Fundraising Fractals: A mathier way to thank our favorite donors
I’d bet that just about every nonprofit startup fantasizes now and then about getting noticed by the right billionaire to solve funding once and for all. Token Ibis is gearing up for a fundraising push, and we’re certainly no different.
In fact, we’re really optimistic that Universal Basic Philanthropy can attract the attention of some pretty influential people someday. But if that day comes, how can we properly thank your donors? One option looks something like this:
Money makes the world go around, and it’s important to recognize the generous individuals who channel it where it needs to go. At the same time, a grassroots nonprofit cannot and should not forget its often humble roots. If you’re reading this in 2020, then please know that a dollar of support from you today will be worth its weight in gold tomorrow.
At Token Ibis, in particular, we can’t forget our core mission: that social impact works best if involves everyone. So how can we get the best of both worlds? How can we:
- Proportionally acknowledge contributions,
- Recognize the individuals who believed in us first,
- Properly thank everyone who helps at all?
The answer: with the magic of mathematics.
Fractals on Fractals on Fractals
If math had a beauty contest, fractals would come home with the crown every time. If you haven’t already, you might consider wasting the next two hours of your life gazing listlessly into the depths of this video.
Aside from being ridiculously cool, fractals are the perfect mathematical object for doing what we need to do: recognizing the importance of different contributions at different levels in a way that can scale with time.
Take the much simpler fractal below: the Sierpiński triangle.
Each triangle gets divided into four smaller triangles, leaving a single solid fifth triangle in the middle. This goes in infinitely. So here’s the idea: Let’s use the solid area in these triangles to represent contributions from all levels of donors in a single, unified picture.
Introducing Fundraising Fractals
And that’s exactly what we did. The Sierpinski triangle is simple enough that it didn’t take too long to whip up some python code, which anyone is free to use at https://github.com/Tokenibis/tools/tree/master/fractal. (Credit to Token Ibis Inc. is appreciated).
More specifically, we took four Sierpinski triangles and stuck them together into a square. Next, we took donation amounts and broke them up into the correctly-sized triangles. All that’s left after that is to bring the picture to life with pretty colors.
Now, we can answer the question: how would it look if some billionaire came and made our day?
As you can see, Mr. Rockenfeller has made three donations at our tentative “Coucal” tier ($⁴⁹) plus change for a total of $1,000,000. Hopefully, he will be quite happy to see his name so prominently displayed.
But wait, what are those little specs in the middle? Let’s zoom in.
Locked forever into the space-dollar continuum, all of the individuals who were donating at or below our “Frigatebird” tier ($⁴⁴) from the beginning. Mr. Rockenfeller can and should be able to define his own picture, but no amount of money will ever displace the community that got it started from the beginning.
Let’s zoom in a little bit further.
Look closely enough, and you’ll be able to see even our smallest donations, down to every last dollar. Every piece starts out life on the edge and spends the rest of its existence moving closer to the center of an ever-growing picture.
One Final point
Our mission at Token Ibis is to democratize social impact. Instead of using this fractal to show incoming fundraising dollars, let’s use it to think about outgoing donations by our students.
Part of undertaking these types of goals is that people will often say that you’ll “never succeed”. That “there will always be winners and losers”. Fair enough.
The funny thing about trying to fill out these fractals is that we’ll never succeed either. Someone could run our servers for the rest of eternity, no matter how many smaller triangles they manage to pack in, there will always be more gaps.
And yet, that’s no reason to stop. So what if we never “fully” succeed? Every triangle counts, and every new voice is one more piece in an infinitely vibrant and beautiful picture.
In conclusion, Token Ibis is now selling real estate on (maybe) the world’s first-ever fundraising fractal. So if you have some disposable income to spare today, please consider donating at https://tokenibis.org/donate/. You never know who might buy some property right next to yours, and you never know who you might inspire just on the other side.
Thanks for reading! If you want to support our efforts to revolutionize the non-profit sector, the best way to do it is by sharing our content with the difference-makers you know. So please hit that 👏 button, share this story on social media, and don’t forget to tag us (@tokenibis on Twitter, Instagram, & Facebook).
To learn more about the Token Ibis project, visit tokenibis.org.
