Stichting GeefGratis and Business to You go way back – and we’re proud of it. Geef.nl has been working with Trust Guard and its seal on the website for some time now; a good opportunity for us to catch up with founder Jordan van Bergen.
What began in 2001 as a free Internet service to charities has grown into one of the largest donation/crowdfunding platforms in the Netherlands. Where in the first year € 14,000 was raised, this has risen to a record of € 3.46 million in the past year. In total GeefGratis has already contributed € 18 million to charities in the Netherlands. The main principle? Donors, charities, activists and companies do not have to pay additional subscription fees if they want to donate and can remain completely anonymous.
Kickstart
Van Bergen: “When we started, we were the first charity portal that enabled online payments. That was thanks to Hans Bouman, who at the time was still working as a country manager at Ogone. We were connected to Ogone at the time, and Hans has never left our side since then. We started in the very beginning with RaboDirect payment, from there we grew to iDEAL, and when we started to outgrow that as well, we extended the payment methods further and further with PayPal, credit card, gift vouchers and Bancontact, among others.
Raising donations online
“With Geef.nl, we mainly serve smaller charities that lack the knowledge and expertise to raise donations online on their own website. Thanks to our platform, they can still raise donations online, without having to pay for an implementation partner. Those who join Geef.nl can easily add a link to their own website and activate their supporters. Any private individual can also start a crowdfunding campaign on our website. Ninety-five per cent of a donation is paid out; we charge only a five per cent deduction. As many as 4,100 charities are now connected.”
GDPR
“As we are committed to the anonymity of donors and work with payment data, we want our security to be in tip-top order. When you donate on Geef.nl, you decide what happens to your data and whether or not you want to share it with the charity. We do not use customer profiles and leave the privacy decisions entirely up to the donors themselves. It therefore seemed only natural to us that we should also show this to donors and users at the front end. Trust Guard was therefore a logical step for us.”
Trust Guard
“Geef.nl works with various external ICT parties for its platform. Hans advised us to use Trust Guard for the security scan. This way there is continuous monitoring of the server and I am notified instantly if a security error occurs. In turn, I can pass this on directly to the hosting or development party with whom I work. In order to demonstrate that donors can use our website safely, we use the Trust Guard seal. Of course, we cannot guarantee that we will never be at risk, but at least we show that we are working on optimal security measures every day. In addition, the ease of use is extremely high for me: I can respond to any problems with just a few actions. Ideal.”
