Vancouver’s Picatic Wants to Help Nonprofits Throw Events

After helping nonprofits and charitable organizations in North America raise $5 million this year, Vancouver’s Picatic is opening its new Movement platform model globally.

The event registration software company test launched the new pricing model geared towards “nonprofits, changemakers, and community builders.” CEO Jay Parmar said Movement started off as a passion project, but evolved into a entirely new company offering.

“A year and a half ago, an event organizer asked for a $1,000 donation to an event. I found out they were trying to raise $6,000 to buy new instruments for students in Central America,” said Parmar. “I showed them how to optimize their software and there were able to raise $30,000. I thought, we have to do a better job about letting the world know about our platform.”

The closed beta proved to be a success, and Picatic decided to roll out the reduced-fee rate to all people and organizations that are raising money for a notable charitable cause. In Canada, Picatic usually charges 2.5 per cent and $1.00 per ticket sold, dropping those fees to 1.8 per cent and $0.80 cents through Movement.

While the reduced rate may not seem like a huge win for nonprofits, Parmar explained how having access to a platform that’ll allow people to organize, manage and run a nonprofit event in fact opens new doors.

“Organizations that don’t have a charitable number are usually left out of the hole,” said Parmar. “Special, paid events are many times how they can make money…We’re enabling them to run an event and keep more money in their pocket.”

Through its platform, Picatic manages both online ticketing and registration, while its API provides developers with the framework to integrate those capabilities into their own apps.

Picatic has undergone a significant transformation since they launched nearly a decade ago. Parmar explained they started off as a crowdfunding event platform, then pivoted to a pay-what-you-want model and then shifted to a freemium model a few years ago.

“When we were dying for users, we opened up the gates… As we took away barriers of entry, we’ve been able to grow all over the world. But then came a tipping point where we couldn’t support the free… The determent was to our users,” Parmar said.

While it has added new capabilities to its software, Picatic is sticking with a flat fee model for paid events, with no fee for free events. The company has grown to 17 employees and has clients in 30 countries around the world.