Seeking Feedback: Integrating DOT x Charity Impact

Hey there everyone!

My team and I have a really cool project that we would love your feedback on. Our name is Charity Impact and we help connect nonprofit organizations working in the realms of social and environmental justice with donors. We truly believe this project has the potential to revolutionize the philanthropic sector and empower NPOs through decentralized finance. Please take a look at our treasury proposal below and let us know what you think.

Thanks in advance!

Proposal: INTEGRATION POLKADOT DOT X CHARITY IMPACT

Proponent: 16VYZCqAx5kXWmsVrRTKHdVqrvWnwkfZjr8nE69uZdDQv8yY

Date: 21 July 2023

Requested DOT: 3300 / $17’000 USD

Short description:
Charity Impact provides a multichain platform for individuals and companies to donate to nonprofit organizations (NPO) globally in both cryptocurrencies and fiat. Our goal with this platform is to empower the worldwide charity network through decentralized finance. To date, we have successfully integrated strategies within our platform to allow for donations in fiat and NEAR Protocol. This project seeks to integrate DOT into our multichain platform, empowering the charity network within the Polkadot ecosystem. Once integrated, every NPO we onboard onto our platform will have a Polkadot wallet automatically generated and managed by our back-end system, which will give the organizations the option of downloading their keys. This allows investors to donate directly to the NPOs in DOT.

1. Context of the proposal

a. Background of the proposal, team credentials.

Steven Malca (founder and CEO) is a software developer with a decade of experience in the field. He specializes in the development of world-class CRM and ERP systems for businesses of all sizes (https://malcacorp.com/). In 2016 Steven entered the charity sector, establishing the South American Initiative (SAI) (https://www.sai.ngo/).

Claudia Peter (co-CEO) has amassed 15 years of experience in marketing and communications over various sectors. In 2020, Claudia founded BeeTogether (https://bee-together.org/), an association that explores innovative fundraising methods, including the utilization of NFTs.

Joshua Hernandez (lead software engineer) is a skilled engineer with 7 years of experience in the field. Joshua is proficient in PHP, C++, and Python development. With expertise in blockchain technology, he has contributed to the creation of innovative cryptocurrency networks, showcasing his talent for cutting-edge software development.

Yudith Serrano (software engineer) is a talented PHP engineer specializing in CRM and ERP development. With a strong expertise in designing and implementing efficient software solutions, Yudith excels in creating custom systems that streamline business processes and enhance productivity. Yudith has 5 years of experience in the field.

With their extensive experience and connections in the charity sector, Steven and Claudia bring to the project a wealth of resources and relationships, providing Charity Impact with the means to tap into a wide range of expertise, support, and opportunities. By leveraging these unique resources and relationships, Charity Impact is poised to make a significant impact and achieve success in its charitable endeavors.

Our development team, led by our founder and CEO Steven Malca, has extensive experience working on large-scale projects, including Instant Vital Records (https://instantvitalrecords.com/), Global Tal (https://globaltel.com/), and South American Initiative (https://sai.ngo). These projects have required significant expertise in various domains, such as data management, security, and scalability. Leveraging their knowledge and skills, our team has delivered innovative solutions that have made a positive impact on people's lives.

c. Their motivation (including any conflict of interests or association to any governing bodies)

Our CEOs are active participants in the charity network, with a decade’s worth of combined experience in connecting charitable projects with funds. In recent years, our CEOs identified DeFi as a valuable innovative tool that can empower the charity network, through mitigating barriers in the transferring of international capital, protecting charities’ capital from fluctuating currencies in their countries of origin, and potentially allowing charities to earn on their wealth as activity on the Polkadot blockchain grows.

There are no conflicts of interests nor any associations between Charity Impact and any Polkadot governing bodies.

d. Any known backups already behind the solution (known stakeholders, organizations or collectives building in the Polkadot ecosystem or participating in its governance mechanism in any way).

None.

2. Problem statement

Currently, there are numerous crowdfunding platforms available for fiat currencies or single cryptocurrencies, and very few multichain solutions. This fragmentation forces charities and nonprofit organizations to create campaigns on multiple platforms, leading to inefficiency and impracticality, and hampers investors’ abilities to source charitable projects to which they wish to contribute.

3. Proposal objective/solution/s to point 2

a. What is the goal of the proposal? What does ‘success’ look like?
Our single-point-of-contact multichain site seeks to mitigate this problem by streamlining the fundraising landscape. Using our site, complex fundraising campaigns and donations administration are managed with our integrated project-announcement feature, custom landing pages, widgets, and CRM donation tracking, allowing our NPOs to redirect their resources to focus on their core mission. Donors benefit from the platform’s database of verified and legal charities, its offering of various currencies, automatically generated tax receipts, and its updates and reports features, which allows charities to share their accomplishments directly with their investors.

Furthermore, our platform aims to empower the worldwide charity network through DeFi. By enabling charities to receive contributions in different currencies, we expand their opportunities for financial support. In order to enhance our multichain site, we have identified Polkadot as a vital role-player in the DeFi space. This proposal seeks the financial resources required to integrate the Polkadot currency into our site. Once complete, every NPO onboarded onto our platform will have a Polkadot wallet automatically generated and managed by our back-end system, allowing investors to donate directly to NPOs in DOT.

Success for our project means integrating a secure, seamless, and user-friendly method of transacting on our site using DOT. We are aiming to onboard a minimum of 20 charities onto our platform before the end of the year (2023), generating a minimum of 20 new active Polkadot wallets. Furthermore, we aim to onboard a minimum of six cryptocurrencies onto our platform before the end of 2023 and raise a minimum of $50’000 USD before the end of 2024.

b. Who does this solution help?

This solution benefits NPOs and donors as highlighted above. This project will also benefit the Polkadot community in a number of ways:
1. Our integration code will be open sourced for other developers to use freely;
2. Once we launch the platform with multiple blockchains integrated, we will migrate our existing charity network from SAI and BeeTogether to the new platform. With each wallet and transaction generated through our site, we empower the ecosystem of each integrated crypto-currency and add to the value of the coin itself. By running ads, we aim to boost the platform and increase its reach, bringing more people into its ecosystem;
3. An integration with our platform provides Polkadot with exposure to our social media audience, amplifying visibility and increasing brand recognition;
4. Cross-linking with Charity Impact enhances credibility and trust, attracting potential investors and users; and
5. A blockchain's involvement in social good is beneficial on multiple fronts. Firstly, it enhances their reputation as responsible actors in the digital landscape. By actively contributing to social causes, blockchains demonstrate their commitment to making a positive impact. Secondly, aligning with social good meets the expectations of an increasingly conscious public. People appreciate and support entities that prioritize social welfare. Finally, the collaboration between corporates and blockchains amplifies their collective ability to drive meaningful change in the world. Together, they possess the potential to tackle global challenges and foster a better future for all.

c. Milestones

The integration of the Polkadot currency onto the platform will take a maximum of three months. The project will be developed using PHP integrated with Python. We have already tested our concept through the successful integration of NEAR Protocol into our live site. Our team will now use our existing architecture that is currently running our platform to integrate with Polkadot. This project is divided into three milestones.

Milestone 1: Wallets (back end)

Duration: 4 weeks

Deliverables:

Integrating the Polkadot wallet: once complete, charities who already have a Polkadot wallet can create a profile.
Integrating the automatic generation of the wallet: once complete, charities who do not own a Polkadot wallet will receive an automate wallet.

Milestone 2 : Payments (front end)

Duration: 6 weeks

Deliverables:

Integrating DOT into the existing payment form: once complete, the payment form will offer DOT as a currency option
Integrating DOT into the existing donation tracking system and the CRM: once complete, the DOT numbers and the system are updated automatically
Integrating the email system: once complete, tax documents will be automatically emailed to donors upon completed DOT transactions
Integrating DOT into the real-time currency evaluation function: once complete, DOT will be added to the real-time currency evaluation which will be automatically updated

Milestone 3: final tests + changes

Duration: 2 weeks

Deliverable:

Final testing and changes: once complete, donors can donate to our registered NPOs in DOT, and DOT will be fully integrated into all our platform’s front-end and back-end functions

d. Include any extra links completing the proposal here

Website: https://charityimpact.io/

Socials: https://linktr.ee/charityimpact

Proposal deck and reference letter: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fs9BiACnw3qbkoz96vKJtFJnJEebQZkD?usp=drive_link

4. Why Polkadot network?

Charity Impact aims to empower the worldwide charity network through DeFi. By enabling charities to receive contributions in different currencies, we expand their opportunities for financial support. In order to enhance our multichain site, we have identified Polkadot as a vital role-player in the DeFi space. Furthermore, Polkadot’s low carbon footprint aligns with our long-term goal of achieving an environmentally just society,

5. If you have seen similar proposals before, why is your different?

The Giving Block is a multichain donations platform through which nonprofit organizations can add donation forms to their websites. While Charity Impact does offer this service to our NPOs, we also allow NPOs to raise funds for specific projects, with custom landing pages and project tracking. The Giving Block has a registration fee of $2 000 USD, inhibiting smaller charities from accessing the platform and thus the DeFi system. Charity Impact allows any charity to join our platform if they are a legally registered entity in their country of origin and we do not have a registration fee. Management of our platform is funded by a 3.8% transaction fee on all donations. All charities will be vetted by our team to verify their legality before their approval is granted and their wallets generated.

6. Payment conditions

a. What is the amount requested?

$ 17 000 USD

b. Should this be divided on instalments?

This amount would preferably be divided into two instalments: an initial ‘kick-starter’ payment of $7 000 USD to be paid upon grant approval, and a final payment of $10 000 USD once the project has been completed.

c. How does this amount cover the work of the proposal? What tasks are to be included on the payment? Please allocate parts of the total request to the milestones explained above.

The total budget of $17 000 USD will provide crucial support by covering the salaries of our two full-time developers through the integration process, and will be split over the three milestones:

Milestone 1
Duration: 4 weeks
Budget: $5 000 USD
Full-time employees: two developers

Milestone 2
Duration: 6 weeks
Budget: $10 000 USD
Full-time employees: two developers

Milestone 3
Duration: 2 weeks
Budget: $2 000 USD
Full-time employees: two developers

d. What is the address of the fund recipient?

Wallet address: 16VYZCqAx5kXWmsVrRTKHdVqrvWnwkfZjr8nE69uZdDQv8yY

e. How can we contact the manager of the funds?

Claudia Peter (Co-CEO) [email protected]

7. How did you become familiar with the spending mechanism and the on-chain treasury?

We discovered Polkadot through word of mouth. Through further online research we came across the Polkadot Treasury on the Polkadot website.