Donar Online

Working with organizations of all sizes and social objectives during the last 18 years, we realized that in Latin America the struggle for resources gets harder everyday. Most nonprofits can invest very few resources on people, money or time, and the access to knowledge and experience is limited to those who can pay for senior professionals. Our vision is to transform the way Latin American nonprofits do fundraising in order to finance their missions, by helping them to become self-sustainable organizations, more autonomous in their decisions and financially predictable. We are experts on Latin American nonprofits and on social impact technology, and CSOs count on us as partners. We plan to scale exponentially and get 20.000 nonprofits into the platform, help them to raise US$ 300M in the next 5 years, and as partners, experience our growth together with theirs.

Latin American CSOs are financially unstable due to three main reasons: investment and grants mainly grabbed by the few, fluctuations or cuts in foreign aid, and unawareness of fundraising strategies. Affording fundraising professionals is not possible for the majority. Besides, training and fundraising platform fees are very high, and there is distrust on these platforms and crowdfunding tools because of their data use and privacy policies.

Some alarming figures have come up in Givingreport.ngo 2018, Global NGO Technology Report and 2017 Global Trends in Giving Report: only 48% of the donations are made online in Latin America versus 61% in the rest of the world. Plus, only 56% of the CSOs accept donations on their websites, while 59% of them don't even protect their data with encryption and 11% still use pen and paper to manage their contacts. All of these factors converge in one result: 60% of CSOs don’t meet their fundraising goals. Our digital platform ensures that more nonprofit organizations can expand their access to information, digital literacy, and services. Therefore, we indirectly create an exponential positive effect on the beneficiaries of each project they carry out thanks to the economic resources we help them to collect.

Donar Online empowers people working in civil society, so they can be engaged and included in the digital economy. Giving their best to try to solve social issues is not enough while working with few resources and fighting against the lack of support. Indeed, most of the obstacles nonprofits face are lack of training, knowledge, and resources.

Our contribution is to take advantage of the increase in the Internet penetration rate and democratize access to a digital tool that empowers the economy and autonomy of CSOs.

In numbers, Donar Online has helped more than 1200 of them to raise US$ 35.000.000 in 5 years, and in 2018 alone, we have trained and empowered 2600 people working in CSOs. Those US$ were used exclusively to improve areas such as Education, Health, Microfinance, Poverty, Gender Equality and Corruption, amongst others. This has had a direct impact on 6.000.000 people.

Our platform improves donations management for CSOs, and it also makes the digital fundraising process easier. It simplifies the acquisition of new individual donors, and it provides the tools to improve retention. Raising funds is more efficient by reducing time spent on donor database management and on solving banking errors (i.e. declined donation payments).

Our turnkey solution provides end-to-end automation from the donor’s intention to contribute financially to the very moment in which funds are made available for CSOs in their bank accounts. Our intuitive platform enables donor form creation with subsequent detailed reporting, allowing users to analyze and rethink their fundraising and donor loyalty strategies. We protect users data by integrating our platform with secure payment

gateways. Last but not least, we offer free fundraising-related training, material, and insight. Our model is both innovative and sustainable. Innovative because we transform Latin American CSOs’ digital fundraising processes by strengthening their autonomy

through financial predictability. Sustainable because we charge 2.7% of every actual donation payment processed through our platform with the exception of Argentinian CSOs raising less than US$100 per month and Colombian and Mexican CSOs until September 30th, 2018. Doing so, we cover our expenses while we amplify the impact of small CSOs with no digital fundraising experience. We offer a “Premium” business version where we charge 2,7% of every donation executed through the platform for organizations with more than US$ 100 of donations per month. Till March 2019, 25% of our users were Premium, the same number as in March 2018.

Our model is based on three principal strategies: (1) One product for the Long Tail of LATAM non-profits, thanks to technology that allows us to scale exponentially, and because we can  reach thousands of CSOs in the region through our own database and through partnerships with Wingu, RACI, CEMEFI, FITS and different networks of CSOs that support our work. (2) One premium group of sub-products with advanced functionalities oriented toward big organizations and their diverse needs. (3) Community and audience building for CSOs, where we and our expert partners including Wingu (technology), Kubadili (agile), Change.org (campaigning), FITS (training) and many other companies contribute significantly to professionalize CSOs, while we support them in bringing and transforming new audiences into new donors.

We are data-oriented decision makers, so part of our strategy is to listen to our users and plan our next steps accordingly.

We are also a nonprofit much like the organizations that we serve, and this allows for a unique perspective that helps us better understand and experience the problems of the third sector to near perfection. We are also the only platform available in three countries: Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. We offered our services pro bono for 4 years and the statistics demonstrate a great advantage: we have helped collect $35,000,000 USD through our platform. We have crafted confident relationships with thousands of organizations thanks to our actions and vast networks of allies in the region, and this confidence translates to our scalability potential. Since we are not a company, we reinvest our entire surplus into a better and more complete service. Our work centers around creating better strategies in fund collection not only in payment processing or donations. Finally, we want to achieve financial previsibility in the third sector, so we dedicate all our resources to nurture recurring donations as well.

Our scalability is fully based on our technology. We thought of our product not as a monolithic application, but instead of a set of services that can interact with each other. This allows us to create minimum solutions for different aspects of it and also to leverage on other services without the need to create them. We work on improving the solution by stacking services that others are not focused in and that creates value. This allows us to expand to new countries with different situations and provide a serious and complete product in the less time possible. We utilize Ruby and Python to build our services and use Amazon infrastructure (Route53, EC2, VPC, S3, RDS & SES) to deploy them because it allows us to scale as needed and provides us a secure platform from where we build long term solutions. 

For our better understanding and having important data to add more value layers to our users, we also use Salesforce (CRM), Intercom (Customer Support), Invision (UX), Zeplin, Hotjar, Sqreen and Tableau. All of our code is on Github.

Our partner Wingu’s digital research on how nonprofits use technology states that 11% of organizations still use pen and paper for managing their donors, and that only 30% have digital strategies for fundraising. So, considering the state of digital fundraising in Latin America, we can say: Donar Online has helped +1200 organizations raise $35,000,000 USD in 5 years. Those donations were exclusively used to improve Education, Health, Microfinance, Poverty, Gender Equality, Corruption and many other topics in Latin America. We have 600 NGO sign-ups in the region. We moved 25% of organizations in the region using pen and paper to manage donors, to 11% in the last two years. That means efficiency but also security and confidence to the sector. One proof of our impact is that active NGO users are paying for the use of the platform. We found that as long as they pay that is proof that we are going on the right path. We also deliver webinars with proven assistance of between 100 and 250 attendees each session. Our recurrency rate is 65%, that means that the majority of donors on the platform support different causes on a monthly basis. We have participated in more than 30 events promoting digital fundraising. Our free content and materials have been downloaded more than 20,000 times.

Current Users: 3,649  

1-year: 10,827 

5-year: 25,561

Without resources (or with too little) we have impacted indirectly around 1,098,000 in-need people from Latin America through more than 3,600 NGOs that signed-up in our platform, where 1200 of them have raised $35,000,000 USD in the last 5 years. 

Our three main goals for this upcoming year are: 

• Launch our product in new markets such as Uruguay, Perú and Chile, where we have proved enough demand and partners to do so.

• Raise US$50 million and impact to 1,500,000 people indirectly, that will also mean improve our revenue generated by users to become fully self-sustainable.

• Assure that 50% of our users receive one new donation at least once in three months, helping build loyalty among small and medium size NGOs.

In the next 5 five years, Donaronline.org would be delivering:

• A strong recurrent donation culture among citizens in Latin America

• Automation on the payment process and new fintech solutions in every country of Latin America

• Exponential multiplication (10x) of the amount of money processed: US$ 350 MM

• Easy integration with any new innovative solution (Libra.org, payments through Whatsapp, AI, Big Data or Blockchain) 

• Predictive analytics and pattern recognition to leverage all users impact

• High quality customer service experience.

1.) Actions of bigger players. Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Apple and all these types of big players could make a great change (if they decide to) in the way payments and transactions are made. 2.) Donors habits. The use of credit and debit cards in the digital world is always resisted in many sectors of society in Latin America. 3.) The capacity of NGOs and poor training in fundraising investments at most NGOs. 4.) Growing and keeping our organizational culture to keep attracting talented people. 5.) Not to lose focus with the regional expansion. 6.) Keep adding value constantly.

1.) We are prepared for that and confident that we are adding value layers beyond that innovation that we will be ready for connecting and integrating quickly with any of them. 2.) Trends are on our side, so we work on security seriously to not have a trust crisis. 3.) We have partnered with strong complementary organizations such as Wingu, Kubadili, Change.org, CEMEFI, RACI among others that work to strengthen civil society capacity. 4.) We are being coached by a top Agile organization in Argentina. 5.) We have a scalable model based in 4 stages, and decide to move to one stage to another depending on indicators that allowed us to minimize risk and grow consistently only if some market conditions are visible. 6.) We are developing a community of donors that are taking advantage of our networks, partners (as Change.org i.e) and companies interested in creating more engagement with their stakeholders and fostering a donation culture in the region.

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6 Total members

- 4 Full-time

- 2 Pro bono consultants

We are a group of multidisciplinary professionals, focused on empowering NGOs through technology. Our team members are:

• Mario Roset - CEO: As a social entrepreneur, he has co-founded Donar Online as well as a series of innovative, high impact tech projects such as Nilus, Kubadili, FITS and Wingu over the past 10 years.

• Agustín Cavilliotti - CTO: Electronic engineer with a solid background in social tech and digital economy projects. Not only did he co-found Donar Online, but he also developed the Donar Online platform entirely. 

• Diana Osorio Rojas - General Coordinator: Political Scientist and Corporate Communication M.A. with experience in social responsibility and development in GOs and NGOs. She has done fieldwork in vulnerable Colombian populations for over 10 years.

• Belén Ozán - Customer Support Lead: Psychologist with experience in Customer Support at NGOs and at e-commerce platforms.

We are extending our capacity through a network of communication, design and programming volunteers and we’re more than lucky to count on the invaluable support of two expert, pro bono consultants:

• Juan Lapetini - Fundraising Specialist: he has over 20 years of experience in Resource Mobilization, Fundraising and Strategic Planning. He was Fundraising and Communications Director for SOS Children's Villages Argentina, and he is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Fundación Huerta Niño.

• Gerónimo Tutusaus - Data Intelligence Specialist: Systems Engineer with a strong background in Fundraising through predictive modeling and process automation. Has worked as a private consultant for UNICEF, OAJNU, OXFAM and Save The Children, among others.

We are currently partnered with a variety of organizations, but some of our most important partners are Wingu, an Argentine NGO that utilizes technology to enhance the nonprofit sector of Latin America, that helps with delivering information on NGOs and nonprofit markets in other countries as well as helping our platform integrate with Salesforce. Mercado Libre Solidario, the nonprofit assistance branch of the e-commerce site, has partnered with us to provide a secure payment processor as well as providing the most economic choice for our users. Wingu and Mercado Libre also help us with providing training in fund collection to our users. Innpactia, winner of the 100K LATAM competition, helps us with commercial support in Colombia and Mexico as well as helping us find grants and donors for our users. Google.org has also partnered with us to provide assistance in delivering grants or funds to our users.

Our impact metric is the amount of NGOs receiving new funding at least once every three months. That means that our impact is fully aligned with our revenue model. Since, we classify our model as a SaaS, so we use metrics that other organizations may find familiar to better utilize our solution. We have segments of users, from A to E, each one with a different Lifetime Value, Cost per Acquisition, strategy, and products (or subproducts) that solve their needs. We do take care to allow only real and validated NGOs to become users, because that’s how we generate our indirect impact in communities. We charge 2.7% of every actual donation payment processed through our platform. With all this being said, we can expect around 8,000 NGOs to use our platform by 2021, and with an estimated average ticket of $27 USD by 2021, a projected income for that year could be around $411K USD.

Despite being a non-profit, Donar Online is one of the only social tech initiatives that has a sustainable business model from the beginning, where all of its income comes from self-generated resources. During 4 years, we were a free solution for the civil societies of Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. In 2018, we started to charge 2.7% on all donations processed through our platform with an exception to Argentine organizations that collected less than $100 USD per month. Our pricing model helps cover our costs while amplifying the impact of smaller organizations with little to no digital experience in collecting funds. 

We have maintained 25% of our users total users as premium during the last 2 years, and our churn rate is extremely low (2% annually) due to our technology and superior customer experience. So, as 70% of donations in Donar Online are recurrent, the total amount of money that we process every month keeps growing thanks to previous months donations plus the new ones. Our organic growth shows ourselves as 100% self-sustainable, and this model shows that with an investment right now, Donar Online will move to self-sustainability to profitability really soon.

We believe that the timing to move forward with our solution is now especially with the opportunity that Solve provides not only in funding but in both of our missions’ alignments. We also believe the the network building will be crucial as we move forward with newer innovations such as artificial intelligence, business intelligence, and other technological and business applications we intend to integrate to our system. We believe that being a part of the Solver community there will be a mutual understanding that our social impact project helps sustainability in the entire ecosystem which of course has plenty of positive, collateral impact.

We are experts on LATAM nonprofits and on social impact technology, this is how we built Donar Online. Now we want to enhance it with:

-AI and BI for deep understanding the complex human process of donating

-easy to integrate platform with our own API for third parties 

-marketing automation tools for creating new donors on of our users

-hot-line for instant support on fundraising strategies

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We would like to work with any of these organizations as we believe that may provide some insight into facing our challenges or providing guidance with the themes in our previous answer.

Techsoup Global

IDEO.org

WINGS

Amazon 

Google

Facebook

Whatsapp

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We believe that our solution can benefit immensely from the Morgridge Family Foundation Community-Driven Innovation Prize as our platform requires much more assistance to be solution that empowers the entire nonprofit sector in Latin America. With the prize, we can improve our platform through updates and enhance our service by increasing our team size. We are experts on LATAM nonprofits and on social impact technology, this is how we built Donar Online. Now we want to enhance it with:

-AI and BI for deep understanding the complex human process of donating

-easy to integrate platform with our own API for third parties 

-marketing automation tools for creating new donors on of our users

-hot-line for instant support on fundraising strategies

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