FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Have you got any ques­tions? Well, we have the answers. If you can’t find the answer to your ques­tion here, then just drop an email to faq@ravetheplanet.com

 

General questions

What exactly is a gGmbH?

Accord­ing to Ger­man law, a “gGmbH” is a lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny which uses its income for non-prof­it pur­pos­es. Its non-prof­it sta­tus is indi­cat­ed by the small “g” (short for Ger­man „gemein­nützig“ = char­i­ta­ble) in front of the abbre­vi­a­tion “GmbH” and defined by the Ger­man Tax Code (ger. = Abgabenord­nung, AO).

Non-prof­it sta­tus applies if the pur­pose of a cor­po­ra­tion (such as an asso­ci­a­tion or a lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny) is to “self­less­ly pro­mote the gen­er­al pub­lic in mate­r­i­al, spir­i­tu­al or eth­i­cal terms”. (Sec­tion 52/1 AO). A gGmbH is also sub­ject to the laws on lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­nies and the Ger­man Com­mer­cial Code.

For more infor­ma­tion in the Ger­man lan­guage, please refer to Wikipedia.

Why set up a non-profit limited company instead of a registering a non-profit society?

Com­pared to a non-prof­it reg­is­tered soci­ety, a non-prof­it lim­it­ed com­pa­ny can oper­ate more effec­tive­ly. Deci­sions can be imple­ment­ed quick­ly and do not have to be con­firmed in a gen­er­al meet­ing of its mem­bers. We have cho­sen this legal form at Rave The Plan­et because we want to be direct­ly involved with our projects, for the pro­tec­tion, preser­va­tion, main­te­nance, pro­mo­tion and fur­ther devel­op­ment of the elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture. The prof­its gen­er­at­ed by the gGmbH will be used exclu­sive­ly for char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es and not shared as div­i­dends to any share­hold­ers.

How long has Rave The Planet been around?

We’ve been around offi­cial­ly since July 2019, but we actu­al­ly got togeth­er short­ly after the nineties berlin exhi­bi­tion opened in mid-2018. This was a spe­cial mul­ti­me­dia exhi­bi­tion about the 1990s in Berlin. We devel­oped the spe­cial exhi­bi­tion known as “30 Years of the Lovepa­rade” togeth­er and, in the process, we real­ized that we all share the same pas­sion for tech­no and the elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture and rec­og­nized the prob­lems that cul­tur­al loca­tions are hav­ing in Ger­many. This is how we final­ly came up with the idea of found­ing Rave The Plan­et.

Why does Rave The Planet have three CEOs?

That sounds like a lot! It is, how­ev­er, very easy to explain: We need the three CEOs because there is a lot to do in some very diverse areas. There is an extreme­ly large num­ber of tasks on the agen­da, which range from exhi­bi­tions, PR, back office, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, team orga­ni­za­tion, dona­tion man­age­ment, pol­i­tics, asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tion, to talks with clubs and artists etc. Each CEO must be able to respon­si­bly and ful­ly rep­re­sent his own area. Our CEOs all work on a vol­un­tary basis, which means that they don’t get paid and it’s going to stay this way.

What is Rave The Planet calling for and what are its goals?

We want to ensure that the elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture is pro­tect­ed, main­tained, pre­sent­ed, pro­mot­ed and fur­ther devel­oped, and also to have the elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture rec­og­nized by UNESCO as intan­gi­ble cul­tur­al her­itage. We also aim at hav­ing an offi­cial pub­lic hol­i­day intro­duced for our cul­ture and cel­e­brat­ing this with a liv­ing tra­di­tion of our elec­tron­ic dance music: a new parade in Berlin that will car­ry forth the spir­it of the orig­i­nal Love Parade.

What about transparency?

Right now, we are work­ing on cre­at­ing a trans­paren­cy chart with every expense we have made so far. It will show exact­ly who was paid how much mon­ey and for what.

Who’s behind Rave The Planet?

You can meet our team on the „About us“ page. We’re a col­or­ful bunch from dif­fer­ent coun­tries and the most diverse fields of activ­i­ty. Our team is made up of stu­dents of archi­tec­ture, cul­tur­al work­ers and artists, as well as suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs. We’re basi­cal­ly a bit of every­thing. This diver­si­ty gives us strength and plen­ty of exper­tise.

Why do the shareholders invest their time and money in Rave The Planet when they can't make any profit from it?

Not every­thing in life is about mon­ey. We believe that the idea and spir­it of the elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture enrich­es us. Some share­hold­ers are also involved else­where as sup­port­ers, donors or spon­sors, for exam­ple in the fields of data pro­tec­tion, envi­ron­men­tal and ani­mal con­ser­va­tion, sports and edu­ca­tion, etc. We want to move things and make more things pos­si­ble. There are lots of oth­er entre­pre­neurs who also donate mon­ey with­out expect­ing any­thing in return. That’s great! It must also be pos­si­ble to pro­mote ideas pri­vate­ly and with­out any bureau­cra­cy.

 

Questions on Fundraving

What is Fundraving?

Fun­drav­ing is a made-up word. It includes the words Fundrais­ing (to raise mon­ey for a pur­pose) and Rav­ing (to dance to tech­no music). The word Fun­drav­ing describes our spe­cial fundrais­ing project to enable the new parade in Berlin. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please click here.

 

What is a Fundraver?

Have you had the chance yet to make a dona­tion in our online dona­tion shop for one of our Fun­drav­ing mod­el fig­ures? If you’ve done this already, then you’re a Fun­draver, too! Cool! If not, you can do it right here.

 

HOW MUCH MONEY HAS BEEN DONATED IN FUNDRAVING SO FAR?

You can see how far the cam­paign has pro­gressed direct­ly at the mod­el. Here on our web­site and in the online dona­tion shop you can also see the cur­rent sta­tus of the dona­tions in Euro and par­tic­i­pants:

 

Can I just donate some money?

You’re more than wel­come! Just take a look at our „Dona­tions” page. You can find more infor­ma­tion there.

 

Why do you need to sell 1.5 million model figures?

The is a sym­bol­ic num­ber rep­re­sent­ing the 1,500,000 ravers* who peace­ful­ly cel­e­brat­ed togeth­er in 1999 — at the largest Love Parade of all time. We don’t actu­al­ly need so many peo­ple to have anoth­er parade, but we’d like to see if peo­ple today are still inter­est­ed in play­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic role in such things.

 

How long will the model be around?

The Fun­drav­ing mod­el has been around since Jan­u­ary 13, 2020. It will prob­a­bly stay there until the end of the year.

 

When is it open?

The Fun­drav­ing mod­el is open from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. Mon­days to Sat­ur­days, as well as on cer­tain Sun­days. The pub­lic can access it, how­ev­er, around the clock. Out­side of the open­ing hours men­tioned above, it is sur­round­ed by a fence to pro­tect it against van­dal­ism.

 

What if I’d like to donate Victory Column or Brandenburg Gate?

Please feel free! Just get in touch with us at: info@ravetheplanet.com

 

When will it be possible to donate the Love Floats?

You can donate the Love Floats for our Fun­drav­ing mod­el when­ev­er you like. Just get in touch with us direct­ly at: info@ravetheplanet.com

 

Why are donation receipts only issued from amounts larger than €200?

The law in Ger­many says that dona­tion receipts are only required for amounts larg­er than €200. Adher­ing to this reg­u­la­tion saves us time and admin­is­tra­tion costs, which means that we have more mon­ey for our char­i­ta­ble projects.

 

Why is the Fundraving model in a shopping mall?

The loca­tion of the Fun­drav­ing mod­el actu­al­ly has a very spe­cial place in the club his­to­ry of Berlin. The first Tre­sor Club used to stand right here and in fact our mod­el stands on the exact loca­tion of what used to be the Tresor’s Gar­den. In the ear­ly 1990s, some leg­endary Love Parade after-par­ties were held here. Thou­sands of vis­i­tors and locals walk through the mall and, thus, this for­mer loca­tion – and these are exact­ly the peo­ple we want to remind of days gone-by and attract. There is hard­ly a bet­ter place to do this. To gain accep­tance for tech­no, we want to attract peo­ple who oth­er­wise don’t come into con­tact with it.

But there are some oth­er rea­sons that make this place spe­cial. It is

• right in the cen­ter of Berlin, in the dis­trict of Mitte,
• in close prox­im­i­ty to the polit­i­cal heart of Ger­many (oppo­site the Ger­man Bun­desrat) and
• with around 22 mil­lion inter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors ever year, per­fect­ly suit­ed for a fundrais­ing cam­paign of our size, as it enables us to reach a huge amount of peo­ple here.

Last but not least: with this loca­tion, we are also fol­low­ing the tra­di­tion of the Love Parade in Berlin. It used to start on Kur­fürs­ten­damm, West Berlin’s famous main shop­ping boule­vard.

 

What else can I do? Can I support it in any other ways?

You’re already a Fun­draver, but you’d like to do more? That’s awe­some! Thank you very much.

The most impor­tant thing, of course, is to make as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble aware of Rave The Plan­et and the Fun­drav­ing. You can fol­low us on Face­book, Insta­gram and Twit­ter. Please feel free to like, and of course share, our posts.

Here’s more you can do if you like:

• You can print up our stubs your­self, cut them along the dot­ted lines and hang these in your local area – or course, only where you’re allowed to. 😉
• You can dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion fly­ers. We’ll be glad to send them to you by post. If you’d like to know more, then just write us an email to edr@ravetheplanet.com

Do you have any oth­er sug­ges­tions? Drop a mail to info@ravetheplanet.com

 

What will happen with the donations if the parade doesn’t take place?

If the fundrais­ing does not raise enough mon­ey for the new parade, the col­lect­ed funds will be used for Rave The Planet’s oth­er char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es in accor­dance with our Arti­cles of Asso­ci­a­tion, e.g. for UNESCO to rec­og­nize elec­tron­ic dance music as Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage, to pro­mote art and cul­ture, to pro­tect elec­tron­ic dance music, and much more.

 

Questions on Cultural Heritage

What is „Intangible Cultural Heritage“?

Intan­gi­ble cul­tur­al her­itage is a term that cov­ers cus­toms, music and fes­ti­vals direct­ly cre­at­ed as a result of human knowl­edge and skills. These are passed down through the gen­er­a­tions, are alive and con­stant­ly under­go devel­op­ment. Unlike build­ings or mon­u­ments, for exam­ple, they are not mate­r­i­al and can­not be touched – this makes them there­fore imma­te­r­i­al.

“It is an expres­sion of cre­ativ­i­ty, con­veys con­ti­nu­ity and iden­ti­ty, shapes social cohe­sion and con­tributes to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.” (Trans­lat­ed from Ger­man)

This is how it is defined by the UNESCO, the orga­ni­za­tion that inter­na­tion­al­ly coor­di­nates and ensures the pro­tec­tion of cul­tur­al her­itage.

Imma­te­r­i­al cul­tur­age includes:

• Cul­tur­al tra­di­tions and artis­tic forms passed on ver­bal­ly, includ­ing lan­guage as a vehi­cle for intan­gi­ble cul­tur­al her­itage,
• per­form­ing arts, such as music, dance and the­ater,
• social cus­toms, social prac­tices, rit­u­als and cel­e­bra­tions,
• knowl­edge and meth­ods in deal­ing with nature and the uni­verse,
• pro­fes­sion­al knowl­edge of tra­di­tion­al hand­work tech­niques.

(Source: Ger­man Wikipedia)

The elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture has already attained the sta­tus of intan­gi­ble cul­tur­al her­itage in the Nether­lands. The tech­no cul­ture in Zurich has also been on the UNESCO list of liv­ing tra­di­tions in Switzer­land since 2017.

What’s the difference between “World Heritage” and “Intangible Cultural Heritage”?

The des­ig­na­tion known as „World Cul­tur­al Her­itage“, but also called UNESCO World Her­itage, is award­ed to mon­u­ments, build­ings, sites, nat­ur­al for­ma­tions, land­scapes, etc. of excep­tion­al val­ue. Accord­ing to the states sig­na­to­ry to the UNESCO World Her­itage Con­ven­tion, these can be pro­tect­ed. In our com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we use the term „World Cul­tur­al Her­itage” because we hope that our cul­tur­al her­itage will one day become cul­tur­al her­itage in Berlin as well as in the rest of Ger­many and gain recog­ni­tion as World Cul­tur­al Her­itage.

How should intangible cultural heritage help the electronic dance music culture?

Our cul­ture is peace­ful, rich in knowl­edge and has a wealth of expe­ri­ence. We are call­ing for it to be placed under the pro­tec­tion of UNESCO’s Lists Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage. This would bring numer­ous social and legal ben­e­fits:

BENEFITS TO SOCIETY

• Inclu­sion on the nation­wide UNESCO list is a com­mu­nica­tive and sym­bol­ic recog­ni­tion of elec­tron­ic dance music and club cul­ture.
• The sta­tus of “Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage” pro­motes aware­ness with­in soci­ety that the elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture is an inde­pen­dent cul­tur­al form that has long out­grown its niche exis­tence.
• Inclu­sion on the UNESCO list guar­an­tees inter­na­tion­al atten­tion and rais­es aware­ness of the need to pro­tect and pre­serve this cul­ture.

LEGAL BENEFITS

• Pro­tect­ing the venues can be con­sid­ered to be of high­er pri­or­i­ty than sound­proof­ing, neigh­bor­hood pro­tec­tion and mon­u­ment con­ser­va­tion. This restricts the dis­cre­tionary pow­ers of local gov­ern­ments.
• It does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly pro­tect already exist­ing clubs, but they are con­sid­ered more wor­thy of pro­tec­tion.
• This cer­ti­fi­ca­tion increas­es the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion of art (see GG Arti­cle 5/3 of the Ger­man Basic Law). Pro­tect­ing things of high rel­e­vance, i.e. cul­ture and art, is of more sig­nif­i­cance than pro­tec­tion of the indi­vid­ual.
• When open­ing a new club, the sta­tus of “Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage” ensures sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er hur­dles and restric­tions.
• Inclu­sion on the nation­wide UNESCO list paves the way for state sub­si­dies and sup­port from oth­er char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions. The sta­tus of “Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage” can bring tax ben­e­fits, e.g. gen­er­al­ly 7% instead of 19% VAT

 

Fragen zum Spendenshop

How much of the money for each model figure is used as a donation?

This depends on the mod­el fig­ure and where it is to be placed on the mod­el. For a dona­tion of €5, for exam­ple, one „Love Lucie“ can be placed on the “Street” area. A lit­tle over 80% of this goes straight to our char­i­ta­ble projects. If you want to place Lucie direct­ly at Vic­to­ry Col­umn, how­ev­er, you’ll have to donate €100. The amount used for the Fun­drav­ing is of course much high­er.

Can I have the model figures also delivered to me at home?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, not yet. The mod­el fig­ures rep­re­sent your dona­tions for our char­i­ta­ble projects (world cul­tur­al her­itage, pro­tec­tion of clubs, new parade, etc.) and will be glued to the Fun­drav­ing mod­el by our mod­el mak­ers direct­ly on site in Berlin.

Why doesn’t the figure belong to me after I’ve purchased one?

The fig­ures are a dona­tion and do not con­sti­tute a com­mer­cial sale. As a non-prof­it com­pa­ny, this is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence. Seen in this way, the mod­el fig­ure is mere­ly sym­bol­ic.

Why isn’t the payment confirmation sent from Rave The Planet?

Pay­ment providers, such as Pay­Pal, want to min­i­mize their own risk (tax, recla­ma­tions, etc.) when deal­ing with non-prof­it com­pa­nies and, there­fore, unfor­tu­nate­ly don’t per­mit the spe­cial kind of dona­tion pay­ments that we’ve thought up. That’s why we work in part­ner­ship with Wom­em­os in the dona­tion shop. They present the dona­tions in a trans­par­ent way and, after deduct­ing the pay­ment provider’s fees, direct­ly pass them on to us. With great sup­port from Pay­Pal, how­ev­er, we are work­ing on issu­ing a joint con­fir­ma­tion. Ama­zon­Pay does not wish to sup­port us!

How can I make a complaint about a product?

You can find detailed infor­ma­tion on this in the terms and con­di­tions of our online dona­tion shop under „V. Right of can­cel­la­tion for con­sumers”.

 

Questions on the new parade

Will there really be a new parade?

Because our project depends on the suc­cess of the fundrais­ing, this is com­plete­ly up to you. In oth­er words: if and when the new parade will take place depends on how much we’re able to col­lect through your dona­tions. So, join in right now and use our online dona­tion shop to donate a mod­el fig­ure. By June, we’ll let you know for sure.

Will the new parade also be called „Love Parade”?

As the trade­mark on the name of „Love Parade” does not belong to us: No. But we’d be real­ly hap­py if this could change.

What do the victims of the Love Parade in 2010 think about it?

We invit­ed three rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the LoPa 2010 e.V. vic­tims’ ini­tia­tive to vis­it us for the launch of Rave The Plan­et and to the press con­fer­ence for the fundrais­ing model’s open­ing. They had a look around and every­thing was explained to them. They also per­son­al­ly glued their mini ravers to the mod­el.

In a tele­vi­sion inter­view on Duisburg’s region­al chan­nel Stu­dio 47, Nicole Ball­hause (spokes­woman for the LoPa 2010 e.V victim’s ini­tia­tive) replied to the ques­tion of what the vic­tims thought of Rave The Plan­et as fol­lows::

„If this project takes place in Berlin and under the direc­tion of Dr. Motte, none of us have any objec­tions.”

You can see the clip from Stu­dio 47 here (in Ger­man):

Will the new parade be carbon neutral? What about particulate pollution?

We are work­ing on strate­gies to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment and avoid lit­ter. Our goal is to orga­nize a parade that is eco­log­i­cal and sus­tain­able.

What about security?

Ensur­ing the safe­ty of the peo­ple tak­ing part is our top pri­or­i­ty. The secu­ri­ty con­cept has already been drawn up and is cur­rent­ly being exam­ined by the author­i­ties.

How will it differ from the old Love Parade?

Your dona­tions and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Fun­drav­ing will enable our project to be inde­pen­dent of any spon­sors. They are of course still wel­come to join in! But as our goal is to throw a parade that’s free of adver­tis­ing, they will not be vis­i­ble at the parade.

The only adver­tis­ing that we actu­al­ly want is for cul­ture itself, e.g. for clubs and fes­ti­vals, DJs, labels, etc. After all, our aim is to present the diver­si­ty of the elec­tron­ic dance music cul­ture.

Kul­tur selb­st, also z. B. für Clubs und Fes­ti­vals, DJs, Labels usw. Es geht uns schließlich um die Darstel­lung der Vielfalt der elek­tro­n­is­chen Tanz­musikkul­tur.