Charity Storm is building infrastructure for the non-profit sector
Swedish Charity Storm is a fundraising and payments platform for the non-profit sector. With the platform Charity Storm helps charity organisations as well as other associations to keep up with new marketing tools and payment methods and thus also target the needs of the younger crowd.
A desire to make an impact on the world
Charity Storm was born out of a desire to do something more. Back in 2011 Adam Hasslert, co-founder and CEO, and his partner started it as a side project.
“While we were both in employment we asked ourselves ‘Where are we heading, how can we make more of an impact on the world?’”Adam Hasslert explains.
With this purpose in mind and since they are both educated within computer science as well as Business they set their minds on creating a tech startup that also helps the society.
“After coming up with a bunch of ideas we dwelled on all of the American and English platforms that are focused on charity and crowdfunding. So we started there and simply build a clone of Justgiving.”
Culture differences as a challenge
However, Adam and his team soon realised that this was much harder in Sweden due to the culture within fundraising is way different from that in the US and UK.
“In the US and UK everyone does personal fundraising. If you don’t do it people almost frown on you. But in Sweden it is not as widespread and this culture difference was a challenge for us. And this is also why we had to develop and improve our service even further,”
Thus Charity Storm expanded their concept to also include a platform dedicated to associations, various payment methods and marketing services. The focus on offering the newest features also benefits the organisations, in that they have a better chance to reach the younger crowd.
“Most of the charity organisations are used to “normal givers” where the average giver is about 60 years old. Therefore they have a challenge in meeting the needs of the younger crowd, who don’t want to make a monthly donation via the bank. They want to do their own fundraising and their own campaigns,” he explains
Their purpose is to make it as easy as possible for them to start using these tools and these modern payments. Therefore they regard themselves more or less as partners with the organisations.
“The charity organisations are good at what they do – to use the money in the best way to help people. Some of them do have challenges regarding how to use Facebook and social media for fundraising and how to integrate the modern payment methods. So that is our role, we are their partners that can help them with that.”
Greater growth with a premium platform
The platform was launched in 2013, and in that year they experienced a payment volume of 300.000 SEK. In 2014 this number increased by 1000%, and reached over 4 million SEK. Adam Hasslert predicts, that this is probably going to more than double for 2015.
“We just launched a premium version with one of the biggest charities in Sweden called Hjärt-Lungfonden. We launched it in the end of January and they now have more or less a clone of our platform. In less than two months they raised half a million SEK and now we are talking to other charities who also want to get our premium service.”
With the new premium platform organisations get their own site and can use their own domain. They are also able to personalise the design to fit their own identity completely.
Foreign demand
Charity Storm does not charge setup fee or monthly fees for fundraisings. Only when the organisation actually raises money Charity Storm get their share. Regarding the future Charity Storm will keep focusing on the Swedish market for a while, but have started thinking about going abroad.
“We have looked into expanding to other countries, and have also got requests from organisations in other countries. But for the moment we are focusing on Sweden and still have a bunch of stuff left to do here, while we are also still learning,” Adam Hasslert finishes
