Entrepreneurial Technologies debuts altruo.us

Entrepreneurial Technologies announced the debut of a new service, altro.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? Erin Ginkens: It’s a giving platform that focuses on the individual and allows them to raise money online on behalf of their…

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?

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.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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