Frequently asked questions

You can send your ThankU at the end of the checkout, by forwarding a link to the recipient via the share-functionality of your smartphone. We have deliberately avoided a direct send functionality via the ThankU platform, as we would then need to collect the recipient’s personal contact data from you (e.g. email address or phone number), and we didn't want that for data protection reasons.

There is one exception, though: If you send your ThankU through the personal ThankU wallet of a user, we will automatically forward this ThankU via email, since we already know their email address.

ThankU is designed to work with a minimum need for personal data. For legal reasons, we need one reliable reference contact to you as a supporter, and we need to know where to send the donation receipt to. That’s why we collect your email address. But that’s really it. Please note that if you decide to set up a ThankU wallet, you will be asked to enter further data (such as your name etc.). If you want to know more about how we handle your data, please read our privacy policy.

No, this is not necessary. You can use ThankU without registration or login. We deliberately designed ThankU in a way that it works with a minimum of personal data, so we only ask for your email address.

ThankU is a so-called web app, i.e. you open www.thanku.social like any website in a browser. The good thing is that you don't need to install an app and can use ThankU on any device that has a modern internet browser (of course you need to have access to the internet). You can still add a ThankU icon to your smartphone or tablet screen.

When you open www.thanku.social in your browser, you can add an icon to the screen of your device via the browser menu. This way you always have ThankU at your fingertips – just like a native app. Depending on your operating system and browser, this function is called "Add to Home screen" (Chrome / Android) , "Add to screen" (Edge / Android) or "Add to Home screen" (Safari / iOS).

You can use ThankU without creating a ThankU wallet. The beauty of a personalized ThankU wallet is that you can collect all your sent and received ThankUs and see at a glance what positive impact you have made with the help of ThankU. Through your ThankU wallet other people can also send you ThankUs directly, simply by clicking on the button "Send me a ThankU". You will then be automatically notified about these ThankUs by email. And: You can of course share this page in your favorite social media channels.

This is a personal link that takes you to the ThankU wallet of a person (What is a ThankU wallet good for?). Get your personal link (thx.to/:your-name) by creating your own ThankU wallet.

Since we want to make ThankU easy to use, there is no classic registration with a password that you have to remember. That's why we store your user ID in your browser. This means that if you open ThankU with the same browser, and you have not deleted the browser data before, you will be redirected straight to your ThankU wallet. If you open ThankU with a different device or browser, you will have to re-enter your email address after clicking on "I already have a ThankU wallet" to get your user ID.

We are planning a profile picture upload on your ThankU wallet for the future. Until then you can use the service gravatar.com to get a custom profile picture. On Gravatar, you can register with your email address and upload a digital avatar (i.e. a profile picture) to be linked to this email address. ThankU will then automatically request your Gravatar image on your ThankU wallet. Please keep in mind that the email address associated with your ThankU wallet must be the same as the email address of your Gravatar account.

We recently developed the ThankU Impact Widget and the ThankU Counter Badge as a Web Component and published it as Open Source on GitHub. With just some basic knowledge of HTML, you should be able to integrate the widget on your website.

Of course you can, and we encourage you to donate as much as possible! We do not consider ThankU to be a donation platform, but a thank you platform. ThankU is a simple tool that provides a very instant and meaningful way to show your gratitude to anybody. We believe this works best if you contribute to a good cause, instead of the common counter-offers like “let me buy you a beer”.

We try to keep the deductions as low as possible. But we have to face the realities of life – ThankU needs people to run and develop the platform, and has to pay bills (e.g. servers, office). We also spend some money on marketing to make ThankU known to more people which results in even more ThankUs and more impact. Currently the team works 100% on a voluntary basis – ThankU is our passion project and we want to contribute to a good cause with our work. We guarantee that at least 80% of your contribution will be forwarded to the supported projects. If you want to know in detail how much money we deduct, please check our page Transparency reports.

For donations up to and including 300 EUR, please use as a simplified donation receipt the payment receipt that our payment service provider (currently: Stripe) sends you by email, together with your credit card statement and our Confirmation of Donations.

For donations above 300 EUR, you can request a donation receipt after successful checkout by clicking “I need a donation receipt”. We will then send you an email with further instructions.

We strive to maximize the impact of your contribution. That’s why we bundle our efforts to minimize our costs, and send all donation receipts of the concurrent calendar year at the beginning of the following calendar year. So if you contributed in 2024, we will send your donation receipt via email in February 2025.

As we are a non-profit organization under German law, we can only issue donation receipts under German law. We do not guarantee that the donation receipts will be honored by the tax authorities.