€500,000 crowd-financed for social impact
The current collapse of the generational contract has real consequences for people – mostly women – who spent their lives in unpaid and undervalued care work. In Austria, the gender pay gap leaves every fifth woman above the age of 65 living below the poverty line.
Vollpension offers a working social solution: retirees bake cakes a few hours per week to supplement their income and strengthen their financial security. To expand to additional cities, Vollpension needs hundreds of thousands starting capital for each new café they aim to open.
Project Overview
Client: Vollpension Generationendialog GmbH
My role: Fundraising Lead
Timeline: June–August 2025 (Crowdfunding); September–November 2025 (Crowdinvesting)
My Role
Developed a multi-level fundraising concept and produced the pilot used to scale Vollpension’s growth.
I coordinated all fundraising communications and led the full community strategy – from first touchpoint to contract signing and final transfer of funds.
Our strategy
After completing the first crowdfunding campaign to gain social proof for future cafés in Graz and Salzburg, we moved into the second stage: crowd-investing.
As a social business, Vollpension opted to run the financing independently rather than using a third-party platform, avoiding 5–10% in service fees.
Together with Sabrina Pils-Matiasek, we automated the full workflow using Pipedrive. Supporters registered, received an automatically generated contract, and were prompted to transfer funds via Stripe or EPS. When the automated workflow failed, I personally reached out to future investors to answer questions and guide them through the process.
By closely monitoring the investor community and calling many of the supporters directly, I identified patterns in motivation and behavior that shaped our communications. These insights helped position Vollpension’s mission in major Austrian media outlets, including ORF.at, Krone, Kurier and many others.
Sustainability in action
Vollpension provides a scalable, functioning approach to reducing elderly poverty (SDG 1). Expanding to new cities amplifies this impact. The model also contributes to improved health and wellbeing (SDG 3) by enabling seniors to participate purposefully in a diverse, intergenerational community.
What I learned
Automation played a central role during this project. Used well, it freed my time for personal interactions that ultimately made the campaign successful. Around 30% of leads dropped out during the process and required individual support.
Direct exchanges with investors helped me uncover fascinating stories . For example, most investors and most of the capital came from women – despite women in Austria owning roughly 23% less wealth – an unexpected insight that enabled us additional and most of all successful press outreach.
Team
Sabrina Pils-Matiasek — Automation
Lukas Kloiber — Social Content Production
Simon Gruber — Campaign Video Production
Karin Hermann-Arnold — PR Coordination
Sophia Hintermayer — PR Outreach
Raphaela Andorfer – Online marketing
Simon Gruber – Campaign video production