Interview with Gabriella Bartlett, Marketing Manager at Äldrekontakt
I have been the marketing manager at Äldrekontakt for two years. I was previously with Burger King, where I was the media and communications manager for Scandinavia, but I felt that what I do must feel right in my heart, so I searched and found Äldrekontakt.
Here at Äldrekontakt, there are three people in my team in the marketing department who work with fundraising, corporate partnerships, communication, and social media. We have a wide variety of companies we partner with. For example, last Christmas, Wella had an auction where they donated a gift to us and invited and styled the elderly. We also partner with, among others, real estate firms that donate money to us and invite us to their premises, provide advice and guidance on home valuations, etc.
We are growing very quickly right now and it feels so exciting. We now have 1,700 volunteers, 1,100 elderly, and over 130 coffee groups in the organization. Recruiting elderly and volunteers takes a lot of time, partly because it's hard to reach isolated elderly and partly because we want to ensure that the right people with the right values are volunteers with us. Therefore, all volunteers undergo a thorough recruitment process and must also show a clean criminal record.
Äldrekontakt was founded in 2008 by Robert Gyll, who had a desire to do something for the elderly in Sweden. Those who, through hard work and sacrifice, have built our society into what it is today. What Äldrekontakt does is about showing appreciation and giving back.
Over 300,000 elderly live in involuntary loneliness, and we want to change that. The core of our operation is therefore to help those who are over 75 years old, live alone, and are involuntarily lonely. This is a group that easily becomes isolated and where there is great potential to make a difference with relatively small means.
Äldrekontakt's concept is based on monthly coffee meetings where 6-8 people meet. With the help of Äldrekontakt's volunteers, lonely elderly get the opportunity for meetings that fill life with meaning. Our coffee hosts invite the elderly for coffee in their homes, and our drivers transport the elderly to and from the coffee meeting. It is always the same people who meet, so that friendships can be built up over time.
The fact that it is specifically 6-8 elderly people and monthly meetings is based on proven methods and research over the 17 years that Äldrekontakt has existed. How often should the meetings be? How long and what can the elderly endure? It is also important that there is not too much time between occasions, which is why we have a policy that says we never cancel a coffee meeting.
We wanted to offer our donors more payment options than just Swish. We found Octany quite quickly when we looked at how similar organizations like ours chose to collect donations.
When we only offered Swish as a payment option, we did not get all information about those who gave. We also lacked the ability to become monthly donors.
I was surprised that it was such a short and smooth process to get started with Octany. Here it was a clear process and easy to integrate on our existing website. We were up and running in a week.
It is easy for donors to make donations, and the best thing for us is that we can now communicate with those who give donations. At the end of the year, we usually send out a compilation and thank them for what they have contributed to. The monthly donor function is also a tremendous security for us, to know that money is coming in continuously.
We want to continue to grow so that we can help even more lonely elderly, and we also want to gradually scale up with more functions within Octany.
We are in more and more places and are growing quickly in the north right now. We just need to cover Gotland and Blekinge, and then we will be nationwide.
