Screenshot from altruo.us
Entrepreneurial Technologies announced the debut of a new service, altruo.us, late Wednesday. I caught up with Erin Ginkens, the company’s president, over email to learn about it.
Silicon Prairie News: What is altro.us?
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Erin Ginkens: It’s a giving platform that focuses on the individual and allows them to raise money online on behalf of their favorite charities, without the need for a fancy (and expensive) custom website. It also lets charities have their own pages to collect donations. We decided to emphasize simplicity over offering a huge array of options, and the goal is that a champion [the individuals raising money] can sign up and set up a page in less than five minutes.
Photo from entretechno.com
SPN: How did you come about identifying the need for the service?
Ginkens: This spring, I was raising money for two charities at the same time: one of them was a large national charity with a full-blown online donation system for their champions to use, and the other was a startup charity that was trying to do it through letters and word of mouth, without an online mechanism. I was blown away by how much easier it was to raise money on the online platform and realized that I needed build something for the startup charity to use. Then I realized that other people who want to raise money for charities probably face the same problem and thought, “Why don’t I just build something that all charities and individuals could use?”
SPN: What’s the plan for altruo.us moving forward?
Ginkens: The long-term goal is to change the way charitable giving works, from a centralized model where the organization is sending out a generic appeal to the masses, to a person-to-person appeal on behalf of a favorite charity. We also hope to relieve charities of the burden of hosting their own expensive custom donation sites, and make Dwolla a more accessible payment option for charities.
