Fundraising platform for NGO's

We introduce a transparent fundraising platform where contributors receive audited proof through an app of how their donation is spent.

With a background in engineering, we are both passionate about analyzing problems, designing and delivering a solution and really make an impact that matters. As part of the Deloitte consulting blockchain department we are familiar with defining concepts and the business needs.

[IMPACT]

Below we will describe the Customer Journey from both the Contributor’s and Campaign runner’s perspective.

Customer Journey – Contributor

1.Select a campaign to support

The contributor will install our software as an app on their smartphone. The app shows an overview of active fundraising campaigns. In this feed, the different campaigns will be introduced by means of a short video explaining the problem which this campaign is targeting, the impact the campaign wants to achieve and the practical requirements (elements) for the campaign to be successful. The campaign page will show details about the NGO, previously run campaigns and success stories. Most importantly the campaign page will also show the elements/requirements (e.g. If the campaign aims to build a school. The contributor could choose to support materials to build the school. If the campaign targets to provide scholing for children in need, the contributor could choose to support educational material)

2.Traceable donation to campaign against a campaign element

Once the contributor has selected a campaign and element within this campaign to support, the payment process is initiated. The contributor can choose to make a crypto donation (ADA / Djed ) or a fiat donation (which will instantly be converted to a stable coin). For a crypto donation, the user would select the amount of the donation, connect his/her wallet and issue the payment. This payment creates a donation UTX with specific tags (Campaign and Element in the campaign).

3.Monitor the status of the donation

After the payment has been made, the user can monitor the status of his donation in the app. (I.e. has the donation been claimed by the campaign, how much has been contributed to the campaign/element).

When the target of the campaign has been reached or the campaign duration has ended, the NGO initiates the claim process for the funds assigned to a campaign element. The contributor is notified the NGO has initiated the claim process.

The NGO makes one or multiple purchases with the funds within a specific campaign element (in the example of the School Campaign and campaign element educational equipment, let’s assume the NGO makes a purchase for school books at one of their suppliers.) The supplier sends an invoice to the NGO. Next, the invoice is uploaded by the NGO to our app. The invoice is validated by our team which checks the authenticity of the invoice and if the purchased goods match with the campaign element. In a next step, we would like to make this validation process entirely driven by the contributors via a voting system.

When the invoice is approved, the NGO is allowed to claim the funds in the donation UTX. The contributor is notified again.

4.Receive updates / Contributor rewards

On a regular basis, the NGO will provide updates on the status of the campaign to its contributors. These updates will be uploaded as picture, video or text update in the app. The contributors to a campaign / campaign element will receive a notification when a campaign update is available.

In a later phase, we want to enable the contributor to share these updates on social media to increase visibility for the NGO and campaigns. Next to shareable content on social media we want to enable NGO campaigns to reward their supporters with rewards and tokens of appreciation (e.g. NFT awarded to supporters of a campaign, tickets to events organized by the NGO, access to online content created by the NGO...)

Customer Journey – Raising funds for a campaign

1.Project onboarding

Before launching a campaign, we want to understand the specific needs of the NGO, their ambitions and the current challenges with fundraising. Together with the NGO we want to list all requirements to host a successful campaign on our platform (The problem which the campaign is trying to solve, material/financial requirements to solve the problem which will translate into campaign elements and fund-raising targets).

Once the targets are set, the details of the claims process will be determined in alignment with the NGO. Agreements on how the audit process will work, timing and duration of the different steps in the process of claiming the funds will be made. In addition to this, agreements will be made on how the NGO plans to keep the contributors updated on the status of the project after the funding campaign has ended.

2.Development & Testing

To cater to specific needs of the NGO, the onboarding phase is followed by the development and testing phase. If any specific requirements were brought up during the onboarding, the team will incorporate these features in the platform.

3.Marketing

Together with the NGO we develop the campaign page and campaign introduction video. Depending on the nature of the campaign, a marketing initiative can be organized in parallel with the development and testing phase. Here our company’s media channels will be used to raise awareness for the NGO’s campaign amongst our user-base.

4.Campaign is live - Monitor campaign status

The campaign is live on our platform. Contributors can check out the campaign video and campaign page in the app and make a donation to one of the campaign elements. Over the course of the campaign the amount of donations can be tracked on the platform.

5.Initiate Claims process

When the campaign has ended or the campaign targets have been reached, the NGO initiates the claims process for the funds assigned to a campaign element. The NGO makes one or multiple purchases with the funds within a specific campaign element (in the example of the School Campaign and campaign element educational equipment, let’s assume the NGO makes a purchase for school books at one of their suppliers.) The supplier sends an invoice to the NGO. Next, the invoice is uploaded by the NGO to our app. The invoice is validated by our team which checks the authenticity of the invoice and if the purchased goods match with the campaign element.

Later on, we would like to make this validation process entirely driven by the contributors via a voting system.

6.Share updates on campaign with contributors

After a successful campaign, the NGO creates updates on the projects (blog posts, pictures, video’s, testimonials,…) and shares these via the app with the contributors.

How to be profitable?

As we aim to create a transparent solution for the campaign contributors, we do not want to take a commission on their contribution. We want their money to go entirely the campaign goal. In order for our business to stay profitable, we want to provide our services to the organizations:

• Campaign design and platform launch
• We will help organizations to design (workshop/POC/blueprinting) their campaign and advice them on best practice. Together we will onboard the campaign to our platform and ensure a success story.
• Invoice auditing service
• As part of the auditing process, the organization will upload the invoice on our platform and we will take care of the rest. As such, the organization's employees don't lose time in processing the invoices and their effort can be used elsewhere which creates additional value to the organization.

With the latest Covid pandemic, the situation in Ukraine and the increased number of natural disasters due to global warming, we believe the time for people to unite and support each other has come. We also believe that in the future, unfortunately, the number of those disastrous events will augment and funding support will be needed more than ever.

However, studies have shown that still 81% of the people are hesitant to donate to such an initiative. Therefore there is a drastic need of finding a user-friendly, low barrier solution/incentive that convinces people to participate. We are aware of other projects already try to provide innovative funding solutions but what makes us different from the others however is the fact that we do not only want to focus on increasing the funds of the campaign, we also want to protect and bring benefits to the campaign contributors. We target to take away the fear of regret and aim to create a lasting bond between the campaign organization and their contributors so they feel connected and know that their money is put to good use. We aim to bring utility by granting people a digital token/NFT of value upon donating which then can be used to access premium content on the campaign website. 

We believe our solution will work because we solve a known and studied issue and have built a solid solution around putting people at the center.

Benefits for fund raising campaign

• Increased campaign participation due to transparent approach
• Creating a relationship with contributors for the long run will keep them on board and will lower the barrier to contribute to future funding campaigns
• Increased marketing as contributors can share their donation directly through social media and motivate others (e.g. Strava where people share their sport achievements)
• Direct link and access to crypto world which is a 2 trillion market year to date and is still growing rapidly
• Reduced time spent in invoicing as our organization will take part of the effort for invoice validation

Benefits for contributors

• Transparency in how their money is put to use (people can track their donation in the app and get notified on how their money is put to use)
• “Feel good” on knowing they have really created an impact
• Feel connected to the organization
• Access to premium NGO content
• Share contributions through social media

In addition, the solution we aim to build will be scalable and applicable to all types of funding and can be fully tailored to the campaign needs.

As part of the consultancy world and Deloitte blockchain community we both understand the business concept and can translate the business needs into working solutions. Although this knowledge is of great value in order to create a successful business, we both lack the technical knowledge to implement the features and will therefore need to partner/hire with the right developers in order to assist us in our journey. We aim to overcome this barrier on 4 levels:

• Attract the right talent with technical background
• Reaching out to the Cardano community and see if someone is willing to join us.
• We aim to use the network we've built via Deloitte and try to get the right technical expertise on board.
• We will reach out to high schools/universities and investigate if we can get a partnership for some master degree/Phd education

Another challenge we might face is to convince organizations to get on board and start making us of our platform. The way how we will tackle this can be found below:

• We will show them the business case
• We have studied the fundraising market and this has shown that 81% of the people is not contributing today. This is a huge potential market that is left behind and with our solution we aim to enter this market and increase the number of contributions to the funding campaigns.
• We aim to take away the struggle of invoicing and provide this as a service as part of our solution
• As part of the audit process, the organization will upload the invoice on our platform and we will take care of the rest. As such, the organization's employees don't lose time in processing the invoices and their effort can be used elsewhere.

=> In summary we will increase the funds in their campaign and lower the effort on invoicing. This is how we will target to convince the organizations to jump on board.

[FEASIBILITY]

We have created a business vision and short term 1 year roadmap with clear KPI's we target to achieve. We will monitor this through a specialized planning tool and take necessary actions to stay on track and overcome potential barriers.

1 month

• Finalize business model
• Finalize business roadmap
• Finalize phase 1 solution design (functionalities/UX/UI)
• Prepare marketing deck
• Prepare website (domain name)
• Start hiring process (1 Blockchain/Infrastructure Developer)

3 month

• Finalize marketing deck
• Finalize website
• Start of marketing campaign
• Reach 50.000 people (social media, events, peer-to-peer)
• Contact & Survey 100 potential interested third parties to collaborate with our company
• Reach out to influencers and crypto/nft projects for partnerships
• Blockchain/Infrastructure Developer hired and onboarded
• Start building solution POC

6 months

• Network fully established and stable
• Prepare phase 2 solution design (upscaling/social media platform/new functionalities(outcome of survey))
• POC 50% completed
• Add utility to the website (use-cases, Point of view articles with proposed way of working for campaigns,...)
• Show and tell solution to 3 funding organization

9 months

• Performance benchmark reached
• Network stability achieved for x amount of time
• UX/UI design 100% completed
• POC 100% completed
• Show and tell solution to 10 funding organizations
• Sign the first deal contract and start developing their campaign
• Smart contract code passed QA audit

1 year

• Onboarding first client onto POC platform
• Onboarding contributors onto POC platform
• Finalize phase 2 solution design
• Start updating POC with Phase 2 functionalities
• Team upscaling
• Intensive marketing

Workpackage 1: Business Development (20k/year)

• Business model definition
• Roadmap and growth plan
• Client negotiations
• Solution blueprint
• Partnerships

Workpackage 2: Solution development (100k/year)

• Hiring of technical resource
• Infrastructure (Web/App/Network)

Workpackage 3: Marketing and Communication (30k/year)

• Social media
• Advertising
• Website & App (UX/UI experts)
• Influencers

As part of the consultancy world and Deloitte blockchain community we both understand the business concept and can translate the business needs into working solutions. Although this knowledge is of great value in order to create a successful business, we both lack the technical knowledge to implement the features and will therefore need to partner/hire with the right developers in order to assist us in our journey.

Our team (core activities)

• Business model
• Solution blueprinting
• Solution design (UX/UI)
• Marketing & Client communication
• Deal negotiations
• Hiring
• Roadmap creation and growth planning
• Partnership creation

To be onboarded

• Blockchain/Infrastructure developer

[AUDITABILITY]

We have created a business plan and timeline with clear KPI's (see previous section). We will manage the business and track progress through these KPI's and take necessary actions in order to keep on track.

On a lower level, we aim to report on the development progress of the project. The project will be managed via the Agile project management methodology. The development tasks will be split up in user stories of which the progress will be tracked via an Agile project tool (JIRA, Octane,..)

We strongly believe in the use case of our idea and aim to help organizations increase the amount of raised funds so they can make a bigger impact on the causes they support. In our vision, the "definition of done" would be reached when we get to a point where our platform is live so organizations and contributors can be united and build relationships in a way both parties can benefit. We want to be here for the long run and aim to achieve to create a real impact in the global fundraising market.

New project

SDG Rating

Not applicable