Hi Cynthia - thanks for your interest! While I cannot speak for @bram , my guess is there’s definitely have some synergy/similarity between our projects - especially how we want to highlight on Stellar’s strength for charity application (multi-signature escrow, validator token, multi-operation transaction and capability of handling transactions). Thus, we welcome any collaboration possible!

However, there may be some differences. For example, we may tend to focus more on “transparency” of the donation while Lumenaid focuses more on promoting visibility of the selected charity. We believe transparency is the real inhibitor of donation...and that if we could increases that, donation amount will increases and charity will reap the most benefit.

Furthermore, we ran our idea through our pilot charity and went through some fine-tuning before finalizing this concept. Therefore, we really do hope this would be fruitful as we got firm commitment to make this project live and start accepting XLM donation soon.

@Cynthia due to your background in nonprofit, we would love to hear more on what you like, dislike, or any general comment so we can improve Charity Hub to the next level.

  • bram replied to this.

      Great idea, and I think with the ability to simplify and explain this concept (which I am sure good clear messaging will achieve) this will open up many apprehensive donors to the idea of dramatically increasing not only the frequency but also width of initiatives they donate money to. Good luck!

      5 days later

      Charity-Hub
      Hi,

      You are correct. Lumenaid also wants to show how the Stellar network can be used for donations. The goal of Lumenaid is not to set up a crowdfunding but more to bring attention to an organization. It will also provide a few gimmicks on the website to keep people interested. Though there's also a lot of focus on transparency: all decisions made on the platform and prove of payments will be publicly visible to everyone.

      Lumenaid is still in an early stage but I will contact you once the platform is ready to use and we'll see if there could be some collaboration (for example: charities from Charity-Hub could be forwarded to Lumenaid and vice versa..).

      Bram

          savebattgo Yes, this is definitely in our roadmap. Our first attempt would be to convert XLM donated by donors into the charity’s preferred fiat currency (such as Thai Baht) and directly deposit the Baht to charity’s local book bank via banking app. However, we are still waiting for clear rules with regard to cryptocurrency and ICOs from Thai regulatory bodies (see https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/1424187/ico-and-token-rules-take-shape ).

          Anyway, savebattgo would you mind sharing with us how banking app integration works with cryptocurrencies in your country? Your guidance may help us foresee what’s to come for our country. Thank you very much in advance.

                bram please do keep in touch as we love the idea of exchanging/referring charities between our platforms. Ultimately, through Lumenaid and Charity Hub we hope charities would reap the benefit from Stellar’s network.

                By the way, I’m wondering how we could use stellar transaction memo text in different ways to enhance the donation process? Any suggestion on this would be appreciated.

                • bram replied to this.

                    Charity-Hub I currently use the memo text to optionally attach extra data to your donation. First you go to the Lumenaid website and fill in some message and vote for the next round. You then receive a reference that you need to fill in as memo text with your donation. This way you can add way more data to your donation.

                    Stellar also supports a mechanism for adding attachments (https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/attachment.html) but here the sender is responsible for creating the attachment and it is also meant to be used with an authorization server which I have not yet configured.
                    I believe with my approach I have more control over the format of the attachment.

                        Charity-Hub We provide cryptofinance called UnbankedX in East Africa and a few other emerging markets by matching lenders to borrowers on a P2P basis. It is a fully automated system with multiple user interfaces. We do not involve banks. Your application needs to deposit XLM into our Stellar wallet and then post to our API and our system will reply with confirmation. This can be done in any country by any user who uses our application

                            I’m a project manager of community tourism with local youth guide. Thank you, charity-hub for the donation. I will maximize the value of this amount of money. I will try my best to improve my students’ communication and leadership skills.

                            bram Very interesting indeed especially with regards to attachments mechanism. Thanks for pointing it out – will look into it!

                              savebattgo Oh got it. Do you have any mechanism on conversion from fiat to crypto and vice versa? Ultimately, to reach a broader audience, Charity Hub hopes donor can convert fiat to crypto in our platform prior to donation. And when a campaign funding is met, we want to convert crypto to fiat to transfer to charity. Any suggestion?

                                15 days later

                                30/3/2018: Charity-Hub Platform Update: Since the launch of Charity Hub, we have received over 7 campaign inquiries, one of them with high potential from African region, and currently working hard to due diligence them before opening up for public donation. Much help is needed in the world and if everyone work together, we can make a difference.

                                6 days later

                                05/04/2018 Campaign Progress Update : For the campaign “Community Tourism with Local Youth Guide”, our teachers are busy training students (see image) to become youth guides to lead the food tour in Bangkajao - which is expected to happen during second week of April 2018! Please stay tune for update as we look to complete our first sub-campaign soon!
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                                a year later