at his Bronx community church.
• For TD Bank’s concert and fireworks “Celebrate America“ event, which drew more than 40,000 people from all over Long Island, Collins and his team helped engage attendees by using social media interaction on a big LED truck screen. “ We used the natures of everyone’s competitive spirit and their desire for 10 seconds of fame to boost the social-media interaction and in return trended the event on social media during a time when a ton of other world events were trending,“ he says.
