Dinner in a million: Olga Fleur about her project Meet for Charity
IN RUBRIC "Case" we introduce readers to women of different professions and hobbies that we like or are simply interested in. This time we talked with Olga Fleur, the founder of the social project Meet for Charity and the co-founder of Handmade сharity. She told why selling dinners with interesting people at online auctions helps children who offer themselves as lots and for meeting with whom they paid half a million rubles.
Restaurants and charity
For ten years I have been running a small PR agency that promotes brands, and I came to charity 3-4 years ago. I just saw on Facebook a post of a friend who organized a holiday for children with disabilities in a Moscow cafe. She invited volunteers to conduct a master class. I decided to try it, just read on the Internet how to make figures from balls and draw face painting. I really liked the simple format of helping children, where for a good cause you do not need to make titanic efforts.
So I decided to support this initiative and invited friends to participate in the same facebook. Many responded and the Handmade for Charity brand was born at the general meeting. Now this project is managed by Anna Pinskaya. The format Handmade сharity is culinary holidays for special children, which we organize in ordinary Moscow cafes and restaurants. We agree with the institutions, and often their owners themselves offer assistance. The restaurant provides the premises, products and its chef for the master class.
Children get the opportunity to socialize in a friendly environment, and parents can relax while volunteers work with children. Such events take place every Sunday, and this is a very easy way to do charity work — no need to go to the hospital or transfer money. You can just come to the cafe of William Lamberti and cook a pizza with kids with a great chef.
Date for money and Kapkov
But Handmade сharity was only the beginning of my work in this area. Apparently, if a person has a vital purpose, it will even get him out of the ground. One day I was sitting in the office, and my colleague complained that she really wanted a date, but unfortunately there was no one to go with. I wanted to help her, and I also needed to get some money for Handmade сharity. I almost jokingly suggested that she sell this date through Facebook. They responded to the post very lively, people began to place bets, and also to call and offer themselves as lots.
I started posting other volunteers to raise money for the project. Attention to these posts grew from the side of both users and the press, so we had to start a separate page, which was originally called Date for Charity and was aimed specifically at dating, but then we changed the name to Meet for Charity, focusing on business. Thanks to the word of mouth project became more and more popular. The boom happened when a meeting with Sergey Kapkov hit the auction: they paid for this lot 300 thousand rubles.
Prices and tours of the theaters
Now we are working through Facebook, but its resources are insufficient, so that the application and the website will be launched in the near future, this will increase the momentum. Before the publication of a new lot (this is always a meeting with a famous or interesting person), we agree with a charitable foundation that will receive the money raised from the sale of the meeting. In the post we briefly describe the new hero, attach his photo, and the auction takes place directly in the comments. You can participate in the auction within 48 hours, offering the highest amount. New lot appears every two days. The highest rate was 500 thousand rubles for the creator of the Hoff hypermarket chain, and on average they pay about 70 thousand rubles for a meeting. Now we almost do not recruit participants, because the foundations themselves offer their trustees or active benefactors.
The starting price of the lot, as a rule, is 3,000 rubles - this is an acceptable price for the average Facebook user. But sometimes the participant puts a condition that the initial price should be 10 thousand rubles, and we go to the meeting. Sometimes for the money you can meet with several people at once. For example, Alexander Terekhov, Mikhail Druyan and Daria Lisichenko themselves suggested such an option. You can always take a friend with you to the meeting with the auction participant. Here restaurateur Vladimir Perelman offered dinner for eight people.
Meetings often take place in friendly restaurants, which offer to treat our participants on a charitable basis. Lots themselves can offer a meeting place or limit time, if they are very busy, or, on the contrary, come up with something unusual. For example, Kirill Serebrennikov conducted a tour of the "Gogol Center". Some prefer to play tennis or golf. In general, lots love this format very much and are happy to spend their time on Meet for Charity.
Forbes and regular customers list
More often lots are bought by businessmen, there are even regular customers. One man at first constantly bought up all the meetings, not even giving the opportunity to participate to other people. For some, it's just fun, but there are real celebrity fans, and one girl bought a meeting at an auction to her husband as a gift. Many buyers use this as a chance to make connections that they would not be able to establish in other circumstances. For example, the joint lot of Alfa Bank’s CEO and Sberbank’s marketing director went beyond 400,000.
As lots we choose not only celebrities, but also non-public people with interesting work. I think no one would refuse to have dinner with the press secretary of the chief rabbi of Europe or the ballerina. It often happens that at first the lot sells poorly, and then the participant records a cool video where he talks about himself and the price jumps twice. But, of course, our direct task is to offer people for whom they will offer the maximum amount; it's just more efficient for foundations. Although we started with ordinary guys. For example, the owner of an advertising agency promised to double the rate from his own pocket. As a result, the fund received 170 thousand rubles - often such amounts are not offered for celebrities.
We already have lots with businessmen from the first lines of Russian Forbes. We hold them for dessert and post them after launching the site and application. There are also applications from potential buyers who are willing to pay big money for a meeting with Ruben Vardanyan or Anna Chipovskaya. And personally, I would invite Natasha Vodianova and Western celebrities, who sometimes come to Moscow.
We cooperate with an insurance company that can deposit the required amount to the fund if the buyer, God forbid, refuses to pay the lot. And if someone from lots is afraid for their safety, we can check a person through insurers. Although no uncomfortable incidents have happened so far. Thanks to Facebook, you can roughly understand what kind of person the meeting will be organized with, for example, through mutual friends.
Silicon Valley and investors
At the very start of the project, we specifically went to Silicon Valley to gain experience. In two weeks, we managed to overcome a very long way, to meet many people who are important for the industry, and learn how to properly evaluate and develop our project. In Russia, the start-up market is not very transparent yet, unlike in the United States, where all the mechanisms work like a clock. Meet for Charity is popular among potential investors, and our task is to filter them correctly. The Russian market in this sense has its own specifics. If in the US, an investor normally looks at getting 3-5% share of profits, then we can request 20-50% at the first stage.
Strangely enough, in Europe there are practically no charity auctions, only isolated cases. Like the fact that the wife of Warren Buffett each year sells a meeting with him for 3.7 million dollars. And in the US, these startups work quite locally. So we have every chance to occupy this niche.
Our project has become so relevant, because in Russia the society is very responsive, and charity fits very well in any context. Moreover, people are usually afraid of such things - they are associated with long trips to orphanages or by transferring money it is not clear to whom. And here there is an opportunity to simultaneously help and have fun. During the year we collected 9 million rubles, and one meeting often equals a saved life. I think that the future of charity is not for pitiful photos of children on Facebook, but for a comfortable environment for donations.