Thoughts on hacking philanthropy

Just about everything in our culture is in a state of forward flux today.

From how work is being redefined and how goods are produced, to how we organize ourselves as communities to drive and support change.

There’s a shitload to worry about politically and environmentally to be certain. But there's also a lot of momentum and good will to platform, much of it within the economics of the blockchain and the capital raising possibilities of incentivized communities.

My friend Bill Tai and I have been talking about what he calls Active Philanthropy, a term I like a great deal.

It's all about hacking philanthropy as we know it today, creating a new category that includes adding crypto to the mix and reimagining how to break the black box of charitable giving.

Active philanthropy weaves in a way to economize support of projects for social good into our daily lives. To incorporate things that matter to us through the very platforms we frequent and work on. Rethinking how to tokenize intent and aggregating good will into a new type of marketplace, where our beliefs and contributions raise the transactional value of our giving as the community grows.

Where the token gives back forever to its cause and with each transaction, the seller profits as well.

In simpler terms, making the act of giving a behavioral reflex where contributing is a natural and beneficial act touching our basic drives both personal and collective on a daily basis.

To be clear, in the face of a changing world, charity or philanthropy, as it is today, is broken.

While wealth generally has increased and collective common goodwill expanded across our communities, we still raise funds the same old painful and exclusionary way. It is fraught with friction and so hard.

Invariably this resides predominantly in the world of high net-worth individuals with little transparency into the projects or organizations funded. A process with no real momentum of its own, no natural rhythms and divorced from the flow of our lives, while our beliefs and desire for change certainly are not.

Honu the CryptoKitty Charity Auction (now extended) is a first great step towards actualizing this idea of active philanthropy. A step driven by an incentive to be inclusionary and transparent by design.

Tying together adorable aquatic Honu, a proxy and CryptoAsset to raise funds, to these heartfelt projects to protect these endangered and beautiful sea turtles. And Honu, part turtle, part kitten will forever exist on the blockchain to support them and remind us of their status.

This project was designed to broaden popular appeal, bring diverse communities together and extend to the crypto world a way to support things that need and depend on us for support.

In this case, the two conservation projects: Operation Jairo , spearheaded by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in Antigua and Barbuda, and Unite BVI, in the British Virgin Islands. They will be the direct recipients of the funding raised.

I don’t know as yet whether this terrific idea that arose out of an amazing partnership between CryptoKitties, ACTAI Global, and Ocean Elders is best termed Hacking Philanthropy, CryptoPhilanthropy, Blockchain Conservation, Active Philanthropy or Conservation. Some variant of these will become the name of our new Telegram channel to aggregate communities from this campaign and the others that follow.

But I do know that the blockchain is a perfect platform for this.

That a whole lot of people in the world, within the crypto space and without, will gravitate towards participating once a new way, more natural to all of us, more integrated into our lives, more democratic for everyone regardless of financial status, is here.

That is what we are about in this initiative. Setting the seeds for change while making a tangible contribution to projects that depend on us for support.

If you are in a position to bid on Honu, help reinvent philanthropy, and make a smart, tax deductible investment, at the same time, a big thanks!

To everyone, we welcome all ideas and support to help push this idea forward.

If you leave your contact points in the comments, or email me, I'll add you to forthcoming projects, meet-ups and our telegraph channel.