Hello, how can we help?

Initiators could be local authorities, ESCOs, resident cooperatives, community associations, public utility companies, regional energy suppliers, or other local organisations. Soon it will also be possible to initiate an initiative as an individual resident, local business, private association or club.

Registration as an initiator on our platform is free of charge. During the entire process of an initiative, there are generally no costs for you. Only in case you are also providing the final service of an initiative to the residents, you as an initiator may also incur costs. If you have further questions regarding this option, you can contact us directly via our Contact Page.

Our platform allows you to gather and inform a large number of residents online for your climate tech initiatives. Thereby, CoBenefit functions as an intermediary between local initiators and installers to ensure supply and aggregate demand. To increase your audience reach, we encourage network effects between residents by motivating each other to participate. Also, we support you by providing templates for workshops, social media, and newspaper articles.

As an initiator, you are responsible for advertising your initiative to local residents so they become aware of it. Therefore, we provide communication templates for newspaper articles and social media posts. Moreover, if you want to involve installers from your region, you can do so by advertising the request for regional installers which is automatically posted on our platform when your initiative is launched. If you want to start an initiative with a partner outside of our network or for another product or project types, please get in touch with us via our Contact Page and we will work out a suitable scheme together.

Yes. Once you register as an initiator, your personal platform page and dashboard will be created for you. On your dashboard, you can create and manage multiple initiatives at the same time.

We have already negotiated specific conditions for initiatives of certain product categories with our partners. If you want to start an initiative with our professional services partners, you can do so within a few minutes by using our dashboard and communication templates. If you want to start an initiative with a partner outside of our network or for another product or project type, please get in touch with us via our Contact Page and we will work out a suitable scheme together.

The duration of an initiative, including the provision of services, depends heavily on the product or project in question. Typically, the registration deadline for residents has to be 4-6 weeks after the start of an initiative in order to create incentives for participation and to achieve group discounts for procurement. For large projects, an initiative can be open for registration for much longer or even permanently.

You can save initiatives on your dashboard and launch them several times in a row, but it is not possible to launch identical initiatives at the same time. The conditions of a follow-up initiative must be reconfirmed by or renegotiated with the respective partner company. If you use our partner network, this process is shortened, due to predefined conditions.

As soon as an initiative is launched, a request for regional installers is automatically posted on our platform and you can advertise it. Regional installers can then respond to the request in a similar way to an online application for a job opening and get an invitation for an onboarding webinar. For reputational reasons, we reserve the right to veto the choice of partner company.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Page.

You have to sign up for an initiative via the initiative page. After signing up, the initiator and/or the partner company will contact you promptly to advise you personally. At the end you will receive an individual offer. This is the only way to get an offer, as we do not offer services outside of initiatives. After the registration period has ended, it is no longer possible to sign up for an initiative and benefit from the offered group discount. If you have registered within the given time frame, you will continue to be inform about the progress of the initiative.

Due to an initiative being a time-restricted group offer, this is unfortunately not possible. This is the case mainly due to the group offer resulting from the collective purchase and the minimal time and travel distance between the individual projects. However, you can always support us in our mission and inform your local authority about our initiatives to reap the benefits of a future offer.

No. By registering for an initiative, you merely express your interest. After you have registered for an initiative, you will be contacted by the initiator or the partner company of the initiative and get advice if necessary. Only then do you agree on a purchase contract with the partner company, in which the terms of payment are set out. These include an initial down-payment, also called a reservation fee, to ensure the potential discount and a fast execution for you.

The initiator and the partner company of the initiative will be informed about your registration to the initiative by e-mail and via their access portal to our platform. From the point of your registration, you will receive information about the further process and will be notified about relevant updates. Regarding your product (and its installation), the initiator or the relevant partner company will contact you in a short period of time. In some cases, however, contact will be made only after the registration period is over, which will be communicated beforehand.

Even if the lowest threshold of an initiative is not achieved; you will receive an individual offer by the partner company. It is up to you whether you accept this offer even if there is no group discount. The threshold of participants needed to reach certain amounts of discount will be indicated on the initiative page. However, a special case may apply in which an initiative requires a minimum number of participants to materialise. Should this minimum not be reached, the initiative will not take place. Once again, this will be clearly indicated on the initiative page.

The timing of your registration does not matter. You receive your final offer after the registration deadline and it includes the potential group discount. You will be informed about the exact discount valid for all participants before accepting the final offer and paying the reservation fee.

The partner company responsible for providing the final service will also be liable for all necessary services arising after the installation and will therefore also be your point of contact. In most cases our initiatives will be executed by a general contractor, who will therefore be the responsible party.

Our servers are hosted in Germany and your data is processed according to strict German data protection standards. The personal data collected from you as part of an initiative is only accessible to the institutions and companies involved in the initiative. The use of your data is limited to the initiative and your data will only be passed to our partners with your consent. If you wish for your data to be deleted after the initiative, you can simply request this and we will do so. You can find more detailed information in our Privacy Policy.

You can unsubscribe at any time. When you do so, we will delete all your data and will not contact you anymore in the future. You can unsubscribe via our Deregistration Form or by clicking the opt-out link in the emails you have received from us. However, this does not mean that our partners will no longer contact you and will delete all your data on their side. For this you need to contact them directly.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Page.

If you want to be part of an initiative in your region you simply have to apply to your local initiator’s request on CoBenefit. If you meet the predetermined selection criteria you will be invited to a webinar during which the further process will be outlined.

You benefit from fully planned projects with hardware packages, free marketing through our platform and initiators, as well as from long-term leads with consistent and more efficient order volumes through easy access to an expanding userbase. You no longer need to consult customers or obtain building information, which increases your efficiency and ultimately allows you to earn more.

In general, installers cannot set up initiatives. That said, there are only two special cases in which private-sector companies can act as initiators. On the one hand, local organisations whose sincere interest in the well-being of the local community is apparent to us can act as initiators. On the other hand, there is the possibility of CoBenefit launching a state or nationwide initiative together with a partner company. In this case, CoBenefit itself would be the initiator. For both cases a personal consultation is necessary in advance. Therefore, please get in touch with us via our Contact Page.

As an intermediary platform for climate tech initiatives, we partner up local initiators and general contractors. The general contractor is responsible of including regional companies for the implementation of the initiatives. Therefore, you sign a work agreement as a subcontractor with the general contractor, who provides you with the hardware for the installation.

As an installer, the only thing you will be responsible for is the actual installations. The initiator is responsible for attracting prospective participants, meaning you will have no efforts for the acquisition of customers. You will also not have to advise people, as the general contractor will then contact the interested participants to make an offer. If they confirm the offer, the planning will be checked on site by an energy advisor or the general contractor. At the end, you are then responsible for providing the installation as a subcontractor with hardware package of the general contractor.

Within our initiatives, it is mandatory to use the general contractor’s hardware packages. You do not have to pay any commission or participation fees to us or to the general contractor. In case a special scheme applies, this will be clearly communicated to you.

You can participate in only one or in several initiatives. By joining our partner network, you can benefit from being recommended for future initiatives in your region, which opens up long-term sales opportunities. Your recommendation is based on feedback from residents and our initiators. How often you can participate in initiatives depends on both your capacities and available local initiatives.

Customer satisfaction is our top priority, both on the part of the initiators and on the part of the residents. We want to ensure that the participants in our initiatives receive only high-quality and well-priced products and services. Therefore, we pay attention to high quality standards when selecting our partner companies. The exact criteria depend on the type of initiative and the products being offered. Once it has been determined that you meet the selection criteria, you will receive access to our partner’s procurement portal. There, you will be able to apply for different exposés of bundled projects. Those exposés will outline all the necessary steps and tasks to be carried out by you to successfully execute an initiative.

No. When residents decide to participate in an initiative, they only express their initial interest in the respective product or project. Only after the participants have received an individual offer from the general contractor and have agreed to it, a binding sales contract is signed. As a result of the initiator’s prior briefing of the participants, however, our rate of completed sales is considerably higher than in the case of traditional lead brokering.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Page.