Happy Bloo Monday 👋,

The weekly newsletter for businesses owners, organisations, team members and solo entrepreneurs (freelancers) — designed to add some colour to the Monday blues and replace it with a touch of Bloo 💙.

In this week of Bloo Monday’s we’ll be covering:

• 💙 Advancing creativity through events — The story of BAI Foundation and Bloo

•  🚀Scaling your events using Bloo — a look at how BAI Foundation is using Bloo Money with their freelancers and volunteers helping them also track their funding.

• 🔥 What’s coming up soon — Look out for our update on the BAI Heatseekers Con 2025.

Behind the Festival — How BAI Foundation Uses Bloo to Power African Creativity

We’ve run events ourselves, so we understand the pressure behind the scenes.

One of the first events we hosted was Coffee & Convos — a Bloo Money event created for freelancers, creatives, and entrepreneurs to meet, connect, share ideas, and collaborate on potential projects.

Over three editions in partnership with Empire Partner Foundation and Business and Arts South Africa we brought together:

• More than 200 attendees

• 60+ post-event business connections

• More than R75 000 in freelance work and gigs for people in our community

We saw the hustle and heart that goes into building an amazing event. We also felt the admin too. From working with teams of photographers, to tracking payments on the go and making sure things are in budget.

However, that’s not what made us start specialising on providing tailored solutions for companies running events, festivals and experiences which bring people together.

It was two visionary siblings Kibare (“Kibz”) Njuguna, a film producer, and Yalezo (“Yazz”) Njuguna, a storyteller — the duo behind The BAI Foundation.

Their mission caught us because it is simple but powerful — to create a space for young African talent across film, music, and digital art to shine.

The BAI Foundation champions digital art, entertainment and independent content creation. Through conversations, workshops and festivals.

We first met them at (you guessed it... an event) — the Business & Arts South Africa SoCreative Summit. They stopped by our exhibition stand, curious to learn more about Bloo Money.

However, it was our team that gained something more valuable from that conversation. We learned the behind-the-scenes struggles that many small businesses face when creating the events, festivals, and cultural moments we all love.

They had already created successful events and festivals which required working with more than 100 freelancers and service providers through their previous Afriquan Film Festival and BAI Showcase initiatives.

They were now thinking bigger. Festivals, events and initiatives which could reach more creatives. This also meant that they would be working with more freelance suppliers.

They needed an efficient way to receive invoices from these freelancers and service providers at scale, to streamline their financial and operation processes for their next project, the BAI Heatseekers.

This isn’t just because running a festival that attracts hundreds of participants requires collaborating with a wide network of freelancers, from film crews to content creators. It’s also because they receive funding from some of South Africa’s leading creative institutions, including the Presidential Employment Stimulus Fund and the National Film and Video Foundation, to bring their ambitious projects to life.

The system didn’t just need to automate how they receive invoices from their freelancers and make payments to them. It also required compliance and transparency on another level to make the task of reporting as seamless as possible.

What we immediately learnt from the pilot with them, is that most events companies start feeling the admin pain once they’re working with 15 or more freelance suppliers. That might not sound like much — until you realise it means:

15+ bank confirmations

15+ IDs or personal details

15+ payments to make manually via a banking app

That’s around 50 documents or pieces of information for one person to process, often taking hours, if not days. Now imagine the admin load for companies working with hundreds of freelancers. It’s overwhelming — and often feels like a logistical nightmare.

That’s where Bloo Money came in.

The invoicing app helped The BAI Foundation streamline all their financial interactions with freelancers — whilst also empowering those who had never used invoicing tools to submit professional invoices in just minutes.

This freed up their team to focus on creating opportunities for young creatives — with the confidence that Bloo Money was handling the admin behind the scenes.

During high-energy events like Heatseekers, the platform made it easy for freelancers to send invoices and get paid on time, giving the foundation peace of mind when it mattered most.

Bloo Money allowed BAI to:
✅ Collect invoices from 100+ freelancers (over 2 events)
✅ Standardise invoice formats
✅ Ensure every freelancer got paid — on time
✅ Focus on creative execution instead of admin.

💡 Scaling your events using Bloo x The BAI Foundation Use Case

We sat down with Yazz and Kibz to capture how they used Bloo to run their festival smoother — and pay over 100 freelancers and suppliers with less stress.

Whether you're running your first event or scaling up to your biggest yet, this story might just spark your next move.

💡 Bonus Resource: Is Admin Costing You Money?

Running events means juggling a million tasks and admin time can easily sneak up on you. That’s why we created our ROI Calculator just for busy teams like yours.

In just a few clicks, you can see how much time you’re spending on admin tasks — and exactly how much money Bloo Money could save you every month by simplifying invoice tracking, approvals, and payments. Imagine cutting down those admin hours and redirecting that time into creating unforgettable events.

Estimate:

• Hours spent per freelancer

• Days and hours spent on admin

• The cost this is having on your business

🔥 What’s Coming Up Soon: The BAI Heatseekrs Con

🗓️ 1–2 August 2025
📍 Braamfontein, Johannesburg

The BAI Foundation is back with HEATSKRS CON — a youth-centred creative convention with talks, workshops, showcases, and mixers. It’s more than an event. It’s a movement.

You’ll find:

• Masterclasses on content creation, sound, and production

• Live podcast tapings

• Brand activations and networking mixers

• Space for creatives to connect, grow and get hired

Bloo Money will also be hosting a finance-for-creatives workshop in partnership with Grapefruit Gardens and Hollard Film Guarantors — unpacking budgeting, film bonding, film insurance and invoice payments for your crew.

If you’re a film maker who attended our Masterclass last year and would be interested in attending this workshop?

Reply HEATSKRS and we’ll reach out to you to add you onto the RSVP list.

🔥 Let’s connect

That’s it for this week folks and looking forward to seeing you again next week Monday.