Ammado raises €7m to solve global giving problem

Following the trend towards global platforms for raising money, such as Kickstarter, Ammado, which connects charities with donors, has raised €7m, and signed up several multinational partners. The investment round was led by Belgiun-based Saffelburg Investments, which put in €5.5m and John Ryan, founder of Rovi, who put in about €1.5m. Set up in 2005 by Anna Kupka and Peter Conlon, the latter has put in €8.7m to date. which means Ammado has raised a total of €15.7m so far.

Ammado aims to be the first truly global donation platform, working in 78 currencies, 30 payment methods and 12 different languages, all embedded in a widget. It sells into large corporates, which then use the platform to allow others to donate to their chosen charity, with Ammado taking a cut of each transaction. Companies that use Ammado so far include AstraZeneca, Nokia, Seimens and Coca Cola. Colon was previously co-founder of MV Technology, sold to Agilent in 2001 for €100m in cash.

Most of Ammado’s 50 staff are based in Dublin, but the company is HQ’d in Zug, Switzerland, close to the bases of many international charities, where Conlon also lives.

Most large nonprofits have a federated structure with national chapters all around the world. Previously there was no way for global companies or for global media sites to run one global and integrated fundraising campaign.

For instance, The Red Cross has 186 national societies with the federation sitting in Geneva. If Techcrunch, based in the US, motivated readers to donate to a cause, the money would only go to the American Red Cross, leaving Techcrunch readers outside of the US without a tax receipt for their donation.

Ammado detects where the donor sits and automatically channels the money to the appropriate national chapter. For countries which are not registered or where the charity doesn’t have a national chapter, the money would go to a Techcrunch pre-defined chapter. After a charity campaign Ammado would provide Techcrunch with a report on how much money TechCrunch readers from around the world had given. Ammado claims this is “brand new and quite revolutionary” in the nonprofit space.

Ammado also has a Facebook App, allowing nonprofits to use it to collect donations on their Facebook fan pages.

You can also support your favourite nonprofit through your own Facebook profile.