Founded
2014
Employees
11
Location
Hamburg, Germany
Steward-owned since
2022
"All For Toilets! Toilets For All!” – with this vision and a large portion of creativity and courage the non-forprofit organization “Goldeimer” (EN: golden bucket) is aiming to revolutionize the sanitation sector. The innovative team strives to improve (the access to) sanitation systems worldwide and at the same time make them more social, sustainable and circular. Their products and services are designed to inform people about the challenges and opportunities linked to sanitation. All profits are reinvested in their non-profit purpose: to support the circular economy, systemic transformation in the sanitary sector, sanitation projects in the Global South, as well as research, development and education.
The formation of Goldeimer truly began in 2012 with Malte Schremmer writing his Bachelor thesis on alternative sanitary systems and dry toilets. Together with his fellow students Johannes Manthey, Hannes Popken, Jan Lange und Rolf Schwanderer, he started to develop prototypes of dry toilets that were funded by prize money won at a competition for impactful start-ups. In 2014, Rolf, Johannes, Malte were joined by Markus Bier and soon they collaborated with Viva con Agua to found the Goldeimer gGmbH (charitable corporation) as a social business within the Viva con Agua network. In order to ensure its long-term nonprofit orientation, Goldeimer was 100% owned by Viva con Agua, while the team designed and performed strategy and activities on their own account. This is the case also for other social businesses that were founded as spin-offs or in collaboration with Viva con Agua around the mission “WATER FOR ALL – ALL FOR WATER”. Together with the Viva con Agua entities, these organizations form the Viva con Agua “family”.
In 2022, Goldeimer and Viva con Agua implemented steward-ownership in Goldeimer’s ownership structure to ensure self-determination of Goldeimer: they wanted the people who are close to the company’s mission and actively involved in the company’s activities to hold the steering wheel of the company, the voting rights. After a journey through different potential ownership structures on which they were supported by Purpose Consulting, Goldeimer and Viva con Agua set up a Golden Share structure with the Purpose Foundation. From now on, employees of Goldeimer hold the majority of the voting power while Viva con Agua also remains connected to Goldeimer with some voting rights and the Purpose Foundation holds a golden share to enshrine the principles of steward-ownership.
In this way, the ownership structure of Goldeimer reflects both the actual organizational and decisionmaking culture as well as the decentralized and collaborative Viva con Agua network they are part of. The case of Goldeimer and Viva con Agua is a great example of how a spin-off can be handled that both reflects a remaining connection to the network as well as enables decentralized and autonomous entrepreneurship.