BÈGLES: It’s a free site that allows the unionist world to raise money: French platform HelloAsso has just reached €1 billion raised for 250,000 associations, including one of the main strike funds of the anti-pension reform movement.
Created in 2009, the online crowdfunding tool aims to be a simple, intuitive, and secure payment solution that allows associations to collect contributions, create tickets to events, run a shop, or even solicit donations.
And its proprietary model – free use and funding by users on a voluntary basis – has earned it impressive growth, averaging 65% annually over the past five years.
Thus HelloAsso went from 1 million euros raised in 2013 to 30 million in 2017. The platform reached 1 billion euros on March 31 and aims to have 2 billion euros by 2025.
“We offer people who pay to leave, if they wish, a few extra euros for HelloAsso,” explains Léa Thomassin, co-founder and head of this company based in Bègles, near Bordeaux, to France Press, describing a model of economic solidarity “and” based on the effect of size.
Voluntary participation
And it works: one out of every two users leaves a voluntary contribution, €1.80 on average, up to a maximum of €25. With a payment every two seconds, this company of one hundred employees, marked by the state as ESUS (Solidarity Company for Social Utilities), achieved 10.2 million euros in turnover in 2022 and presents balanced accounts.
This method of reward allows funding a wide range of free services: directory of associations, calendar of events, thematic pages to highlight specific causes.
“We seek to facilitate the general digital life of the association,” sums up Léa Thomassin.
It is a welcome service for establishments that often have limited resources and rely on volunteers, confirms Manuella Jean, BDX Rollergirls secretary, which brings together about forty members passionate about “Rollerdance” (roller dancing) in Bordeaux.
“I didn’t have any particular computer skills and it’s true that it’s fairly intuitive,” testifies this nurse, who has been using HelloAsso for three years.
His association, which has a budget of between 10,000 and 15,000 euros, also pays a small annual donation to the platform. “We’re almost amazed that it’s free and there are no ads on it,” she jokes.
HelloAsso has about fifteen partnerships with sports federations and claims half of the French basketball clubs among its users.
“Super powers”
A non-partisan platform that applies strict controls over the nature of funded activities HelloAsso has, however, seen its name associated with the movement against pension reform: several union strike funds have used its front, including the Solidarity Fund set up by CGT InfoCom that raised nearly 4 million euros Since January.
“The fact of making a free contribution seems to us more ethical, more virtuous, than imposing a percentage,” Roman Altmann, national coordinator of this fund, explains to AFP.
Half of the 47,000 donations received since January have been made via HelloAsso, that’s 1.9 million euros, the leader details. The rest was through PayPal, who took over €40,000 in commissions.
The emergence of online strike boxes is a new phenomenon, as witnessed by Léa Thomassin, who provokes the “democratization” of digital tools.
She says that the federations “now have all these + superpowers + at their disposal to carry out their business”.
Can this model be exported abroad, such as Germany’s Betterplace platform? “It is possible, especially in Europe, but today it is not our strategy,” says Léa Thomassin, who instead wants to develop new services in France, such as a mobile application (“click to phone”) payment system.
To do this, HelloAsso has raised 15 million euros in 2022 from Crédit Mutuel, the main shareholder, and is targeting 500,000 user associations. in France by 2025 (out of a total of 1.5 million).
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