GrecoParo: Donating one tab at a time
IE students have already proved to be creative and hard-working entrepreneurs, making new ideas come to reality. In this article, we decided to give some spotlight to OpenTabs, a first product by the Start-up GrecoParo. The two guys behind it are Umberto and Matheus, 2nd year students with a great initiative to do some good to the world… through opening your browser tab.
How OpenTabs works is similar to Ecosia: it changes the layout of the starting page of the next tab you open. However, here you are presented with several ads. Proceeds from just displaying those go to a social cause.
GrecoParo plans OpenTabs to be only the first of its initiatives.
“OpenTabs is a web browser extension which places unobtrusive ads every time you open a tab. And so, what we are creating is the cheapest way of donating money to charities, so you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to pay money, just do your every day-to-day tasks like just opening a tab, which you do so many times a day without even thinking. And so we are trying to get as many people as possible to contribute to causes without actually changing their lifestyles.”
- Umberto
The only thing that changes is the default page that appears when you open a tab, as it is overridden by the extension that displays advertisements. However, the layout will stay simple, with couple fast link buttons. The team is working on the option to make them customizable so you can adjust the page to how you want it to look like.
“This already exists, there’s one of these extensions called Tab for a Cause, but we don’t follow with their vision, because they don’t actually give out all the money they get. They keep around 60% of it, 10% goes to costs, and 30% to charities. This is a statistic from the first quarter from this year: they got 140 000 dollars and they donated only 40 000. And people think they are actually contributing, but the other guys are just getting money in their pockets. We’re trying to do what they do in a better way.”
- Matheus
The idea for now is to proceed the funds from the ads to smaller scale recipients, like using them in Kiva micro-lending platform. Once the company has more money to work with, it would be given to bigger organizations or charities, and the third and last stage would be to set up GrecoParo’s own fund. There is also an idea to set each quarter to a specific (e.g. environmental) cause, accompanied by an appropriate campaign.
“The little impact that we do is a step. We believe its more of a movement and doing our little part can potentially get bigger, really impactful.”
- Matheus
GrecoParo will present at an Entrepreneurship Evening in January on the Madrid Campus. Make sure to come and ask the guys any questions you may have! Or, to get more information on the company or the extension, visit their web page.
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