WELL DONE SANTA CRUZ! Ride Out the Wave is over. We’ve crunched the data, distributed the money, and notified participating businesses and gift card purchasers. And you all made an astonishing thing happen.

Here are some numbers:

$432,000.

Money to local businesses. This total is a conservative estimate based on a $25 gift card purchase price. It also includes $48,000 in matching funds from donors like the City of Santa Cruz Economic Development Office, County of Santa Cruz Economic Development Office, Amazon, Looker Data Sciences, the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz, and the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership. Note that the site is still live and purchases are still happening so this number is actually still growing!

35 Days.

Campaign duration. The site launched on March 29th and we stopped tracking activity on May 5. All business listings, consumer promotion, Facebook Live concert events, matching grant fundraising and receipt processing took place during this period.

28,147 People.

Half the town. The campaign worked if the community supported local businesses through the website. This town has 64,000 people, so almost half of you turned up!

15,448 Purchases.

As much as 82% conversion. The unique site visitors selected merchants and purchased their gift cards. On average, 43% of you started gift card purchases each day, but the second event really stands out. At the Keith Greeninger concert 82% of site visitors started a gift card purchase. Who knew that “community love” could be quantified so clearly?

361 Friends and Neighbors.

Local organizations who listed themselves on the site to connect with you willing buyers. The listing process helped many of them add gift card purchasing capability for the first time.

1440 Fund Match Requests.

The second concert event was a runaway success and we ran out of matching funds in the first 15 minutes. Happily, we were able to match almost half of the requests. Even better: this one event drove more than 8,000 purchase clicks.

“We really appreciate having been included in this community event. It must have been quite a lot of work to coordinate!”

— Isabelle Brightman, Illuminee Inc.

Thank you to the merchants and local business organizations who trusted us, the local government agencies who ponied up right away, the promotional partners who helped spread the word, the private donors, and most of all THANK YOU!

The 9 volunteers from Amazon and Santa Cruz Works that put this together are ready to get back to our families, get outside, and get on with it. We’re honored, humbled, and touched by the community we live in.

“We knew there was an urgent need for help. We hatched an idea and assembled the right folks to make it happen. Online gift cards were not going to be a ‘silver bullet’ for anyone, but they provided a simple, effective and fast way for customers to support their local businesses. When the campaign began turning dozens of contributions into thousands, we realized we had underestimated our amazing community.”

— Rex Harris, Product Lead

California State Treasurer Ma Recognizes Santa Cruz Works for Ride Out the Wave

For details about the event and the matching funds processing, see our Frequently Asked Questions.

Learn about the team behind Ride Out the Wave, and more at: Celebration of Santa Cruz Tech

Ride Out the Wave concert #1 with Taylor Ray

Ride Out the Wave concert #2 with Keith Greeninger

Thank you for making us so proud!

Team Ride Out the Wave