It’s good to give. Philanthropy is an essential force in our global society.
An estimated 9% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, and two-fifths live on $5.50 a day. Roughly 11% of Americans – the richest nation on the planet – live below the poverty line. Volunteers every day step up and perform vital activities that help the lives of millions. Whether it’s disaster relief, food banks, or everyday acts of micro-kindness, volunteering makes the world go round.
The Problem with Philanthropy
But giving isn’t easy. Philanthropy needs to be done better. There are problematic inefficiencies in the sector. The journey of a dollar from the giver to the recipient is fraught with expense, and the path of the river is often turned awry. Poor deployment of capital, misuse of donor funds, and in the worst cases corruption of charitable money, are just a few of the perils of the philanthropy sector. Non-profit organizations know this. They work tirelessly in trying to improve their systems so that money gets to where it’s needed most – but it’s hard. This is where the blockchain can help.
DeVO (Decentralised Volunteering) is a protocol that aims to redefine volunteerism and philanthropy and drastically reduce inefficiencies in the sector whilst boosting volunteer reward and engagement. It harnesses crypto-primitives to support those that need help the most, and creates a trustless communication framework and decentralized structure that allows all stakeholders to communicate seamlessly. As Rob Reich says, ‘a robust [philanthropy] sector can decentralize the production of public goods.’ DeVO, using the blockchain, can achieve that dream.
What is DeVO?
DeVO uses DIDs (Digital IDs), NFTs, and the immutable nature of the blockchain to provide total transparency for donors so they know exactly how their funds are spent. Due to the cost-savings of fund management through the ecosystem, it ensures that every dollar goes exactly where it is supposed to, rather than being washed through the expensive architecture of a traditional charity organization.
Hand-in-hand with such transparency is rewarding volunteers better. Organizations that use volunteer management software skyrocket volunteer retention rates. DeVO has created that tool for the Web3 generation. Rather than using a centralized, expensive platform, organizations needing volunteers can find who they need through DeVO’s platform, recognize their efforts on the blockchain, and retain them through the rewards they receive for participation.
This allows traditional charitable organizations through using DeVO, to execute their mission statements better as they can mobilize volunteers faster and retain and reward them better. As well as offering a new way to do philanthropy, it provides a pathway for the philanthropic sector to move on-chain.
How Does DeVO Work?
DeVO also uses a set of crypto-primitives and smart contracts to make fundraising more efficient and charitable work more financially incentivizing. Although it sounds oxymoronic, whereas old systems could not reward volunteer achievement without debasing the essence of being a volunteer, new tokenized on-chain value allows for effective and creative distribution of rewards. DeFi – through vaults, liquidity pools, and yield – ensures effective capital distribution and rewards those who help the most.
Think of it this way, a CEO managing a large charity will take home an enormous salary for their efforts – usually for good reason. It’s not easy running a non-profit. However, with DAO structures, the part of a donation reserved for execution can be distributed to every person that helped effectively, as the management of fund disbursement and recognition of who did what can be more accurately captured. Just as removing financial middlemen from peer-to-peer transactions is resulting in a new financial system, so removing the bureaucratic middlemen from philanthropy can, indeed, ‘decentralize the public good’.
DeVO Protocol provides transparent interactions between stakeholders, volunteers, donors, and corporations. Anyone within the network will have to be verified first before they can join it, establishing a base layer of competency and trust between all those using it.
Rewarding Volunteers at the Heart of Charity
Core to the DeVO mission is the ability for people to create VOs. These are simple. Any individual can go on the protocol and fundraise for a cause that matters to them. VO’s can solicit donations from donors and the DeVO DAO directly.
Individuals will then be able to use the DeVO protocol to find volunteers to help them fulfill their mission. They can also harness the pool of talented volunteers already vetted on the network, helping them to propel their missions ever onward, and get working capital for their efforts directly to their cause.
For donors, they can choose which of these VOs to direct their funds to, and DeVO will let donors use liquidity pools that fund DAO initiatives and retain their principle while donating their yield. For corporations to ensure their goodwill capital is spent and managed effectively they can use the DeVO Protocol in the confidence that all projects are vetted and have a gradual release of funds via smart contracts as they complete their pre-approved project milestones.
The DeVO DAO and DVO Token
DeVO Protocol will run as a DAO, with DVO tokens representing ownership and governance of the entire protocol. DVO tokens will enable voting rights for issues and initiatives. They will also be required by participants to communicate on the platform, and for corporations to perform advertising on the platform.
Several core tenets of DeVO, such as the exact nature of DIDs, will be under the purview of the DAO community as it makes the best decisions possible for the user base. The will of the community, through protocol votes, can be established on chain. The increasing decentralization of the token as it deflates over time and ongoing distribution will make the DeVO DAO more representative of the community that makes it what it is.
Services from the DAO, such as advertising and corporate sponsorship, must also be paid with DVO tokens. Moreover, when users use DeVO’s contracts to interact – such as sending a mass message to all volunteers in your organization – it incurs a fee – a fee that is reinvested into the DeVO liquidity pools.
DeVO: Volunteering Made Easy, Giving Working Better
Giving isn’t easy. It’s one of the most natural, and hardest, things to do. Effective altruism is a social challenge that we are continuing to work out. There is no shortage of willing volunteers, talented changemakers, and determined groups that want to solve the world’s problems. However, they are constrained by the lack of systems for fast and effective distribution of capital, and ones that truly reward volunteers and charity workers who drive the philanthropy sector.
Blockchain is all about efficient capital allocation. Addressing the faults of the philanthropic sector through crypto paradigms that have been shown to work, makes giving as easy as it should be. DeVO wants to make giving work better, and empower anyone anywhere to be the change they want to see in the world.
