We have legal structures with which to make statements like this about nonprofit status, structures which bind the promise so that we don't have to take your word on it.
Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
51–60 of 227 posts
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#52Their website is confusing. So it's a non-profit for planting trees.. that's also a search engine? How are those two things at all related or have any benefit to being combined into one company?
Because ad revenue can be used for the non-profit? Ecosia's whole thing is that when you use it, you indirectly help plant trees - "the search engine that plants trees".
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#53I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…
I'm not sure how much that's creating outsized income for the founder...
There are between 98 (2022 annual report number) and 120 (ZoomInfo) and 133 (LinkedIn number). German filings are notoriously opaque vs Europe or UK.
So that's 637k EUR / 120 employees (although the payroll number jumps around between 450 and ~640 - weird, but who knows, # of employees shifting around or some paid quarterly or on commission?).
That's around 5,300 EUR / month per employee, or 64k / year. Germans notoriously don't work on the cheap - so unlikely that everyone else is working below market to line the CEO's pockets.
That said - they are still a profit seeking enterprise (another commenter noted that they aren't gGMBH - but also they set up a Feeder fund in January - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1999332/000199933224...)
Which presumably CAN be profit seeking.
So yeah - it doesn't invalidate their mission - if you're into that - but it's not 100% of what it says on the tin.
Also - monthly financial statements may be a German thing (sorry, I actually quite like Germany and Germans - just German company law is quite cumbersome) - but annual statements would give a clearer and more transparent picture.
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#54Their website is confusing. So it's a non-profit for planting trees.. that's also a search engine? How are those two things at all related or have any benefit to being combined into one company?
yea, I could't figure out what's the idea either.
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#55Their website is confusing. So it's a non-profit for planting trees.. that's also a search engine? How are those two things at all related or have any benefit to being combined into one company?
Because ad revenue can be used for the non-profit? Ecosia's whole thing is that when you use it, you indirectly help plant trees - "the search engine that plants trees".
Do they disclose what percentage of their revenue is donated?
If it's just a token amount, then I'd rather not support a marketing gimmick and would prefer to just donate directly to an organization focused on trees. If it's a significant amount, then it seems unlikely that they'll be able to compete with for-profit alternatives that can focus on developing the best product.
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because ad revenue can be used for the non-profit? Ecosia's whole thing is that when you use it, you indirectly help plant trees - "the search engine that plants trees".
Do they disclose what percentage of their revenue is donated? If it's just a token amount, then I'd rather not support a marketing gimmick and would prefer to just donate directly to an organization focused on trees. If it's a significant amount, then it seems unlikely that they'll be able to compete with for-profit alternatives that can focus on developing the best product.
You can explore the amount paid out to projects by month, region and partner projects in those regions here: https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planti...
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#57I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…
FWIW: They have provisions in their bylaws (which can only be changed with the assent of their public interest asset-locked shareholder) that restrict salaries to a level that's commonplace in the industry specifically in Germany. In Germany, software engineers and managers tend to make a lot less than they do in the U.S., certainly not an amount of money that's a meaningful tradeoff for giving up rights to dividends and other distributions.
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#58Does anyone use Ecosia every day? How does it compare with DuckDuckGo and Qwant?
I've been using it as my primary search engine for a couple of months. It's not great as a search engine. I find their locality of search to not be well-supported (e.g. the search "food near me" works good in google and not great in ecosia).
Ecosia doesn't emphasize recent events, news, or posts in search results as much as I'm used to --- but I haven't decided if this is good or bad.
It's not so bad that I've changed. But I do sometimes use a better search engine when I want better results.
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#59Trees don't need planting.
Trees need a safe place to grow without saplings getting destroyed.
But trees absolutely don't need planting. Besides, a healthy forest has to go through pioneering stages first.
Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like a gGmbH, but the Imprint ( https://www.ecosia.org/imprint ) still says Ecosia GmbH (-> For-Profit).
I looked up the bylaws just now (mostly because I'm procrastinating). It looks like they have a gGmbH that owns 99% of the shares (by number of shares), but founders retain 99% of the voting rights. Founders' shares are barred from receiving dividends, and the gGmbH has veto rights in relation to any certain changes that would fundmentally alter this ownership structure.
Something I don't really understand, maybe you have thoughts: is there a benefit to gGmbH over the company being a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Stiftung?