GiveCrypto’s January Monthly Report
In January we shifted our focus from experimentation to scaling our most successful program: the GiveCrypto Ambassador program. The Ambassador program will allow us to significantly increase the distribution of crypto to people in need. In many ways, we will operate like a startup, using software to achieve leverage. We will continue to experiment with different ways to distribute crypto, but developing the platform to support the Ambassador program will be our primary focus.
While we didn’t initiate any new programs in January, we continued to distribute cryptocurrency for the programs that launched in 2018. We distributed $22,758 to 528 people. The majority of our January distributions went to the FreeFrom project, which helps victims of domestic abuse achieve financial independence.
Ambassador Update and Roadmap
We recently launched a beta version of the Ambassador program, which is a web application that makes it easier for people (i.e. ambassadors) to distribute cryptocurrency to people in need (i.e. recipients). The beta version has very limited functionality and we have already started working on the following improvements.
UX issues
There are a number of ways we can improve the user experience, which will be the first priority for the next version of the app. For example, we need to make the invite and on-boarding processes easier for both ambassadors and recipients.
Data Collection
We are currently requesting minimal data from ambassadors and recipients and will eventually want to collect demographic, behavioral and impact data.
Data Sharing
We would like to share the program’s activity with the general public. In the short term, this means surfacing photos and descriptions of transfers from ambassadors to recipients. The longer term vision is to expose as much data as possible (and responsible) from the program.
Further down the road we would like to allow anybody to become an ambassador (currently invite only) and expand the jobs that an ambassador can perform; audit other ambassadors, recruit vendors and cash-out recipients.
Santa Elena -> Barquisimeto
The Santa Elena project was the result of our previous work on the Brazil-Venezuela border; where a pastor from a local church helped us distribute cryptocurrency to Venezuelan refugees. We learned that a good percentage of the recipients were from a town (Santa Elena) just across the border and decided to set up a new project sending crypto to their family members in Venezuela.
This new project ran into a number of problems; the local partner had family issues and had to quit, internet access in Santa Elena was unreliable and we were having difficulty leveraging participants in the first project to recruit recipients in Venezuela.
We were able to find a new local partner who recommended that we move the project to the town of Barquisimeto. We have since recruited 79 recipient families (the goal is 100) and started making transfers last week.
We have already seen one interesting development. One of the recipients is buying crypto from the other recipients, effectively serving as a cash-out option for them. We never asked her to buy the crypto and she is doing so to limit her exposure to the Bolivar (Venezuela’s currency). She has a side business selling coffee products and wants to hold as little of the local currency as possible. We view this as a positive development, suggesting that it should be possible to recruit ‘cash-out’ ambassadors down the road.
Storytelling
We believe that storytelling will be an important part of our fundraising strategy. The goal is to connect with potential donors on an emotional level, hoping that will compel them to support GiveCrypto.
Towards that end, we recently published our first story, which is about an ambassador that helped us distribute crypto to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
