Geev, the art of democratising private donations!
Today we'd like to introduce you to Geev, the superb application for private individuals to donate objects and food.
Meet Maureen Marinier, Geev's communications manager.
Can you tell us a bit more about Geev? How did this project come about?
Geev was created by two co-founders (who are still at the head of the company), Florian Blanc and Hakim Baka. At the time, they were both living in Paris and working in Parisian companies. When they wandered the streets of Paris, they found that there were a lot of objects lying around and abandoned. In fact, in Paris it's common to see people throwing things out into the street, except that many of these objects are in very good condition. So they decided that this was a pity and that they could do something about it, and that people might be interested in these objects. So they set up a Facebook page, which at the time was called "Adopt an object", with a fairly simple principle. For example, when Hakim and Florian were walking through the streets of Paris and they saw a bedside table, they would take a photo of it and post it on the Facebook group. This way, the people in the group (who were initially their friends) could see where the bedside table was located, with the address and a photo to back it up. Using this information, they could then move around easily to pick up the item in question. That's how the project got started in the first place.
The idea was to create a service between citizens to prevent objects ending up in the rubbish. The very pleasant surprise was that a lot of people started to join the group, beyond the circle of friends and family, and eventually all these people had adopted the reflex of posting an announcement on the group when they found an object in the street. Groups were set up all over France, and the two co-founders of Geev decided that they could go even further by creating an application dedicated to donations.
For the record, these facebook groups were created between 2015 and 2016, and the Geev app was created in April 2017. So, in the foundation of Geev, there were two things: the use of facebook groups, which made it possible to realise that there was a real desire not to waste and not to spoil that was shared by many citizens. The second was the community. In other words, people who were united around these values and who wanted to put objects back into circulation that would otherwise have ended up in the bin. So the idea behind creating the application was initially to fill in the gaps in the existing Facebook groups.
The founders of Geev: Hakim Baka (left) and Florian Blanc (right)
How is your company involved in responsible consumption? In practical terms, how is Geev helping the world to be a better place?
Basically, Geev's intrinsic philosophy is to support eco-responsibility and anti-waste with our mission to democratise private donations. So our aim is to reduce waste in all its forms. Initially, we launched on objects in April 2017 and we realised with the community that there were other sources of waste. And indeed, food is one of them. So, in July 2019, we also launched on food, at the request of our community. Because it's true that the food part of private donations didn't really exist. So we added this new element. Our aim is to put things back into circulation, and so avoid waste, through a very simple gesture that has existed since the dawn of time: donation.
Geev is really about eco-responsibility, one of the pillars of our values. Beyond these elements, there is of course another thing that is extremely important to us: solidarity! Donations don't have a monetary value, which can be a barrier. Typically, when you want to get rid of an object and someone asks you for a discount on it, it can sometimes annoy you, so you decide to keep the object. In this case, however, we remove the blocking factor and are able to give it away graciously and wholeheartedly.
So there's the solidarity part, because everything on Geev is free, and there's another thing that's very important to us: the social link. Indeed, Geev is a geolocated application that also lets you meet your neighbours and perhaps people you'd never have seen in your neighbourhood, so as to encourage people to forge more social links.
Our vocation is really to be an everyday tool for the French and to democratise private donations through the simple act of giving.
The Geev application
What impact has the pandemic had on GEEV? What is your assessment of 2020?
Our results have been very positive. Initially, like many other companies, we weren't sure how to react given the crisis. So we started by closing the application, to avoid our users meeting each other and to avoid creating problematic situations.
After that, you have to realise that we work a lot with our community and we talk to them very regularly. Some users have told us that the closure of Geev was a problem when it came to food, because people who needed to eat relied heavily on us. So we partially reopened our service, notably to food donations, while respecting the barrier gestures. We did this through a survey to find out what our community thought, and the majority voted in favour.
Then, after the first containment period, we reopened our application completely, and since then the figures have been exponential. On average, 540,000 donations are posted on Geev, which is a very significant figure. Before the crisis, we were at around 300,000 pledges. So after this first wave of covid, we saw a growth in the community and a growth in donations.
Why did this happen? Because people started sorting things out at home, in their garages, in their belongings... Apart from that, there was clearly a need for solidarity that we all felt to some extent, and a desire to consume differently. We've all more or less asked ourselves questions about the way we consume, the ways we used to, buying and buying for pleasure... So there's been a real awakening among the French, who have said to themselves "I'm perhaps going to review my way of consuming", and donating is part of that. So even though we had to deal with the health crisis head-on at the outset, the post-covid situation turned out to be quite favourable for all the reasons mentioned above.
You recently announced a partnership with Auchan. Auchan is a major player in the supermarket sector. What was your reaction to this? And what does this partnership involve?
Our aim is to work with all those who are concerned about eco-responsibility. Auchan is a well-known player in the mass retail sector, and the idea behind our partnership with them was to promote the idea of donating objects, to encourage people to say "when I don't need something, I'll give it away".
Typically, the partnership was used to promote giving and the practice of giving through a communication campaign that was carried out both in Auchan shops and on our website to encourage Auchan customers to give, to adopt the reflex of giving. The idea was to be able to say, for example, "When I buy a new coffee machine from Auchan, what am I going to do with my old one? I'll donate it. The idea was to develop the reflex of giving away our old household appliances, for example, rather than putting them at the back of a cupboard because that's also wasteful. When you don't use a product, it becomes a wasted resource that could be used by someone else. The idea was to develop this reflex: "when I buy a new product and I no longer use the old one, I give it away so that it can be put back into circulation to avoid waste".
Our aim is to democratise donation among retail chains in particular. So we were extremely pleased that this partnership enabled many customers to discover Geev, as the application was displayed on screens in Auchan shops. It also enabled us to create new accounts on our application to help people think about more responsible consumption.
Your application is now available in France and Canada. Are you planning to make the application available in other countries?
Yes, of course. Geev currently has over 2.5 million registered users. In France, there's already plenty of room for growth, so we're going to keep up the momentum, but in the medium term we'd like to expand into Europe. Particularly in the UK, Spain, Germany...
Whether you're in France or Belgium, for example, there are communities of people giving things to each other all over the world. Our innovation is to be able to do this through an application that requires geolocation. Of course, there is a huge amount of security in place, and we don't give out our users' addresses. We have brought technology to a gesture that has always existed. Given that it's a universal gesture, we want to expand in Europe and make Geev as well known as possible.
Have you noticed a difference in usage between France and Canada?
No, not necessarily. The application works in the same way in both countries, but perhaps the difference lies in the sensitivity of the population. Indeed, Geev is French, but apart from that, there's no notable difference. Geev also has communities that already exist in Belgium and Switzerland. These are not communities where our teams are present, but in the medium term we hope to be able to develop them.
Some of the great encounters you have had with your users have made a real impression on you personally.
I have one, and I invite you to visit our blog, don.fr, where we share all our encounters.
As I was saying, Geev is based on one use - donating - and the community has been built up over time with these users and their commitments, and there's something for everyone! That's Geev's strength: we have consumer-actors, consumer-citizens, who use the application for different purposes... Either because they're eco-responsible and for them, living this way is super important, but we also have people who don't necessarily have this sensitivity but who want to get rid of things very quickly that they don't want to bother with and don't have the time, and finally, we have people who come to Geev and who are very supportive. This creates a very rich mix in the community, which makes for some pretty incredible encounters.
For your information, the most generous Geeveuse [Geev users are called "Geeveurs"] in France, someone who has been making donations for nearly 2 years, has made 92,447 donations. The second Geeveuse has made over 12,000 donations, and the third, a Geeveur this time, has made 11,124 donations. It's incredible! The figures speak for themselves, especially when it comes to the generosity of our users. That's why I'm telling you that we're co-constructing with our community, because when you see the involvement of our users, it's so enormous that that's why we rely so heavily on their feedback to work on the application.
Sévérine, a user based in the north of France, donates a lot because eco-responsibility and solidarity are extremely important to her.
A story I can tell you... There are two Geeveuses, Saltana and Nathalie, who met in Bordeaux. Saltana is a woman who was looking for a coffee table and Nathalie is another Geeveuse from Bordeaux who had made a coffee table. One day Saltana saw this coffee table that Nathalie was giving away on the app and they met and became great friends. Since then, they've created a small group of Geeveurs between them, which means that they continue to donate on the app, but they've met each other and made new friends around the Geev concept. Since then, they've been rubbing shoulders, regularly donating things to each other and sharing many things beyond the Geev app.
It was a meeting that left a deep impression on us, because over and above eco-responsibility and solidarity, Geev is also about social links. These are people who would never have met in real life, but who now, thanks to Geev, know each other and have become friends. That's the power of giving, the fact of giving something for free to someone, to please them, it's unspeakable. There's no money barrier. You talk about why you're giving this object or this food... and it's quite incredible. Once you've taken the plunge, it's so much fun, so simple, so quick and so much fun, plus you get to meet people, you can't stop.
There's also another user, Daniel, who's from Marseilles, and who makes donations in Marseilles. He has neighbours in mind who use the application and when these neighbours are looking for things, he goes straight to them to get them. He had a neighbour who needed a pushchair, and he very kindly went and got it for this young lady. The idea is really to give, whatever the reasons for giving, whether it's for reasons of eco-responsibility, solidarity, or just to part with things..., in every case you win for yourself, for the planet, giving is a very positive thing, giving is winning!
Have you already had the opportunity to meet your Geeveurs?
Yes, of course. We're in regular contact with our geeks, so in order to present our users, we need to meet them and get to know them. It's not us, it's our users who speak best about the application in their own words. That's why we give our users a lot of support and try to meet them. For example, this is less true with the health crisis, but normally, every week, a member of the team makes one or more donations. The idea is to stay as close as possible to the needs of our users, so we make the donation and then introduce ourselves to them, and this often leads to discussions and so on. Thanks to these meetings, we know what our users like, and what they like less, why they use our application, and this allows us to correct certain things if necessary.
What's going on and what are your plans for 2021?
For 2021, there are a lot of projects. Firstly, we're going to continue to optimise the application. As you know, it's something that's constantly evolving, so there's always a lot to do in this area. We've already launched a partnership with Auchan, but we hope that other partnerships will follow, so that we can work with other players. We're also going to start preparing our international development.
At the moment we're also working on a big subject, which is ambassadors, as I was telling you, brand ambassadors are our Geeveurs, a community within the community. These are people who are extremely committed, with whom we have a relationship and who can typically test features and new things to make sure that everything is OK. They're going to make Geev known to as many people as possible. We're in the process of building up this base of ambassadors, we now have over 1,000, and the idea is still to use this co-construction approach and to increase the number of ambassadors a little more.
After that, there are other projects to come, which I'll let you discover as soon as the time is right!
The Geev team
The last word?
Geev is a free application that can be downloaded by anyone with a phone, so I'd like to say: try it out and experience the gift of giving! People who test the application will discover a new way of consuming and/or being eco-responsible on an individual basis.