I moved from Dayton, Ohio to my current home of Durango, Colorado in 1995 to attend Fort Lewis College. After graduation, I joined up with two founders of a payments-technology company and embarked on a life-changing 16-year career leading small business solutions for one of the largest financial technology companies in the world. I decided to take a break on 12.31.19 to spend time with my three daughters. Two-and-a-half months later, COVID-19 invaded everything, and everything changed.

Durango is a small town but it’s not unlike every hometown, where the fabric of our communities is stitched together by the people who show up, every day. Around each corner live our friends, the storefronts, and the past times we cherish. Our neighbors are children’s teachers and those who coach our lives. We help keep each other’s lights on, and we help put food on each other’s tables that we all share. We take our time browsing neighborhood shelves and providing for each other. And we clean up and care for our doorsteps when each day ends. We do this together. It's the foundation of community.

When the Covid-19 crisis ripped through our hometowns, dismantling our Main Street economies and leaving many amongst us, our friends and our neighbors facing unprecedented challenges, I discovered a confounding problem in our society: everyone was sidelined. Receiving emergency financial assistance felt like a ‘lottery ticket’ to most, and completely out of reach to many. Anyone fortunate enough to be able to help their neighbors and neighborhoods, felt helpless, with no method to make a real impact in our own hometowns.

All of us have faced a difficult time in our lives, or the lives of those around us, when you see a solution to a problem that you cannot ignore. This became one of those moments for me. And it’s the moment I started the journey that is now, AidtoAll.

AidtoAll is a ‘first-of-its kind’ solution that empowers communities during crisis; providing immediate financial relief directly to those who need it most, from within the community. It’s built using decades of payments technology experience amongst me and several cherished colleagues from my days at Mercury, Vantiv & Worldpay. It’s become a reality with the help (and heart) of incredible partners, dozens of volunteers, community leaders, and a dedicated team of ‘mountain movers’, all aligned under a singular purpose and mission.

It’s been the privilege of my lifetime to work on solving this problem, and to work with an incredible group of ‘good’ humans who’ve brought this to life, and into our community.

Matt Taylor, Founder