Topic: Looking for advice on a fun/charity project (Read 340 times)

I just recalled this thread while talking in another here about a South African student finding a blockchain use for charity: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.32009737

The article in discussion: http://bitcoinafrica.io/2018/03/08/south-african-student-leverages-blockchain-to-curb-fraud-in-charitable-giving-sector/

All the aspects you're wondering about have been used in that example: a charity, a bank acting as the escrow. If it could work in South Africa with tokens transferring value to the unbanked, I honestly don't see why you couldn't discuss a similar, simpler method.

As I said before, you're using crypto... why not take advantage of its technology?

Thanks Yes.

Trying to find a solution now on reconciling escrow with this project that isn't extremely complicated and thus confuses/puts off participants.

Do you guys think the crypto community would have confidence in a proper escrow company (like brick and mortar) or perhaps some sort of legal structure drawn by an attorney?

Sounds like a good idea, I think video interviews with the charity will show who they are and create trust showing faces on the camera of who you and the charity are. Also creating the escrow would be a way to show that youre not trying to take all the money and run. Marketing in general with lots of Q&A videos will be very helpful. Hope this wrap idea works bc thats def. an in trend nowadays with vehicles and to combine that with crypto could be a success for all of us getting the word out there to be like free marketing for us all to expose more people to crypto.

I remember him saying that the photos of the Lamborghini will be updated before/after the competition ?It's my assumption the car will be accompanied by the owner ? To make it more secure,a trusted middleman should be used to watch over the funds.
Ultimate,ICO's will big investments will use this strategy to advertise the coin leaving behind the poor ETH competitors.It's a win-win situation for you.

I don't have a Lamborghini but I can decorate my truck better than that and can advertise 2 coins at the same times on each side of the truck.How does that sound ? Yes I don't mind standing besides my fancy truck while speaking a word or two on my new venture.

It would seem that it sounds a little more complicated than regular escrow, but I'm pretty sure there should be a matter of setting conditions on what happens if all conditions are not met - perhaps it would be a third party to the escrow (or the escrow themselves, actually), one that would be trusted to execute the final payment to said charity. In this case, Coinpayments would seem to be the suitable set up. They hold funds in escrow, and if conditions are not met, they execute and settle the payment to the charity in fiat (which is exactly their business anyway). Good luck!

Gotcha!

I will indeed look into it with team tomorrow, thanks. However again, the nature of escrow is that it refunds people if conditions are not met. Therefore, if say we don't hit our minimum amount to do the project, per the terms we were going to donate all funds to the charity. For escrow, it would simply refund anyone. What i'm asking is how to strucutre, or perhaps to word the language of rules to indicate that indeed all donations are final, and that if we dont' hit the minimum the money goes directly to the charity.

To another point, the charity obviously isn't going to accept crypto, so it would need to pass through someone into fiat, then be donated. Obviously this is me. I suppose the "jist" of what my issue is how to reconcile escrow with the structure of the project, which by nature does not allow for any refunds whatsoever.

I think, if you will use features of Buddhist economics, this ideas can help for your project. Probably.

How about refer to the post I made above? I gave you one option [LocalEthereum] for a "trustless" (you do it on yourself, don't need to trust anyone, not even the escrower... well OK you've to trust the coding!) escrow system using Ethereum smart contracts (since that's the platform you're using!). If you use that, the smart contract automatically refunds the money to donators if conditions are not met.

Check out my other suggestion [Coinpayments] for the service that provides escrow (third party). Am sure their support could arrange with you to meet your unique requirements.

In talking with the team, im' not even sure how escrow would work. Maybe you can give an opinion.

Escrow is meant to return money to a buyer if the seller doesn't come through, but in our setup, either way the money is non-refundable. With this in mind, im not sure how to implement escrow. Its not like if we dont' hit the mark we do refunds, since all money goes to charity.

Vod, thank you again for this suggestion. I'm not finding much in the way of escrow services suited or even willing to take on such a specialized project. It seems most want to go for "low hanging fruit" of escrow'ing not-listed coins and merchandise, etc.

I'm now looking at local, brick and mortar type places to get escrow done, but they haven't a clue on how crypto works! Plus, I doubt the community here would really trust a local place. I'm hoping you might have a lead, or at least some further advice on this. Again, I greatly appreciate your time.

It all gets swept together at the end to fund the project as outlined. Its a competition, so there can only be one winner. Ideally, this spirit of competition will fuel the hype. I think I have a good idea which coins will be the most popular and have added them in the original list of coins, but will certainly add as many as are requested.

This would surely make somebody like me the "regular joe" trust in a project...

Good luck techis!

Nice idea! But, what happens to the wallets that don't hold the most ETH and therefore don't win the wrap on the Lambo?

Thanks for the reply! I thought about this as well, and thats why we wanted to be clear that we would have lots of photos taken and videos to provide to the community. I dont drive the car often (quasi-collector item given it's a gated-6) so it wont be out in the wild. Even if it was driven frequently, most people simply aren't into crypto and won't have any idea what its all about. However, i'm totally open to taking the car to events for promotion so long as it's not terribly far away. I dont see much in the way of concessions on how to expose the vehicle beyond photos and videos though, which we are very happy to do on an ongoing basis.

Thats a really great idea that I didn't consider. I suppose I'd need a specialized escrow company for this. Right now I have about 12-15 different cryptos listed on the voting page, but if someone wants to vote for others not listed we will add them as requested. Is there an escrow company familiar with crypto wallets, keys, and doing transfers? I'd love to have escrow handle this as it provides the ULTIMATE in confidence and transparency. This would raise the minimum funds to cover escrow fee, but that shouldn't be too big of an issue at all.

Do you or anyone else have a lead or suggestion on an escrow service that is suited to handle this type of thing?? Thank you!

The very first step you'll need to do before embarking on any of these ideas is to register your charity/non-profit (or if they already are, then they need to register or get approval/licence for your gig). Make sure you've got all the paperwork covered, make sure you're compliant with every existing regulation in your jurisdiction, and prepared to remain compliant. None of these would have been necessary if you ran something like the Pineapple Fund... unfortunately, you're soliciting funds for them. So that means they need to get approval for your activity - that's the starting point.

Vod recommends an escrow and that's absolutely the minimum. Since you're using ETH, you could even use a trustless open source smart contracts like LocalEthereum.

Aside from the trust issue one would want to have a way to get an idea of how far their donation is going to go to help their respective crypto.  Things like where the lambo is going to be driven (there's a lot more exposure if one is tooling around New York City versus upstate New York for example), how many miles per day or week or whatever are going to be put on it to maximize the exposure, a minimum number of hours daily that the advertisement will be running so to speak.

Also more information on how the ad campaign is run to pull in the participants would be needed.

Good luck with your project!

You could just take the ETH and run.  You have no vested interest in this community.  :/

To gain trust, you must agree to:

1) Have a trusted escrow here control the funds.

2) Escrow sends directly to the advertising company for design and application.  

3) Escrow sends money to charity

4) Escrow sends you your profit.

All you willing to do this?

I guess its really boils down on your credibility. Show them that you are that trusted by showing your face around, probably more media exposures like interviews and explain in details about your project. Or maybe the charity itself can help you build the trust the you needed.

Or have a Q&A, a interactive one perhaps so that interested participate can gauge everything before joining the contest. And yes as @JohnWarlock, paperwork. Everything should be transparent. Sounds like a good project and goodluck.

Techis, I think this is a wonderful idea you have. Might I suggest two or three things:

First, if it is a charity, I would suggest doing a video interview with them, so people can see how real the charity is.
Second, sign a contract stating what you are doing with the representative of the charity, that way there is a legal basis for it. (Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork)
Third, once you have the contract and approval, publish any public info on the charity, so people can look it up.

Once you cover those three aspects, there is a higher probability that people won't think it's a scam, since it's all in the up and up.

Hello,

I'm about 50% through putting together a small project and am looking for some advice on challenges i'm having.

The project is sort of a "fun" little program that will benefit myself, my team, and primarily a local charity. I own a Lamborghini (not purchased with crypto sadly) and had the idea to sell advertising space on it given that Lambos are very popular in the crypto space. In the interest of brevity, i'll spare you the hard details, but the basic overview:

We've set up a website and several social channels to run a contest, wherein people will "vote" on which cryptocurrency to wrap the car in. Participants will send any amount of ETH to an address corresponding to the crypto of their choice. After a set period of time, the wallet holding the most ETH will be declared the winner. A design will be created, submitted to the community for approval, and then the car will be wrapped in the design. Professional photos/video will be taken and provided to the community/internet to promote that coin.

Those are the basics, now for some light detail:

As I mentioned, this program's goal is for fun, profit for myself and my team, and charity. 60% of the total funds (over the minimum amount) will benefit the charity. The remainder will benefit the team and myself. I have detailed everything on our site, and have made it a point to be very transparent. Here in lies the big challenge I feel I will be facing -- confidence.

With a new scam popping up every day, I feel our biggest hurdle is going to be instilling confidence in participants. While I can promise all day that i'm going to fund the charity, my team, and actually wrap the car - people will have no hard assurances that I will. I've worked into the program regular video updates, my face, and am scheduled to meet with the charity for a short interview. Still, I dont feel its quite enough to drive the point home.

We've made it abundantly clear that all donations to the addresses are final, with no refunds, and that no one will have any expectation of receiving goods, services, or credit for a charitable contribution. Again, keeping things absolutely transparent.

Also for the sake of transparency, we will have a minimum amount that must be reached cumulatively across all the wallets. Both to cover expenses of wrapping the car, some of the team's labor time, and a minimum donation to the charity. Should the minimum not be met, we will simply send all the funds received to the charity.

I think i've covered all the bases, just hung up on what else I can do to really drive the point home that i'm on the up and up. I'd really love to see this program work out. I think it's pretty fun, has a lot of potential to bring hype to one coin's community, make money for myself and my team, and mostly to see money going to charity (its an animal-based charity by the way). The idea is if it blows up, we repeat it in the future. Maybe i'll get a tattoo next time? Who knows!

Any advice or guidance is appreciated. Further, if there are any paragons of the cryptosphere who would add confidence to the program simply by being part of the team, we would love to have you aboard and we would do all the heavy lifting. Thank you for reading.