iGIVit - The Future of Giving

After proposing for Fund3 and getting no financial results, we have decided to re-apply with this improved proposal.

FIND THE MAIN IDEA KEYNOTE HERE: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cBOqfPvPRHYaJZU8yUNEvea5rHI_QvSToL_BiMOx2Vs/edit?usp=sharing
AUDIO VERSION OF THE TEXT: you can listen to an audio version of this text on our Discord channel here:
https://discord.com/channels/756943420660121600/831165976707072010/834458827150589993

SHORT VERSION (longer version below):
Goal:
We are looking to finance the creation of a new way of giving to charities by building an app that will ease the donation process, help manage campaigns and transparently display all data on the blockchain: it's called iGIVit.

With iGIVit, we aim to create a completely integrated solution for giving better by providing the tools to deliver financial assistance and/or emergency relief to the people and communities in need. We aim to restore trust in charities and bring philanthropy to the 21st century by building a decentralized app allowing donors to follow funds' usage and for charities to create and manage their campaigns with more transparency and accountability.

The goal of this Fund5 proposal is to get resources for our initial phases which include the development of a Minimum Viable Product (or MVP) as a proof of concept (PoC). We plan on building a webapp without any blockchain at first, just back-end logic, for faster prototyping. It will, of course, later be converted to the Cardano blockchain. We have started hiring a development company to be actively working on the project. This MVP will help demonstrate the basic functionalities of two user personas (Donor and Organization) first.

This MVP will allow us to demonstrate the benefits of iGIVit and increase traction of potential partners, investors and charity organizations. We are already in early discussions with the Canadian Red Cross for implementing some of their campaigns into our solution.

We are personally fronting the money to pay for developers to materialize our MVP, and the funds we ask for through this proposal will help cover these initial costs. For the initial phase, we are asking for 20,416.00$ USD.

You can see more details below or directly in the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AmTc_Wd-fCToCF37u3KvxYiA27Wm9VrIedPM7lBjV8U/edit?usp=sharing

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The iGIVit team

"And if you'll permit us we'd like to change the world" ?
Well, this might be one good start.

LONG VERSION:
Overview:
Currently, when giving to a charity, it is very hard to know how the funds are really being used. This opacity in the donation process prevents a lot of people from making contributions. Now, imagine being able to know exactly, and with absolute certainty, how your donation is making a difference in the real world.
With iGIVit, we aim to create a completely integrated solution for giving better by providing financial assistance and/or emergency relief to the people and communities in need. We aim to restore trust in charities and bring philanthropy to the 21st century by building a decentralized application allowing donors to follow funds' usage and for charities to create and manage their campaigns with more transparency and accountability.

End-user value:
Once fully deployed, iGIVit will help in more than one way:
- Bring back integrity, transparency and accountability into the donation process and;
- Become a leading donation platform in the philanthropic space; where charities and other organizations will be running all their campaigns on our solution.
We strongly believe that iGIVit is a great use-case for the adoption of blockchain and its underlying Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). By being very easy to use and by giving the ability to witness, in real-time and with 100% certainty, how the donations are used, iGIVit will be a great tool to demonstrate the true wonders of the technology.
In time, the general public will realize that blockchain-based organizations offer so much more than regular charities that the balance of donated wealth will start to shift.
What's more, iGIVit will provide a thorough search engine that will allow you to find new charities to give to, even if they're not blockchain-based. For those latter ones, iGIVit will automatically forward the donation to the charity's account (minus minuscule processing fees). If the organization is not showing in the search results, it can be added very easily by the user itself.

Usage:
Here are two examples of the main features the platform can be used for in order to improve the donation process:
Financial aid
- This is the most simple example. If the end-goal is to give money then the funds get transferred to the wallet of the person in need, for them to spend as they please. Every transaction is displayed transparently on the blockchain. There is no need for an auditor.
Emergency relief
- If the goal is, for example, to feed villagers, then every step of the process will be displayed on the blockchain. For this to be validated with great certainty and to avoid fraudulent claims, a 3rd party Auditor will need to assess and approve the various steps involved.

Roadmap:
Here's an overview of the road ahead. Everyone will be able to follow the progress of the build on both our website (https://igivit.org) or Github repository (https://github.com/lokdao/igivit).
Phase 1 - Proof of Concept - April 2021 (in progress):
- Applying for Fund5 (hi!)
- Subcontracting external developers to help us build the Proof of Concept (or PoC) as a high-fidelity prototype with all user personas: Donor, Recipient, Organization, Employe, Supplier and Auditor. This PoC will be a web-based app that won't yet be connected to a blockchain and won't have a FIAT on/off-ramp. The delivery for this phase is planned for the end of May 2021.
Phase 2 - Complete solution build - May and June 2021
- After receiving Fund5 resources, we will initiate Phase 2 which is two-fold:
- Demo the PoC to internal parties and make modifications following comments.
- Start attaching the whole ecosystem onto a blockchain. Part of our team is currently taking part in the Plutus Pioneer Program in order to build it directly on Cardano.
Once completed, Phase 2 will deliver a functional MVP that can then be used to demonstrate the value proposition and attract investors and potential partners.
Phase 3 - The Alonzo Era - July, August 2021
- Finish transferring the app on Cardano using Plutus
- Integration with Atala Prism for decentralized identity
- Make UX improvements and UI advanced design
- Perform Quality Assurance (QA)
Phase 4 - Hello World - September, October 2021
- Go Live: Launch the first real-world campaign

Measures of success:
- 3 months: In three months, we will be converting the PoC into the Cardano blockchain using Plutus/Marlowe so a success marker would be that the PoC has done its job well and we pursuing the goal.
- 6 months: In November, if all goes well, our first real-world campaign will have been launched 1 month prior. This will stress-test our solution for field use. It will be a great milestone and also a great source for improvement ideas.
- 12 months: May 2022. iGIVit will start to get traction as we can demonstrate the various campaigns it helped manage and the growing adoption of it for making those donations.

The team:
David Poulin or @mrvaralta (https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-poulin/) used to be a Creative Director for Cirque du Soleil. Being a crypto enthusiast and a Cardano fan, the pandemic pushed him to write down the initial idea for iGIVit in a white paper and to design paper-prototypes (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13bD-l9eQOUmiRrg_eE2SFA4Rk9OCh2Gc?usp=sharing). Even though he's not from the dev world, he has a very good understanding of this emerging technology and the new possibilities it can offer to the world.
Ludovic Grandclement or @gildor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludovicgrandclement/) is an experienced Project Manager as well as owning a Master's Degree in Computer Science. What's more: he got accepted into the first cohort of the Plutus Pioneer Program.
The two joined forces during the Fund3 proposal process.

Challenges and Roadblocks:
Many challenges and roadblocks exist on our path to successfully reach our goal. Here's a brief description of some of them, in no particular order.
Challenge 1 - Fraudulent/Untruthful ledger entries or claims
To deliver funds to a person in need is relatively straightforward as we can easily verify the transfer of values on the blockchain as long as we have proof of their true identities (we are looking at implementing Atala Prism for this portion of the challenge).
However, when trying to deliver physical help in the field (building shelters, serving food, etc) it is much more difficult to prove that non-digital actions really took place. To overcome this challenge, we are implementing a multi-signature process where both the Organization's campaign manager and an independent Auditor need to confirm the truthfulness of the action item being forever written on the blockchain.
Challenge 2 - Partial Centralization
Some level of centralization will unfortunately need to be present in order for a charity to manage their own campaigns. But we believe that the transparency of the blockchain coupled with the aforementioned Auditor process, will bring enough accountability into the system for the general public to get a heightened sense of trust towards the whole process.
Challenge 3 - Large endeavour
Our project is not small. There is a lot that needs to be accomplished and it has lots of potential ramifications that we are not aware of. We are then taking it one baby step at a time. Building the house brick by brick instead of throwing a tarp over some branches. That's why we are splitting the work in distinct phases.
Challenge 4 - Reliance on sub-contracted dev teams
We want to be 100% transparent regarding our capabilities. Our core team is not made of pure coders. In order for us to succeed in creating this ambitious project, we sub-contracted a dedicated dev team that will enable us to demonstrate to the world the possibilities offered by iGIVit.
Challenge 5 - Legal monetary issues (doing philanthropy in all regions of the world)
Right now, questions arise about the legality of using cryptocurrency to deliver humanitarian aid to any parts of the world. This challenge is currently being addressed within our team as an on-going research. The solution will emerge in a later phase of the project.
One thing is for sure, in order to secure the value of the donated money, the use of a stable coin is inevitable.
Challenge 6 - Identity proof
One major challenge is to get absolute proof of the identities of the people and organizations taking part in our ecosystem. As we mentioned before, in order to be able to trust that help is really being carried out to the right people, a decentralized identity system needs to be used. All parties involved are then becoming owners of their own information; their own identities. Again, Atala Prism is so far the best example of such a system that could potentially be integrated into iGIVit once we deploy on the Cardano blockchain.
One added benefit is that, while providing humanitarian help, it also provides greater freedom and possibilities to the affected people and their local communities through identity ownership.
Challenge 7 - Adoption by organizations
Of course, some organizations might not want to open their books so wide and so transparently to the world. They might prefer to remain opaque in order to keep more money for other things than helping the needy. Our vision is that, over time, the donors to these charities will switch to iGIVit for a better way of giving. The opaque organizations might find themselves forced to adopt blockchain in order to remain relevant.
Challenge 8 - Blockchain choice
Even though we will be building the PoC with backend logic only first in order to get a working prototype faster, meaning without any blockchain, inevitably we are going to migrate to the only blockchain worth building on: Cardano. Our legendary 3rd generation protocol is the perfect backbone for our entire system because it is built the right way; because it is built for centuries. But we are preaching to the choir…
Building our solution in two separate steps will create a layer of complexity to the process as we will need to find time and resources to do the switch. But we believe the advantages outweigh the drawbacks so that's why we are moving forward with this plan.
Challenge 9 - Competition
Right now, there are very few places to donate where blockchain is used to guarantee and show the usage of said funds. The biggest one being Binance Charity (https://www.binance.charity/) . Even though it is one of the biggest crypto exchange in the world, the reach of its campaigns and the thoroughness of what is available to monitor seems pretty limited and we believe this is where our solution will shine.

Budget:
We already have committed personal money into this adventure in order to showcase the basic functionalities and the seriousness of our intentions, but, in order to move forward, we need more funds and that is why we are asking for the approval of 20,416.00$ USD during this Fund5 process.
Here is a simplified version of our intended use of the funds. If you prefer, you can see the full budget details in the attached spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AmTc_Wd-fCToCF37u3KvxYiA27Wm9VrIedPM7lBjV8U/edit?usp=sharing).
Phase 1 budget breakdown
Definitions and Initial Design: $ 5,200.00
Architecture, wireframes: $ 12,860.00
Basic infrastructure (website server, etc): $ 500.00
Contingency (10%): $ 1,856.00
Total costs: $ 20,416.00

Conclusion:
With iGIVit, members of the general public will finally be able to see with their own eyes how their money is really being used, what actions have been taken, who received the intended help, all in fine details. This emerging blockchain technology will then be used to create real improvements for real people; real changes in the real world.
By tackling challenges of the 3rd sector (philanthropy) head-on, we believe that one day, iGIVit will become the reference in money donations.

Thanks:
Thank you so much for taking the time to read our proposal. If you like it, if you have a comment, if you have a question or if you are interested in joining us, we would be happy to hear from you. Send us a message!
Finally, you can help make a difference by voting for us on the Catalyst App or directly within the Yoroi Extension.

The iGIVit team