Two Swiss social startups merge to create Alaya

Share A Dream and Hope it up’s common mission is to help companies promote their employees’ engagement to impact the world in a positive manner by connecting them to amazing non-profit organizations. While Share A Dream’s digital platform offers different opportunities to support organizations in Switzerland (30) and abroad (35), Hope it up supports local non-profit organizations (85). Furthermore, Hope it up specializes in field volunteering and fundraising while Share A Dream is specialized in online volunteering (skills-based) and impact reporting.

The recent merger of the two Swiss social startups comes as a logical step. “After two years of activity, we made a decision that would better serve our clients and non-profit partners by combining our know-how. The new company enables us to offer a complete solution for employee volunteering and corporate giving. It consolidates our positioning in Switzerland and enables us to grow in other countries.” Olivier Eyries, COO of Alaya (founding member of Share A Dream)

Alaya is created
Nowadays stakeholders expect companies to be actively involved in impacting the world in a positive manner. In order to respond to those expectations, companies need to be able to rely on their best ambassadors: their employees. Employees wish to get involved as volunteers but do not always have adequate solutions to do so. Paradoxically, the human resources departments are increasingly challenged when motivating their teams.

“To respond to these needs, we created a platform that facilitates employee volunteer engagement and reinforces social responsibility. An innovative solution to boost corporate volunteering programs, giving and impact reporting.” André Abreu, CEO of Alaya (founding member of Hope it up)

Alaya enables employees to get involved as volunteers in diverse ways and offers a powerful automatic impact analysis tool. Simple and efficient, Alaya reinforces a collective mindset and conveys the companies’ values. Companies will thus be able to build a sustainable impact, that can be communicated and is visible in real-time.

Companies pay a subscription fee for access to the platform, according to the number of employees they have. Alaya’s clients include pioneers in the Swiss or international economy such as PwC, L’Oréal, or Sunstar, but its list of partners also includes SMEs such as Evolusys and Sylvac.

Speaking of its future expansion plans, Alaya which employs 10 people, already works with many international non-profit organizations and have some clients abroad. But their activity is still mainly focused in Switzerland. As André Abreu explains to Startupticker.ch the international expansion of the new entity will prioritize the neighboring countries, especially France and Germany, and the countries in which its existing clients have an important presence (such as Singapore, Brazil or the US).  

(Press release)