Thriftify receives National Start-Up Awards
BALLYFERMOT social enterprise Thriftify has been awarded the Best Social Sustainable Start-Up at the National Start-Up Ireland Awards.
Clondalkin entrepreneur Rónán Ó Dálaigh heads up the enterprise, which is based in the Ballyfermot Community Civic Centre and belongs to the local SEDCo Hub.
Thriftify is an App for charity shops that helps them to find out how much their donations are worth and to sell them online.
The App is being used in 25 charity shops across Dublin and, according to Ó Dálaigh, it is helping them grow their profits by an average of up to 30 per cent.
Ó Dálaigh said: “It’s always a real honour to represent your country, so to win this national award and get to represent not only Ireland but Thriftify as well is incredibly exciting.
The team is putting in an enormous voluntary effort to try and build something with the potential to generate millions of euro for charities – without them it wouldn’t be possible.
We really hope the award will also inspire people to support us by going to www.thriftify.ie and buying something from a charity shop.”
From their base in the Civic Centre, SEDCo has launched Thriftify, refugee training project House of AKI-NA, and the weekly Win-Win Bingo.
According to Ó Dálaigh, they are working on further projects “which we hope will benefit local people and create employment.”
Thriftify will now represent Ireland at the European Awards.
