Robbie Heeger: Endaoment’s Donor-Advised Funds Enable Crypto Charitable Donations For 1.5M Organizations

Dec 3, 2020

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Chain Reaction Host Tom Shaughnessy hosts Robbie Heeger, the CEO and President of Endaoment. Endaoment is a new Community Foundation & public charity offering Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) built atop the Ethereum blockchain, allowing you to donate to almost any U.S. nonprofit organization.

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Show Notes:

Broad Topics:

Educate about DAFs and how they work.
Share process of opening a DAF with Endaoment.
Discuss why DAFs can be advantageous.
Talk about Endaoment’s origin, mission and vision.
Share about future roadmap and long term vision for the technology behind Endaoment.
Discuss the charitable/philanthropic space inside of the crypto/defi industry.

Endaoment Background & Roadmap:

Created by Robbie Heeger in 2019 originally as hacking project as I was teaching myself to code.
Recieved 501(c)(3) – the first public charity on chain – in June 2020.
Released MVP DAF product in October 2020, audited by Open Zeppelin.
Built to be a DAF that is powered by smart contracts.
Accepts over 135 different ethereum assets + ETH.
Lowest cost, lowest donation minimum DAF provider in US.
Built atop Uniswap’s open source front end, Gidestar API + USDC API.
Enables giving to 1.5 million + US organizations.
Consider our current DAF product an MVP of what’s possible using Ethereum/DeFi to power charitable giving
Down the road, User will choose either giving to Pooled Capital Community Fund (Endaoment Community Fund) or to an individual Endaoment DAF.
Endaoment Community Fund to be the first DAO powered Community Foundation & Endowment Fund where token holders choose investment allocations across yield farming strategies in DeFi, grant awards to nonprofits and select Endaoment policies and board members using tokens.
Looking to bring those same investment options to the individual Endaoment DAF as well, without the same token based voting weights.

DAF History/Background:

Donor Advised Funds are charitable accounts owned and managed by a public charity.
Allows a donor to donate an asset to charity without selling it first.
Over 750k DAFs in the US.
Fastest-growing method to give to charity in the united states in 2019.
Over 120 BN in DAF assets in the US.
DAFs can be controversial … many people park assets there, take the deduction and let it sit. Many people think DAF capital should more quickly flow into communities.

Crypto Giving Landscape Background:

Several large DAF providers accept “blue chip” crypto, but no long tail of tokens.
Most crypto giving platforms either are crowdfunding derivatives, public goods funding projects, or going one organization at a time to support giving.
Many community foundations in the US are still running off paper checks and desire to modernize their financial infrastructure but are intimidated by crypto.
Many organizations are intrigued by crypto but scared away by the fluctuation in value and unknowns about custodianship…delivering grants in USD is prime concern.

Resources:

Guest’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobbieHeeger
Guest’s Website: https://endaoment.org/
Tom’s Twitter: