NONPROFIT
BRINGING BACK THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP
By WENDY MCMILLAN for LONGMONT MAGAZINE Want to try a simple social experiment? Ask someone, anyone, how many friends do you have? Chances are (after initial confusion or possibly shock), you might be treated to a laundry list of stats. Today, we’ve become accustomed to accumulating ‘friends’: Facebook friends, Instagram followers, LinkedIn connections. But real, genuine friends—the ones who make us laugh, know and love us despite, and for, our many flaws? Those kind of friendly relationships are a whole lot harder to quantify. They’re also much harder to find. BeFriendlee wants to change that. 52 LONGMONT MAGAZINE
BeFriendlee.com is a free matchmaking service for platonic friends (18 and over) with the goal of bringing back the true, empowering connections of friendship. The passion project of the Anderson family in Niwot, BeFriendlee.com aims to build a As an adult, friendships can be hard to find. global family vil(Photo courtesy BeFriendlee) lage of support, Whether by social media firestorm caring, and underor over a period slower than dialstanding. And they’re doing it by up internet, technology has been facilitating friendships, one match at a time. changing the face of friendship. A key force behind this shift is largely down to lack of time for actual faceto-face connection. For busy adults, work-life balance can be awfully challenging. Putting oneself out there in an effort to forge meaningful friendships can feel nearly impossible. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if a good chunk of the work of finding friends could be shared? What if discovering potential true friend matches could be as easy as, say, online dating? With BeFriendlee.com, if can be. LongmontMagazine.com
BeFriendlee.com just became live this past autumn, but its seeds were planted years ago. Dynamic and energetic, Fawn Anderson has always been deeply invested in community. As a vegan baker, she nourished community spirit. As a professional photographer, she observed and documented it. Fawn’s husband, software engineer and fellow BeFriendlee founder Matt was similarly community oriented, bringing people together with his warm, appreciative manner wherever he went. March/April 2019