$75
The first month of tools
Software, a domain, and the accounts a studio needs to take its first customer.
What a gift does
It buys a start, not an overhead line.
Start on Monday already carries the expensive part — the businesses are built, priced, documented, and supported. What a gift covers is the last stretch between a builder who is ready and a business that is running.
Solo has a one-time fee, usually $500–$700 depending on the business. For some applicants that fee is the only thing standing between them and a first customer. Gifts fund the starter support that clears it, and the tools people need in the first weeks.
$250
Equipment and connectivity
A headset, internet support, or the hardware gap that keeps someone off client calls.
$600
One full Solo start
Covers a builder's one-time fee outright. They own the kit and keep 100% of what they earn, forever.
Amounts are illustrative of real costs, not fixed packages. Gifts are pooled and directed where they unblock the most builders.
Why this model
The business outlasts the gift.
A gift here is not consumed. It hands someone an operating business they own outright — no equity taken, no IP claim, no debt created — and the earnings stay with them and their community.
On the Cofounder path, ventures pay a flat membership fee on proceeds back into the cooperative. Builders who earn fund the builders coming up behind them. Donors cover the gap at the front of that cycle; the goal is for the cooperative to outgrow the gap and sustain itself.
Where your gift sits
Part of softerbread's work on financial autonomy.
Start on Monday is one of the ready-to-run tools built by softerbread, Birthright Project's venture platform for financial autonomy. Softerbread's work runs across four lines, and giving supports all of them.
Residency programs
Programs like the bakery that turn ideas into functioning ventures.
Access to capital
Getting builders capital-ready and connected — funder introductions, financing options, and the documentation lenders ask for. We open the door; we are not the lender.
Ready-to-run tech tools
Proven platforms for small businesses, built and handed to builders to operate. Start on Monday is one of them.
Local financial cooperatives
Structures that keep capital circulating in-community, in the hands of the people who earned it.
Success is measured in businesses that outlast us — not in interest collected.
Give
Fund a start.
All contributions are managed through The Birthright Project, a 501(c)(3) public charity — EIN 99-3166732. Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
For institutional partnerships, matching gifts, or multi-year commitments, email us directly and we will put together a package with defined deliverables and reporting.