Boudewijn Poelmann

Boudewijn Poelmann (born 1949) is a Dutch entrepreneur who favours doing business with a cause. A cause more than earning money or creating value only. He likes to start new ventures that also have a social impact or benefits the globe at any other aspect. For this reason he (co)founded the National Postcode Lottery in the Netherlands. This charity lottery gives 50% of its proceeds to charities and/or other good causes, both NGO's as well as UN organizations. Boudewijn Poelmann (February 3, 1949 married to Annemiek Hoogenboom) who holds BA’s in Marketing and Political Sciences, is the co-founder and CEO of Novamedia in 1983. Novamedia is the owner and founder of the Postcode Lottery format worldwide.

Before establishing Novamedia in 1983 he worked with DAF and Oxfam Novib (Dutch organization for international development aid). At Oxfam Novib he was responsible for the fundraising and was running its publishing house. In addition he acquired exceptional experience in the European TV, telephone and printed media businesses. Until September 1992 he was also the director of IPS (Inter Press Service) Europe.

The Postcode Lottery was founded in 1989 and has until 2007 donated over 2.5 billion euros to good causes, especially in the field of alleviating poverty, human rights and environment. Since 2005 this successful charity lottery model was also introduced in Sweden (Svenska PostkodLotteriet). Since the start in 2005 the Swedish Postcode Lottery contributed 30,8 million euros to good causes. End of 2007 the Postcode Lottery extended its reach to Scotland (People’s Postcode Lottery), where it has just started beginning of 2008. All in all the Postcode Lotteries in 2007 had a total revenue of over 550 million euros, of which 250 million euros were handed over to the charities.

In the Netherlands two other charity lotteries fall under the chairmanship of Mr. Poelmann: the SponsorBingoLoterij and the BankGiroLoterij, the former being set up for organisations active in the field of health and welfare and the latter for culture. All in all these charity lotteries in the Netherlands, Sweden en Scotland expect to pass the 1 billion yearly revenue in one or two years. Mr. Poelmann is also one of the founders/owners of Independent Media, which became the second largest publishing house in the Russian Federation (newspapers, magazines and internet). He was a big shareholder and chairman of the board of directors until 2004 when Independent Media was sold to Sanoma Publishing. In 2004 he co-founded City AM, the daily financial newspaper in London. One year later he co-founded the new Dutch publishing house Nieuw Amsterdam (books and magazines). Currently he is also member of the board of Feyenoord Rotterdam. As a member of the supervisory board at Feyenoord he mainly focuses on media and marketing.

References

* [http://www.feyenoord.nl/pages/newsdetail/S1/10010000030470-999-10010000000003.aspx feyenoord.nl] nl