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Ammado plans global reach
Sunday, September 07, 2008 By Gavin Daly
Dublin internet firm Ammado has unveiled an online donation system that its founders claim will help it become ‘‘one of the biggest internet companies in the world’’.

Ammado, which was founded in 2005 by Peter Conlon and Anna Kupka, has launched the Giving Circle, which allows internet users to donate money to non-profit bodies worldwide in 33 currencies.

The Ammado site combines social networking with charitable giving, linking the non-profits with people who want to support them.

About 2,500 organisations, ranging from Irish charities such as the Barretstown Gang Camp to Amnesty International, have signed up to the site. With the Giving Circle, users of Ammado can quickly and easily donate to multiple organisations around the world, add new charities, alter their donations or choose to make recurring donations.

‘‘We have created microphilanthropy,” said Conlon, a serial entrepreneur whose previous ventures have included MV Technology, which was bought in 2001 for more than €100 million. Kupka worked with Conlon in his last venture, Xsil, which makes machines to cut silicon and has been highly profitable.

They have kept Ammado under wraps for the past three years, while its technology was built from scratch. The company now employs about 70 people at its headquarters in Dublin, regional headquarters in Singapore, and in 11 other locations, including Amsterdam, Washington, Dhaka in Bangladesh and Novi Sad in Serbia.

Kupka said the company’s focus had been on creating a system that made donating as simple as possible. Donors must commit a minimum of €4, $5 or £3, and can decide how to distribute the money between their chosen charities.

Kupka said the site accepted ‘‘every payment method in the world’’, with the payments processed by Bibit, a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Scotland. She described the Giving Circle as the ‘‘first of many milestones’’ for Ammado, which expects the innovation to appeal to everyone from teenagers to large companies.

The Giving Circle can be accessed through Bebo, the popular social networking site, and Ammado has also signed up companies worldwide, which are using it as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes.

The idea is that, rather than making a fixed donation to a particular charity, a company gives each of its employees a small amount of money to donate to charities of their choice through the Giving Circle.

For donations of that type, Ammado charges a 10 per cent processing fee, so a company wanting to donate €1,000, for example, would make a total payment of €1,100. Kupka said the system could be used to increase employee motivation and allow companies with staff from different countries indirectly to make donations to charities outside Ireland.

She expects the Giving Circle to increase the amount of money donated to charities worldwide and allow non-profit organisations to build relationships with their supporters. ‘‘Think of the power of this for charities, for schools, for sports clubs,” she said. ‘‘Any school can create an alumni club on Ammado and attract support and donations.”

Conlon said the company had received positive feedback, particularly in a series of recent meetings with business and philanthropic leaders in Asia. He would not comment on the exact investment in Ammado to date, but said the firm had made ‘‘a multimillion euro investment in best-in-class web technology’’.

Ammado expects to make its money by selling targeted advertising on the site and by charging a fee to corporate users. It is also exploring other revenue streams and is recruiting a senior management team to build the business worldwide.

‘‘This is a very exciting space to be in, combining charity and CSR (corporate social responsibility) with technology,” said Kupka.

Ammado won the Irish Software Association’s new company of the year award last year. Conlon is a former winner at the Ernst & Young entrepreneur of the year awards. As well as Ammado and Xsil, his ventures include Emuse, which develops technology for interactive advertising and is run by his business partner, Patrick Rainsford.

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