aragon / nest

A grants program to support the development of the ecosystem
https://aragon.org/project/grants
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Aragon Nest Proposal: Perpetual Funding for Charitable Operation Costs #9

Closed tenthirtyone closed 6 years ago

tenthirtyone commented 6 years ago

_See the Guide for submitting a proposal for grants for further details on submitting a grant proposal_

Aragon Nest Proposal: Perpetual Funding for Charitable Operation Costs

Abstract

Raising donations for operations costs is the most challenging obstacle for charitable organizations. It's actually kind of easy matching donors with causes, but difficult to fund donations that grow the organization.

From 1970 to 2009 the number of nonprofits to cross the $50M revenue barrier is 1441. The number of for-profit was 46,136. Why are nonprofits incapable of capturing market share?

Money is the symptom. Social dogma is the problem. It is taboo to profit from helping others. The things we are taught to think about giving and philanthropy and charity undermine the causes we love. We have no problem with someone making millions of dollars selling widgets but make half a million dollars curing sick kids and you risk character assassination.

We propose a DAO and DAPP ecosystem dedicated to funding charity operation costs. All Ether raised in the token ICO will be locked and go to monthly donations specifically to grow non-profit organizations. A monthly vote by token holders will decide the non-profit recipients of the allowance. Token holders will decide which organizations are eligible to receive the allowance.

A DAPP for charitable fundraising can tokenize donations - issuing ERC-721 digital assets representing donation levels. Each donor token represents a specific act of charity or giving. E.g. "This token represents a pair of clean clothes to go to disaster relief victims" Purchasing the token funds the charity to buy that item and give it to those in need. The donor receives a permanent token certifying the donation.

The tokenizing of donations creates a commodity market for charity. Donors can 'shop' to make donations.

Furthermore, A Metamask enabled embedded HTML snippet allows Ether donations on any website. This enables anyone to create their own decentralized charitable donation page. Celebrities, brands, shops, can all pick their favorite causes and accept donations on their behalf. The button interacts directly with the DAPP smart contracts, there is no possibility of middle man fees.

After donors purchase the ERC-721 tokens to make their donation. Web3 provides donor token holders new web experiences based on their donations and token holdings. Using the token as an identity mechanism you can start building fraternities/sororities based on philanthropy. You can do anything an ERC-721 token is capable of doing. One great use case we've explored is eventually transitioning DAO control to the donors - basing DAO votes on ERC-721 giving amounts instead of token holding.

Essentially this DAO is a faucet for growing non-profits chosen by the token holders. The DAO builds DAPPs that serve the non-profit space. The DAPPs charge a small fee, adding half the monthly fee to the DAO allowance fund and the other half pays token holders for their work maintaining the DAPPs and DAO. Unspent allowance funds go back to the fund, extending the life of the DAO.

Deliverables

  1. A DAPP to tokenize donations. This DAPP creates charity campaigns, issues tokens for each campaign representing specific donations. The DAPP issues a Tax Certificate for tax refunds with the organizations 501c Id.

[Working Prototype is available: https://igave.io/demo]

  1. An Embedded Donation button. This button interacts directly with the DAPP smart contract to purchase donation tokens. This allows anyone to include a single js file and decorate HTML elements to web3 enable them to accept donations for a cause.

[Working Prototype is available: https://igave.io/embedded/1/3]

  1. An ICO/DAO to issue a new currency, abscond and lock the ICO funds and Dev Funds in a trust, and a monthly voting schedule to disburse funds to a verified, chosen non-profits. The amount of unlocked dev funds at launch diminish as the ICO funds increase [Planning Stage. We are still finalizing the best steps forward here]

Grant size

Funding: We don't need any funding right now. We've completed most of this work on our own and are at the stage where we are beginning to talk with non-profits. What we really need right now are partners the help grow and legitimize the project to attract more organizations and users.

Success reward: Up to $100k in ETH. This not for operation costs, this is our minimum goal for the project launch. If, worst case, this were to be the only funds raised for this project. $80k would be slated for monthly charity allowance, 10% is an available dev fund with the remaining 10% of the dev fund being locked in a DAICO model.

To be clear on the grant money, this is not to pay ourselves. We are only seeking funds to help the project succeed. The primary motivator for our interest in the grant program is the value a partnership with Aragon and Placeholder brings.

Application requirements

Jessie Mooberry - Charity Advisor Entrepreneur-in-Residence @ Stanford Peace Innovation Lab https://www.linkedin.com/in/mooberry/

Daria Cuda - Business Advisor Marketing and Business MBA https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariacuda/

Harsha Goli - Developer BitCraft Founder, Prior Bitpay Developer https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshagoli/

We have one more, an ICO and solidity veteran. We are still finishing up talks and where they fit. All are committed to the project's success.

Development timeline

The development timeline will be the following one in regards to each deliverable:

  1. Feb 2018 - Production ready DAPP & Deployment
  2. March-April 2018 - Production ready DAO contracts
  3. Q2 2018 - DAO / Token Launch
  4. Beyond - More DAPPs to generate income - use cases listed at end of whitepaper.
  5. Beyond/Moon - DAO based on ERC-721 voting steered by philanthropists instead of token holders

There is currently a private testnet setup with a working demo with restricted features at https://igave.io/demo

We are presenting the project as it currently is. Even if this is not a good fit, we would love any feedback to make it better or work with Aragon to be a better fit for this program.

Thank you. Alex Sherbuck https://igave.io https://github.com/I-Gave

mariapao commented 6 years ago

@tenthirtyone Thanks a lot for submitting your proposal. A Decentralized Autonomous Charitable Organization is definitively something we want to see flourish in the Ethereum ecosystem. However, we don’t think this project is a fit for the program. Right now we are focused in funding the development of fundamental basic tooling for Aragon and Ethereum. Thus, your proposal is not a candidate for funding this time. We appreciate your participation very much. If in the future you are working on something that is a fit for the program, do not hesitate to apply again!

I'm closing the issue.