Our Story

When two moms, a couple of Macs and a small army of children come together, funny things happen. It started like this:

Hey, come to my kid’s birthday party. Then you come to my kid’s birthday party. Then, let’s invite all the same friends to each birthday, six times a year between our two families. Then they go to 20 other birthdays, each…and so on.

At a certain point (about the time we watched Story of Stuff), the running around got to be too much. That’s when self-proclaimed mom 1.0, Monica Ostby, enlisted the help of her mom 2.0 friend and mommy blogger, Jamaica Jenkins, to create an in lieu of gifts site that lets friends pitch in to benefit the planet. The result? inlu.com.

Inlu.com is a savvy site that allows people to coordinate a group collection that can be sent as cash to cover a gift, a check sent direct to charity or allocated to both gift and charity. The result? An easy, personalized pitch-in process that stops the runaround and saves the planet by curbing waste. Each party adds up to less mess, more love because organizers can set a gift amount and give the rest to a cause.

But, it’s not all about the eco-savings. Inlu.com features a printable keepsake with each inlu to keep the love alive long after the party is over and done with. Inlu is an excellent tool for all kinds of collections: from weddings to baby showers to in lieu of gifts, this site is about as flexible as it is clever.

Next?

Inspired by the Story of Stuff, Inlu would like to get to the bottom of: The story of…