How Benefactory Groups Tokenize Movements

Benefactory uses crowd philanthropy to create a grassroots sector of our economy where influence flows from the bottom up, not from the top down. Benefactory’s groups are similar to nonprofit foundations, but they work a little differently from the organizations we are used to. Like corporations, members in a group vote to make decisions based on how much they’ve contributed. Like political and social movements, everyone with the same mission can collaborate to achieve it without centralized decision-making.

Unlike crowdfunding campaigns that work towards achieving a single goal, Benefactory groups can have multiple campaigns all working towards the same mission over time. Volunteers commit to doing a specific task as part of the group’s mission, and people can make monetary contributions to support those tasks. In return, those contributions are translated into nonprofit tokens that can vote on any decisions the group makes together, such as:

• Prioritizing an initiative. Setting priorities is the most important action a Benefactory group can take. Vote tokens in a group are apportioned according to the amount contributed to prioritized initiatives. Funders will typically receive a vote token per dollar contributed. Volunteers receive vote tokens for the work they do without funding.
• Granting votes. Vote tokens can be granted at any time for any reason by a vote of existing token holders. Even initiatives that a group never prioritized can be granted votes if it aligns with the group’s mission. Vote tokens can also be freely given out to non-contributors, particularly if you want prominent community members to have votes to lend legitimacy to the group.
• Delegating votes. Members don’t have to be actively involved for their voice to be heard. They can delegate their vote tokens to an active community member to serve as their proxy.
• Publishing a post. Any time contributors need to make a collective statement, they can vote to approve a post that will appear on the Benefactory group’s page. Requests for proposals will be one common type of post that informs potential volunteers about what needs to be done.

Volunteers start groups from scratch and grow their economic power by working together. They use their initiatives to raise resources that they circulate between proposals until they find their way to an initiative that needs funds to expand its workforce. Volunteers can use the resources they collect to back new initiatives, which can help groups expand beyond volunteers.

These groups aren’t decentralized just for novelty’s sake. Decentralization makes them easy to start and grow. When there’s a new mission to organize, they don’t create a separate organization like companies do. They form a coalition of existing groups like a political movement does so it can hit the ground running. Giving vote tokens for a new group to voters from established groups makes the priorities they set together more influential. Most importantly, these groups don’t compete with one another for resources. Initiatives don’t belong to a particular group, so whenever groups want to cooperate, there’s no reason not to give contributors vote tokens in both groups.

Ethereum Movement’s Benefactory page

The Ethereum Movement is one Benefactory group dedicated to making Ethereum-based applications easier to build and use. For instance, an initiative to improve TestRPC was completed by the Ethereum Movement. The broader Ethereum developer community already has many developers and companies working towards the same goal. With a Benefactory group to coordinate these efforts, working together can become the default rather than the exception.

If you believe in the Ethereum Movement’s mission, and would like to coordinate your efforts with the rest of the community, here are the steps to do so:

1. Write a proposal (like this) for an upcoming feature that you or your company will commit to completing.
2. Estimate the market price for the work to cap the funds you can raise for the group. Choose a fair price in order to keep as many people in agreement as possible. If the funds raised don’t hit the cap, you get vote tokens for the remaining portion.
3. Set a fundraising period timeline.
4. Post it for discussion on #ethereum in the Benefactory Mesh Slack.
5. Ask the Ethereum Movement members (those who have made past contributions) to vote to set your initiative as a priority.

We believe that crowd philanthropy can be far more effective than the types of organizations we are used to. Political and social movements have already changed the world as we know it today. We think economic movements can change the world, too. Join us. Let’s build this movement together.