How to start, grow, and fund a local chapter of BEN

Why join BEN?

Individual, Student, or Graduate Membership

1. Access to an online community of over 2,350 plus students, recent graduates, developers, entrepreneurs, and young industry titans from around the world. Oh, and a JOBS CHANNEL!
2. Free/Discounted tickets to conferences, workshops, hackathons, and bootcamps with a BEN Partnership, Sponsorship, or Media agreement.
3. Participate in events such as airdrops, hackathons, AMAs, livestreams, and soon weekly Discord topic sessions.
4. Opportunities to volunteer and intern, so you can build resume/portfolio and grow your network.

Local Chapters, Meetups, and Student Organizations

1. Network effects. Be a part of a growing, non-profit grassroots organization run by students and graduates for students and graduates. Onboard your members to our Discord community for maximum discourse.
2. Learn from other chapters on how to develop and grow your organization.
3. Access to BEN media channels to promote events and meetups, as well as, to highlight accomplishments of your local chapter and it’s members.
4. Add to an ongoing shared contact list of CEOs, COOs, CTOs, developers, entrepreneurs, and industry thought leaders for sourcing speakers to talk at your chapter meetups. Do you know someone that may be interested? Are you interested? Fill out this form!

Become a Member of BEN

It’s free!!! Sign up on our website blockchainedu.org. After that, introduce yourself to our global Discord server.

On Discord, join a region channel. If you don’t see your region represented, then ping one of the admins to create a region for you and your fellow colleagues. Ask an admin to give you permissions in order to gain the ability of creating your own public or private chat rooms. These channels can represent your local chapter, meetup, or student organization.

Start a Chapter

First off, read SWARMWISE by Rick Falkvinge! It’s literally a tactical manual to changing the world. Also, look into how cooperatives govern and scale, especially platform co-ops. I’m personally a big fan of Enspiral and Loomio. Check out their handbooks in the hyperlinks from the previous sentence. They’ve mastered asynchronous, distributed decision making. You’ll totally learn a thing or five.

If you are a student, I highly recommend on applying as a formal student organization within your college or university. You’ll have a ton a resources to benefit from, right off the bat. Not a student? don’t sweat it! Get a group of friends together and pick a place, or set of places, to have regular meetings.

Whether a student or not, you’ll want to let people know that you are hosting meetings. Take a couple of moments to setup a simple mobile-friendly website, Facebook Page and Facebook Group, or meetup on Meetup.com. For maximum coverage, do all three.

Register your club by completing this form.

Try experimenting around with blockchain governance tools. Aragon’s tight. Issue tokenized shares to every member your organization and vote on chapter proposals.

Grow a Chapter

Apply the tactics you learned from reading SWARMWISE, as well as, from the handbooks of the cooperatives Enspiral and Loomio. Make friends with the journalist of your local paper, on and off campus. You’ll be making waves soon! Host weekly meetings on your local campus, coffee shop, co-working space, or hacker/maker space. Promote those meetings and events by tabling. For example, my Alma Marter the University of South Florida (Go Bulls!) had a weekly bazaar-like event called the Bull Market. It would be full of student organizations, nonprofits, and small businesses. If your school doesn’t offer something similar, look to see what your city or chamber of commerce can provide.

What events do you plan to host? Here are some ideas:

• Airdrops
• Movie/Documentary Night
• Hackathon (Physical and/or Virtual)
• Maker Faire
• Workshops or Bootcamps
• Bitcoin/Token Bar Crawl → Check out BANANO Quest made with the Pocket Network iOS SDK.
• Scavenger Hunt
• Lightning Network Node Setup

Fund a Chapter

Create a multi-sig wallet with the core team of your outfit as co-signers. Then, put together a budget agreed upon the consensus of your organization. University chapters should request funding from their institution by applying for an annual budget. For event and traveling purposes, see if your university or college provides grants for travel or event costs. Build a website with a forum (it’s great for SEO purposes), then create a donation page with QR codes of the chapter’s different cryptocurrency public key addresses. The next step would be to seek out sponsorships and partnerships from local businesses such as, but not limited to co-working spaces, maker places, coding academies, startups, and incubators. Don’t forget to ask for free or discounted space to host your meetups and events. Both parties benefit. Just make sure to thank them. A thank you note, signed by you and your team, adds a nice personal touch.

Sign up for Earn.com and join the BEN list to earn Bitcoin for completing task, replying to emails, filling out surveys, and participating in airdrops. We are excited to announce that BEN is now the fourth featured charity available for donations on Earn.com.

Collaborate with Local Chapters in your Region

Build a consortium of local chapters to form a region and bridge together ecosystems. This has loads of benefits. Together you can reduce your marginal costs by co-hosting events like hackathons, conferences, maker fairs, or startup pitches. Pull resources as a collective. Also, ask BEN if you need any assistance. We are currently working on a Patreon account, where donors would have the choice to patron a chapter among other patronage tiers. An announcement will be made soon.

Fork a Chain (Optional, but recommended)

Learn by doing. Fork a blockchain, and start building applications at a local level. Form the backbone of your local smart city. It’s a fun project to work on together, too. Now, this is where it get’s interesting. Develop a digital local currency as the first dApp. Use it to foster a local P2P shared circular economy. Look at the problems your city or campus faces, how can your local blockchain as a public utility (BaaPU) be utilized to solve these issues. For example, Berkeley and Neighborly have teamed up to launch an Initial Community Offering (ICO) backed by municipal bonds to raise money for the city’s affordable housing program in response to both federal spending cuts and tax cuts.

Feel free to reach out to me at Alberto@blockchainedu.org