PoolTogether Community Podcast #17 with Noah from Endaoment

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. I'm your host, Hot Mike, aka Sally Struthers. I don't know why that came to my mind, AKA the man with the plane. And I'm here with Noah from Endowment. Noah, thanks for making time for the Pull Together community. This is great.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to, you know, bring our communities together a little bit and talk about, you know, philanthropy and crypto and how the two can really help each other.

So yeah, I love that. I love that. I'm still just amazed that Sally Struthers was the thing I came up with. I need to anyway. Google that. I forget. I don't even know. Anyway. Okay. So, so exciting stuff. I would love to hear, Noah, your origin story. Like, how did you get into the space? How did you end up at Endowment? What are you doing there? That sort of thing. Would love to hear just kind of that as the intro to the podcast.

Sure. So, so my background is in 2 things. I'll start with what's probably more important to me, which is human-centered design. So this is something I did at university and following school. And human-centered design is really a discipline that studies products, services, anything that businesses, orgs put out into the world that— Sally Struthers— that interacts with people, something that people use, and looking at those products and saying, how could this be better for people? Regardless of whether it's profitable or how it's affecting business or anything like that, but really focused on people and sustainability. The second part of my background is like, I'm a frontend developer and alongside that designer. So following school, I spent a few years doing actually mainly e-commerce development. So working with a lot of D2C DTC brands, like making websites for them, online stores, all that time, you know, spending, you know, hours in Discords and working within the Web3 space to try to bridge human-centered design and what's happening in crypto. Because to me, I think what Web3 provides is a really interesting path to say, let's design products not around profitability, But around sustainability. And that path lets us do some really interesting things and affect the way we use the internet, you know, like ad-free products that maybe use some sort of interesting tokenomics to fund themselves. There's a lot of interesting things that I see around the incentive structures in crypto that seem to bridge human-centered design, which is this discipline saying, Let's make the purest form of a product, not something that will in any way adversely affect the user. And that sort of is what drew me to Web3. And I had spent some time, you know, researching nonprofits and working with nonprofits in regards to human-centered design. And I found Endowment, you know, I'm sure I'll give a more in-depth explanation about what Endowment is, But just to start, it's a DeFi philanthropy hub. And I was curious about, you know, how they were implementing maybe more interesting strategies for funding through, you know, decentralized applications, through protocol treasuries. And it turned out they needed somebody with a human-centered design background and that they were growing. So I left freelance and I joined the team. And right now I act as sort of product and design lead, helping architect the tokenomics, but also like doing very traditional design and front-end development work. So I think that sort of brings us to present, but yeah, that's where I live.

The human-centered design, doesn't that beg for centralization? That's gotta be the clash, right? That's gotta be like, It's just way easier to go to one hub, one place, and find all the things that you need to find and all of that. And now we've got how many wallets, how many different chains, how many different tokens, right? It's just not, it feels like not, it just, it's the Wild West. It feels very clunky, very difficult, just this whole Web3 space. So how does that, how do you reconcile that?

Yeah, I think that's a really, really good point. I think that for me, I think, and I think for a lot of Web3 people, we just put aside that sort of bridge to entry, that barrier to entry of like wallets and the difficulty of onboarding and say, all right, here are the benefits down the road that far supersede, you know, the normal product difficulty of interacting with Web3. Versus sort of the ethical things we could change about how we structure products around people. When you could change entire incentive structures, that's a lot more meaningful and can bring a lot more human-centered products to the world than, you know, just living with like the easiest, meaningfully and ethically with society at large. It's like a step, you know, you have to take that step back from almost like layer 1 user interaction and think about Like the layer 2 user interaction of how that the app works. So there are definitely different flavors of human-centered design, but I think what people in the Web3 world practice is like nearly like an ethical version of it where maybe human interface design, which is something I think a lot of crypto people maybe should turn more attention to right now, that definitely prefers like Web2 systems. But Yeah, I, I think that it's just a philosophy.

I mean, I can even, I, I, I forget, I, I wish I could remember the specific example of this, but it, it, it's to the point of like, I'll use a service or I'll use a protocol and, and, and I'll eventually figure out how to do the thing that I wanted to do. But it, it's, it's as simple as like labeling things and how I could see how it makes sense to the person who's creating that user interface. That's what it is, but just, it, my mind never went to that label to, for, for like editing stuff, you know? And it's, uh, it's very evident to the user, I think, that, um, this is not friendly. Yeah. That, that, that just generally, right? Because we're so busy shipping, we're so busy building and iterating and coming up with more things, it, that it kind of, it, it actually shows like underlying core value misalignment maybe, where if it was human-centered design, if UX was more of a focus or something, that would actually, as a user, make me feel more safe and secure as I'm using the product, whether or not it is safe or secure, because I know that, hey, they took the time to think through the language on this button so it's clear. Maybe they also took time to think through if I'm going to get rugged by their smart contract or not. So there's this kind of like messaging that UX can communicate.

Absolutely. It's, I mean, there aren't a lot of design-led, I would say, projects in the space, or at least we're seeing more and more. I think something like Magic is like a great example. If people want to check it out, it's like a sort of custodial wallet onboarding to Web3, magic.link. You're absolutely right. And I think the one way that you sort of solve those user interface issues very effectively is user testing. And I don't see a lot of that happening in the space. And it's something we're trying to do, but you run into this wall of like, okay, we can try to put this in front of crypto users. And those are your main user base, but you put it in front of just like an average internet user and your application and the main hurdles and something they can't get over is an experience that isn't really related to your application, which is— You know, the wallet experience. But you're absolutely right that I think usability, information overload, like information hierarchy, that sort of human interface stuff is not something that a lot of people building in this space, either they don't find it valuable or it's just like people have an economic incentive to participate in your application. So, you know, people or builders in the space are like, okay, people are going to be making money through my thing, so I don't really care if it's not so usable. But I think that's something that will change as maybe the competitive landscape changes and as design becomes, you know, more important in the space, which it does seem to be becoming.

Yeah, and we actually interviewed Ivy Quinn. She does UX at CoordinApe and also worked at Sushi for a while, and it was so refreshing to talk to UX test, like she did, does design as well. She has her own consulting for UX for crypto. Mm-hmm. But it was just so refreshing to hear her talk about it and like the benefits of like, I mean, at Coordinate, I mean, I can see her work as I'm using the platform and it gets less clunky every time I use it. And it's like, you're making a difference. So listener, if you want to hear more on UX, Ivy Quinn's episode is really is really a killer episode. But also conversely, if you want to rug somebody, have a really well-designed, thought-out, you know, front end, make it really super so people feel safe and secure, and then you can rug them. This is not financial advice. So, uh, so Noah, so you're on the team and you actually, it sounded like you just kind of like, you love human-centered design. You saw an opportunity there. And so you're in it. So you're not even like this social, You know, warrior, you know, you're not this like climate change mastermind. You're just, you care about human-centered design. You saw that Endowment's trying to make the world a better place. Okay, let's align and let's do this.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, this is totally a personal thing, but I really love like maximum impact, minimum effort kind of thing. Like, donation maximization and like out, you know, any sort of like output maximization. So like the more I can sort of help people with like the simpler the tool or, you know, the more the dollar can go towards helping the broadest amount of people. That's sort of my path. I don't think I'm def— I'm probably in the camp of like a little bit of social like warrior. I mean, working at Endowment rather than like a different DeFi Sort of, or, you know, any sort of decent Web3, you know, business probably makes me that. And I think a lot of our team is very socially focused, of course, because like we're working pretty much solely with nonprofits, entirely solely with nonprofits. But for me, and this is what interests me about Endowment, is like sort of how we can grow from philanthropy to like a very flexible nonprofit, like welfare ecosystem. I think we see a lot of projects in the space building towards like these public good systems, and I think that's really awesome. And a lot of them, not, you know, Gitcoin, Giveeth, not to, you know, just to bring those up, like they work within the Ethereum ecosystem and they bridge out to like, you know, regular nonprofits. But for us it's like, let's start with impact. Let's start with nonprofits and build out from there, like this system that leverages what's cool about crypto and what is cool about coordination and tokenomics and creates this like, you know, maximum impact and positive sum game kind of thing. But yeah, I think that I am probably a little bit more in the camp, but human-centered design, I do think it has its roots in like social interest and social impact. Like you're trying to to optimize products along human lines and sustainability rather than profitability. I think anytime you're doing that, you're just like, you're forfeiting something that in the interest of social impact. So yeah, that's sort of where I land, I guess.

So at East Denver, Andrew Yang presented, he was on stage and he was pitching this LobbyDAO Lobby 3 DAO. I think that's what it's called. Yes. It, and the question was asked, hey, how can we make a difference in Washington? How can we get like all of these bureaucrats to be okay with us and to like help us? And his main response to that question, I probably misstated the question, but it was generally that vibe. He said, Web crypto needs to show that it's good for the world. Like you have to have, what's the positive change? 'Cause right in the subtext of that was like, right now it's just about pumping your bags. That's what it's, that's what it feels like on the outside. So how can you show, how can you actually make a difference? And, and so Endowment, I feel like this is, that's, that's Endowment is answering that question in some way. So Noah, can you pitch me Endowment? What's your elevator speech? Say we're trapped in an elevator and you have to talk to me and you want to pitch me on Endowment, what would you say?

Yeah, let me try here. I think for me, Web3 is about a couple, 2 things, decentralization and programmable money. And what Endowment tries to do is leverage both of those things to create an online system where we incentivize people to give to nonprofits along certain value metrics. So maximizing donation amounts, maximizing donor impact, maximizing donor diversity. And to do all that stuff, we need crypto. You know, it lets us leverage economic coordination In a much more meaningful way than Web2 technologies. And so Endowment at its basis is technology which lets you set up donor advised funds, community funds, do direct donation, all of those things on-chain with crypto to any US 501 nonprofit. And on top of that, we're working to build more into what the Web3 philosophy is and leverage, you know, tokens down the line, investments, yield to take advantage of everything crypto has to offer in terms of economic efficiency and make that into a nonprofit funding model.

So that means I can give to nonprofits As a United States citizen and receive, you know, tax benefit from that.

Exactly. So we're a 501 organization, endowment.org. When you send your crypto to Endowment or make a fund on Endowment, you send your crypto directly to a fund and you don't have to choose at that time which nonprofit you're going to send that money to. But at that time of donation to your fund, that is a tax deductible transaction. So you get the benefit of not having to pay capital gains, for example, by selling your crypto and then donating. We take the crypto, we liquidate it on your behalf, and we get it to the right place and the right people.

There we go. Is there like some sort of like connect your wallet in it and it shows you all of the tax loopholes that you can jump through and maximize your giving as well?

Yeah, I think that's the other side of the elevator pitch is that this is tax software. That's like one, you know, when we talk internally about what we're trying to build, it's like tax-efficient crypto tools. So that's donor advised funds, that's direct donations, that's, you know, community funds. How can we maximize tax offset with crypto, like through our tooling? And then the other half is sort of more what I was explaining towards like, okay, how can we leverage that tooling and DAO governance to create like a redistributive model for funding those same nonprofits?

So what's the percentage that you take? You gotta take a percentage, right?

Yeah, it's a point, it's a 1.5% donation fee, 1% grant fee, I believe, which is below industry standard. Wait,

so that's one, that's 2 fees that you just said, a 1.5% fee and a 1% fee.

Yeah, I need to double check on this, but I believe it's, yeah, like if you do a direct donation, I think you, you go around the donation fee. I apologize, I don't have this information.

What were the name of the 2 fees?

There's a grant fee and there's a donation fee.

Got it. Okay. Grant fee, which is on the one end, like I, Like, for example, if I give to, like, I could create a fund right now on Endowment and then, uh, I could start a new fund. And then when I give to that fund, that's the donation fee, right?

Mm-hmm.

And then on the other side of it, when once you grant it either to one of your nonprofits on here or with the existing fund, when that dishes out, or I can apparently, I can pick any 501 in the United States is what you said. And then there's a 1.5% granting fee on the other side of that.

I think it's a, yeah, 1% granting fee.

Oh, okay. 1%. And then, okay, got it. But that's still, credit card fees are like 3% and up. So, I mean, you've, you, yeah.

And then, so our goal is to, to make those fees governance controlled and allow those fees to be part of like that sort of redistributive funding that we were talking about. You know, the, the, the goal for us is sustainability. It's not profitability, obviously, like we're a 501. So, right. There, there's a lot of interesting stuff we can do there, but it does feel like, I think to us that the fees are necessary, whether it's just from like a, yeah, sustainability standpoint.

For sure. Yeah. I mean, it, a lot of pass-through 501 or DAFs, the fees are like 5% or more, potentially 5 to 10%. This is awesome. I am like super stoked about this. So, Um, what, what about like, what about like, so you could give to anyone, any 501, have you had values alignment clashing? Because there are very, there are, there's a diverse set of 501s out there.

You are absolutely right about that. And this is something that we think really critically about. Um, uh, and ultimately it's at our discretion. Because once the funds enter the system, they're under the supervision of endowment.org as the donor-advised fund coordinator. So we have a set of bylaws for our 501 that talk about fairness and equality and like what we sort of want to support. And at the end of the day, we can decide not to allow a grant to go through if we don't feel like those That 501 abides by those bylaws. But it is a very tricky thing, right? This is the trade-off of like decentralization. And ultimately, like, is it our responsibility to moderate donation, like through our smart contracts? It's a good question. But ultimately, because of— because we're trying to build tax-efficient tooling and because ultimately we are the managers of these funds. We do have a say in, yeah, what grants might or might not go through.

And when you say say, you, or we have a say, you mean the DAO itself, or do you mean the endowment leadership?

It would be the board of the nonprofit. And yeah, there's a lot of thinking we're doing about how we can decentralize ourselves. So at this point, there is no token. There's no DAO structure. We wanted to start with a viable product and sort of build that tax-efficient software and then introduce governance. So, you know, in the pipeline definitely, and definitely in our heads and at the code fingertips is like, all right, how are we going to make— 'cause it's a very interesting question and this is a separate topic altogether, is tokenizing nonprofits. The governance of nonprofits. And, you know, there are a lot of opinions on this, and there's a great talk at ETH Denver with the Giveth people, and I think somebody from Gitcoin and a few other people, you can look it up, about, yeah, do we want to tokenize the governance of nonprofits? Do we, you know, want to sell off the ability to make decisions in what is supposed to be a mission-driven organization. And I think that there are valid points on both sides of that argument. For us, we have a very broad mission of facilitating donations to other nonprofits. And I think it ultimately ends up being like, consider, you have to make considerations about how market forces drive tokenomics, how those tokenomics then influence governance and the mission and how that can adversely affect the nonprofit. And there's currently no existing legal structure that would facilitate that process in the United States in a simple manner, but something we're actively researching and something that solutions, I think, you know, might be presented for.

Now, you said at the beginning of this, you said something about like getting rewarded for giving or something. There was some sort of like Bonus. So that's, that's what I actually, actually was thinking. Oh, maybe there's a token or maybe there's like, we, what did I hear that correctly? Or were you just saying like that, you know, you're gonna get rewarded like karma-wise or something?

Well, here's the first thing is if you get anything in reward for your donation, anything in return, it loses its tax deductibility. So There's a consideration there. And for us, since we're trying to build at the base level tax-efficient crypto software, I don't think that's something we want to sacrifice. And I'm sort of talking in the abstract here, like trying to take the perspective of like, you know, if we're trying to build this DAO system around what we are doing, like tokenomics incentives around donation, I don't think it's in our interest to forfeit that tax deductibility. By rewarding people for donation. And I think that also introduces maybe some adverse, I don't know, incentives around donation. But the goal of token— of the potential tokenomics of our system would be to reward platform participation, which in turn corresponds with people being involved in what we're doing and hopefully more donation. But yeah, I think at the baseline, it's like, Donations can't receive anything in return or it's not a tax-deductible action.

Yeah, but crypto people know how to get around that. But no, the, what you just said though is the, is the, you know, what that participation in the DAO, that the very nascent DAO that is forming and planning on how to transition, you know, that, that's what you're talking about as far as participation goes.

Yeah. Well, there's governance mining I think is a really popular thing, but then there's like, platform actions. So something like deploying a fund could be something that we ultimately might reward or deploying an organization. So before you were like, oh, I can donate to any 501. That's true. But first, that contract for the org to receive the funds has to be deployed. So there's a gas cost associated with that. And that's not a donation action, but that's something that we want to reward people Possibly for, as an example.

And this is, this is only on mainnet?

This is only on mainnet. And I think that one of the thing, one of the challenges that we run into obviously is like, you know, the cost of mainnet transactions is very high, but the value, the economic value that ERC-20s, you know, most tokens that we accept, if not all, at least not over-the-counter tokens. And we do accept, I think, pretty much any cryptocurrency over the counter. You'll need to go to endowment.org to verify that. But a lot of that value lives on layer 1. And since we're, you know, doing contract interactions around those layer 1 assets, it's very hard to move some of that to layer 2, at least for the time being. But, you know, as value transitions to different layer, you know, layer 2s or sidechains or, you know, different chains. That's something that's definitely worth thinking

about. I'm trying to, there's, yeah, the, let's see here. I have like 7 different questions. I should have written them down because I'm like, my brain is going in 7 different directions. But, but like there was something about, 'cause what I'm thinking is, oh, you could use, oh yes, this is my question. You can, is it as simple as sending You know, once the fund is started or whatever, say I, say I do that with one wallet or whatever, then I can, is it as simple as sending money to a wallet with Endowment? Like each fund, how, what needs to happen for, for a donation to happen to a fund?

Yeah. In our current, in our current smart contract infrastructure, you need to use our application. And what'll happen is we'll set up the contract interaction for you. It'll get sent to a contract address that you can track that has the fund balance and the fund actions within it. And then each 501 has also like an org entity associated with it on-chain. And currently it's not like you send your assets directly to certain like wallet addresses. The challenge there being liquidation, like sort of what I was talking about earlier. But, you know, we're exploring ways we can, and then this sort of goes into the, some of the questions I see that we might talk about, you know, later on is like, how do we integrate this into better into DeFi? And I think the easiest solution is like a unique address for each org, unique address for each fund. And that's something that I think is high priority for us.

Yeah, 'cause I'm thinking like with other chain, well, first of all, like to send money to a wallet is the cheapest. It's the gas fees on that is very small compared to something with, you know, signed like smart contract, multiple like approve and then transfer, whatever. So I was just thinking about reducing those fees. But the second thing is, is like, you know, on other, there's a lot of play-to-earn. I could just see people like instead of playing to earn, they're playing to give. So like you're able to turn, you know, your hoppers or your ice poker or your Krabada or whatever it's called into like donation, that sort of thing. But that, you know, or DeFi kingdoms or whatever. It's just really that, that then suddenly you're playing with purpose for your cause. This is just, there's just so many different ways to go about this. But okay, we're on, we're on mainnet. That is, that is where you're at right now. And it sounds like that in the future, Like, it sounds like in, in the near future, that's, that's the way it's going to be is mainnet all the way.

Yeah. I mean, at least probably for the next version of our client. Yeah. But that's, yeah, it's really just like where the value lives currently.

Yeah. The other option here, the reason I bring that up, the wallet address is that PoolTogether has a new feature that's a multi-delegator tool. So you can actually Like take your account on PoolTogether, your lump of money that you have in the pool, and you could delegate your prizes to other wallets. And so PoolTogether did this with Ukraine where during one of the community calls, we all just, they, the devs built, devs did something and they built this, this page using the multi-delegator tool where we could just send our funds to Ukraine, our prizes. So it was like no, no lost donations. Obviously you wouldn't, I don't think you'd get a tax write-off for that. I don't know how that would work, but it was really cool. But I could see that happening here is like we could have a list of wallet addresses that, but you need a wallet address to send your prizes to and claim and everything. But I was just, I was thinking of some crossovers that could happen between PoolTogether and Endowment. But we'll keep thinking, we'll keep talking about that. But I see that you have a, you go ahead.

Well, I was gonna say, I mean, in the current structure, you just split it with endow.eth. Or yeah, that's the wallet address you use, and then you send us instructions on where you want those funds to go. So it's definitely doable in our architecture. Yeah.

Oh, great. Okay. But is there, there a limit to that? Or are you like trying not, is that like some sort of like secret hookup that you just gave me because we're on the Let's Go Crypto podcast? So anybody can do that. They could actually just send to the wallet and then give instructions. Hey, I've sent this.

Exactly. Yeah. That's, that's the thing.

Oh,

yep.

Oh, that's awesome. That solves all my problems. But again, it's only mainnet.

Only mainnet. Okay. Well, if it's like, I mean, I think in the case of an over-the-counter donation, that, that's just something that you just reach out to us and, and yeah, 'cause our goal here is not to like limit What you can do. And some of this stuff is not, you know, possible through our current smart contract infrastructure. But if you have a crypto token and you want to donate it, get in touch with us. We'll make it happen. And that's our goal here. And get it to the orgs. Like, I think maybe something we haven't really talked about, but that's worth mentioning is like, orgs have to do very little to get the money from us in the end. All they have to do is claim their org, whether it's a wallet claim or a wire claim with their bank information. And once money is sent to them, to the org entity, either granted through a fund or direct donation, we just get it to them. And that's like, there's really almost zero friction there.

And this is only to nonprofits based in the US, correct? Like say, Somebody doesn't care about the tax deductible situation, could they send it somewhere else?

Um, currently it's US 501s and, uh, you know, we're always trying to explore and a lot of the time, um, there are related 501s in the US that have some, possibly have, you know, connections to what specific cause you're trying to, to 2 is, but yeah, um, right now it's, it's the 1.5 million US 501s.

Yeah, I, I, there's, 'cause you have to connect it to that to be able to get the tax donation, the, the, um, the whatever, the tax credit or deductive deduction or whatever. Uh, it has to be connected to a US 501. You couldn't just funnel money, get your tax deduction, and then it goes to A different country. That would, that would not be cool.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, so here's the thing that I've been telling nonprofits, because I feel like step one for a nonprofit is to accept crypto donations and Endowment solves that for them. You could also, I think there are other services that'll take payments in crypto, but just like putting a handout that now can accept crypto, that's like stage one for, for a nonprofit. I feel like stage 2 for a nonprofit in web— in the Web3 space is either giving up, like giving up your power or, or like creating a board structure that allows those who give or some sort of governance token there, like kind of like easing into the Web3 space. And then the stage 3 is actually totally becoming a whole new thing, like actually forming in the Web3 space. Yeah. To then be that, you know, you know what I'm saying? So, so I, I wonder if you have any thoughts on that whole, like being a nonprofit in Web3, but in a Web2 or a, you know, IRL world nonprofit doing work in the field.

Yeah, I think step 1 is absolutely right. Non-endowment at no cost to the nonprofit, they can accept cryptocurrency. That's like baseline. Step 2, I think you're right. But for me, this is, this is like external to endowment. I would almost say like my personal philosophy is that nonprofits have to be really careful about how they make their decisions. Not just in the sense of like losing their tax deductible status as nonprofits, but on top of that, how do we stay mission aligned? And I think this is a broader thing we see in the crypto community that doesn't get enough attention is like, There's just sort of like an assumption that everything, that every DAO and every foundation building in Web3 is not profit-driven or is like, that it's somehow better than Web2 companies. And I don't know that that's necessarily true or that there's a very specific guide to this is how we run Ourselves as a business entity. And I think for us, it starts with, okay, let's look at what current entities exist as structures, like legal structures in the world. And we're starting with US 501s. And this is sort of relating to what I was talking about earlier is like tokenizing the governance of a nonprofit, it might be a slippery slope. You create weird incentives around maybe the market prices of those tokens. First of all, you can't really have, and that would be first, you know, that's maybe second of all. First of all is like, you can't really securitize the, you know, your nonprofit governance and current legal structure. Although like we are working hard to like think of creative ways to do that and keep your eyes and ears out. But I think for Us, and for my personal philosophy, like non— like it's like, yeah, nonprofit should maybe just be every DAO, you know, like every DAO needs to, or like should think about that. How do we operate as mission-driven entities? But on top of that, like if you introduce something like profit sharing or, you know, any sort of mechanism for including token holders in financial decision-making, You open yourself up to sacrificing the mission of whatever the organization is. So, I mean, it, I just, I think there's a lot to explore before we get to that, to the point of like, of like transitioning existing nonprofits on-chain and whether or not there's a benefit for them to do that. And for us, it's like, let's, what is the clear benefit of, of nonprofits and crypto, it's using token-driven governance and on-chain systems to maximize donations and maximize capital flow towards those nonprofits in value-aligned, ethically aligned ways. So I think that's like step one for us. And yeah, it's like to be seen how how we as a Web3 community determine, you know, where do we, do we still live by the profit above all, you know, growth above all sort of mindset? And I think for me personally, it's like, let's transition to a sustainability mindset. Like pick your mission and then grow to whatever is meant to be like the size of that mission. Because I think like really what's damaging, and this is a super simplification, but Seems to me like the most damaging thing that exists in like, you know, our capital world is like infinite growth mindset, is that growth at all costs. And everything is about, you know, just making everything profit as large as possible and growing your business. And I mean, that's what drives stock prices, but what drives token prices and potentially nonprofit token prices or Maybe it's not the price, but some other mechanism should be mission-driven and should be sustainability-driven. I don't know how we get there. And all this is just to say that there's a lot of ethical considerations about tokenizing governance of nonprofits. But I think that it's really exciting to like think that there is a very, there seems to be I don't want to say a clear path, but somewhat of a vision of a path to restructuring incentives of organizations to allow them to exist in a more sustainable and ethical model than the for-profit business, and maybe a more capital-efficient model than the nonprofit structure.

Is there I'm sure there's the, these nonprofits are asking you for consultation or for tools, ways to help. Is there, is there, are there plans for Endowment to do, to go that way as well, to support and shore up these nonprofits that have Web3 FOMO?

I, it's funny you say that. There are very few. I think we see a lot of nonprofits are scared of crypto. We have nonprofits that are like, won't accept donations, crypto donations. You see that, I mean, on Twitter, like, you know, I think it was Girls Who Code started accepting crypto donations and like lost donors. Ultimately, they made more money from the crypto donations, but it's like nonprofits are very wary of this space. And I don't know, I think it's interesting to us as like, Do they need to exist in this system to benefit from this system? I think it's like how, you know, it's like maybe in a limited capacity or maybe it's slowly onboarding them. But this almost returns to like the initial question, the initial discussion of like the difficulty of wallet use and how hard it is to interact with the Web3 world for non-Web3 native people. And for most of our nonprofits, I think they really just want the check at the end of the day. And that's not a bad thing. You know, like their goal and what should be their goal is like completing their mission, right? And if we find ways that Web3 can enable them to do that, that's what we're gonna work towards. But I don't think our goal is to like tutorialize Web3 for nonprofits. If that makes sense.

Yeah, totally. In my, in, in being, I come from the nonprofit world, marketing background and with nonprofits, and there's always this donor field kind of clashing, you know, there's always this like, um, you know, uh, hey, I'm going to give a bunch of money and I would, I would like to have a say in what goes on in the field. And the field's like, just leave us alone. We're, we're, we're doing the programming. Like we know what we're doing. And there's this tendency for Web3 crypto and devs technology to have this chronological snobbery kind of thing. It's like, you know, we've had the most advanced stuff, so obviously we can solve all the problems with cryptography and with the stuff. And it's like, yeah, yeah, great. You have no, I mean, there's a DAO that's like, you know, buying up all of this abandoned farmland in Japan. And I think that's a great idea until I'm like, wait, is this all white people just like trying to go out and like, uh, like land grab Japan right now? Like maybe this is not, you know, like, oh, we're going to solve the problem and we're going to take over all this unclaimed land. It's like, I think that might create more problems. Uh, so anyway, just, yeah, there is this like, it's really interesting to think about the dynamics of, you know, technology can solve some problems, but it can't show up. There can't be this let's Web3 everything mentality.

Yeah, it's a fine line. And like our goal is to enable those nonprofits as best as possible. And you can always make a grant with special instructions. That's sort of that methodology. But then the org can refuse it if they don't want to do that. And yeah, I think it returns to this, like, I, I'm not sure how interested in that. Like, I'll preface this with, I'm gonna refute this point maybe right after I say it, but I'm not sure how interested nonprofits are in selling, yeah, like decision-making. That being said, people pay a lot of money to sit on the board of nonprofits. So there's just like a lot of interesting stuff that happens in the nonprofit world. And it's like, yeah, where, how can Web3 assist in improving the system and not assist in like devolving it, you know, further. So, uh, yeah, our goal is, our goal is to help, hopefully.

Yeah. Yeah. Just like, uh, putting an economic engine into something could destroy it and like making something a meritocracy could make everyone exhausted and dehumanize people. Um, yeah, that's definitely, but I, but I love, I do think that there is, uh, you know, um, I think that there's like a, what is it, demystifying of crypto and Web3, like a translation that needs to occur for nonprofits to show them, no, this is actually like really powerful, certain aspects of it. And how do we, so is there, is there like spaces? Are there spaces besides ETH Denver and these sorts of conferences where like specifically talking about nonprofit Web3? Should we make one right now? Should we start one, Noah?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm all for that. I think definitely one of the bigger contributors to this space has been Celo. You know, their chain has like from day one really been oriented towards like helping people and they host, you know, they have events for, you know, impact-related Web3 stuff. But there is just this, yeah, there's a difficulty I think, and this exists for us too and like, Talking about public goods and where does that line get separated between like public goods and nonprofits? I think for me it's, they're sort of different things, but in the Ethereum space at least, like we sort of treat like anytime we're thinking of Ethereum as like a positive sum thing, it's like, okay, it's a public goods thing. But for us it's like, Let's create mechanisms for helping nonprofits. And I think the, yeah, a definite great first step and something we'd absolutely be interested in developing is, yeah, like nonprofit Web3 conversation. And 'cause it is absolutely the case that nonprofits are scared of Web3. For Maybe good reason, you know, like there is a lot of, you know, scary stuff that sometimes happens in the space and like, why should they risk their status and their mission to like get involved with this space? And that's where we're sort of like, here are the benefits and you don't have to, and this is sort of what we're doing at Endowment or trying to do is like, we're going to give you exactly what the benefits of the system are without any of like the risky parts. We're going to handle the crypto. We're going to get you the check at the end of the day. We're going to create these funding mechanisms. And here is what's cool about crypto. But it is a, you know, the whole like onboarding to Web3 experience is an unsolved problem at its core. And who knows? Yeah, who knows like what that ends up looking like?

I think it's going to surprise everyone. I don't think it's going to be what anybody thought it was because it's not Coinbase. It's not, these neobanks are trying. I love Onjuno. They've been really great, but it's just like my, my mom's not getting on Onjuno. My friends aren't going to, you know, it's, yeah, it is the problem, but maybe I don't know what that, what that could be, what the crazy, but maybe it's like, I don't know, like Coca-Cola solves it or something. Okay. Uh, so, uh, but you said, so, so what happens when somebody gives and you don't approve the grant? Where, what happens to that money? It just stays in a fund?

Um, they, they then, we can, we can return the money, in which case, like, they don't get the fee for it. Um, or they can donate it somewhere else. Yeah, I think we're, we're very flexible and like, I think one thing we pride ourselves on is like really putting people in the mix of this stuff. Like, I think a lot of the goals of any sort of technology company is to remove people from the equation, but especially when it comes to nonprofits, like, there does need to be a little bit of loving hand. And that's our goal is to really be supportive of this process.

And you have to immediately, you said like, you, I know like when we would receive stock gifts at a nonprofit, you immediately sell. So you have to liquidate, right? Do you do that with the crypto? As it happens? Like as it's sent in?

Yeah. So, so there's a, you know, a general idea or requirement for us as donor advised fund providers to do responsible management of money and to account very carefully that money. And in our current structure, the way it works is that That crypto gets liquidated immediately once you put it in the fund. That way the accounting is a lot more simplified and there's no question of like whether that money is being managed well, because it's hard to say if, yeah, putting money in like a holding Ethereum is like a responsible investment. So yeah, the liquidation happens immediately and as quick as we can, we get that money in dollars to nonprofits.

Okay. So you can't like immediately convert it to stables and then get yield off of that. You can't do that.

Well, I definitely think that's something that we see a lot of like requests for because something like stablecoin yield is not, there's no risk involved. But yeah, responsible, I'm forgetting the term. It's not like responsible management, but there's a concept that's like you have to manage this money pretty carefully and with good intent. And offering those sort of managed investment solutions is something we see a lot of interest for. And then also like, okay, like let me put something into like a yield-bearing thing and then take all the yield and don't that. So it's like a sort of in perpetuity kind of thing. I think those are all in our product roadmap and like, or at least some, you know, features that we've seen high requests for. And something that we see is really—

okay. Has there been a rug yet? Like, has there been like a fund that's gotten really popular, but you know that it's not going to actually amount to anything or you had to shut it down?

Uh, no, I think that at the end of the day, what's nice about the system and what is really cool about working at Endowment is all the money goes to a nonprofit at the end of the day. So even if it ends up, I mean, I think that maybe there are cases where the fund doesn't end up with as much money as we think it might, or like the fundraising is not as successful of a process, or like the NFT fundraiser wasn't as big as we thought it would be, we're still giving a lot of money to nonprofits and it's all enabled by smart contracts and crypto and that's what's awesome about it. So no, I don't think there's a rug.

Right, it would have to be an IRL rug. Like it'd have to be like a fake or like, you know, some sort of fraudulent 501 or something. I'm just always, I'm in this space, so I'm, I want the juicy secrets and the, there's always gotta be a way to exploit and stuff. So, but it's, yeah, that, that would be an IRL exploitation or something. Um, but the board would protect against that. Where I need to find a link or I need to figure out where that is, Noah, like who's, who's the board? Like who's actually like making these decisions? And then is that under docs? I think as far as like, yes. I'll post that link in the Discord. That has kind of like your—

And then, um, if you do, so if you just go to endowment.org, that's sort of like our marketing and resource site. And then app.endowment.org is the donation application. Um, and on the marketing site, there's our, our board is, is on the about page, I think. But yeah, the docs also has our board and, and all of our bylaws as a nonprofit. Um, so yeah, if you're ever, if anybody's ever like, who's making these decisions, right? That's Should be a transparent thing and we will make it transparent.

Well, that's the, our leadership. Is that the board or?

Yeah, I think so.

There's Ruth. Ruth is a board member. So that means I feel like there's other board members that aren't Ruth or these other people on here.

Our leadership. So all the, so these 5 people are on the board. Yeah. This is the board. This should be labeled. You're right. Got it.

Yeah. Okay. You're not on here, Noah.

I'm not on the nonprofit board. Um, in fact, there are 2 entities. Uh, yeah, there is a .tech, endowment.tech entity, uh, that builds the software. And then there's the nonprofit that facilitates the donor advised funds. Um, but the, that structure, I don't know, that, that might change in the future.

Right.

That's It's just in place to facilitate, yeah, this process as, as best as possible.

Are both nonprofits or one is and one isn't?

The software development, like the, the .tech entity is, is like an LLC.

Okay. And does that, does Endowment Tech only exclusively work with the nonprofit?

Yeah, it's just an entity. that has like a software development agreement with the nonprofit.

Got it. And when you do this liquidation, is it on-chain?

The liquidation is on-chain. Every interaction that you take within the application has a corresponding transaction that you could see in Etherscan and find through the application. And yeah, like our goal is to be like the on-chain facilitator. Everything that we do not only is like meant to like get to, you know, 501s at the end, but being on-chain is, is super important to us.

And it's, and how would you see like those transactions? Would I just need to look up each of these over-the-counter wallets or?

The over-the-counter ones might not be as easy to discover those transactions 'cause those are usually non-Ethereum ones. But if you go to like a fund page, a community fund page, The Grifter Fund and scroll down to donations. There's like a little box with an arrow to the right of every donation. Yeah. And that'll take you to the Etherscan transaction.

That's awesome. That's so good. Hey, so how can we pull together as a community? We, we love our Discord. We have, we have great fun together working together, and we also love to like be involved in other projects, right? This is Web3. You gotta at least have 5 Discords that you're highly active in. So what is, what are the needs of Endowment? Like, how could, like, I know that you're hiring, like there's an open call for hiring, you know, who, what are those? We're really good about job placement here at Pull Together. We have a high success rate. So yeah, what, how do, how could Pull Together people get involved? What positions are you looking to hire for? That sort of thing.

Yeah, we're looking to hire for frontend developers, full-stack developers, Smart contract developers, project managers, sort of the full suite. The open call is just like a signal that if you think you can contribute in any way, you can be a part of this project. And if you just want to hop in the Discord and like put ideas in the channel, whether it's, you know, like fundraising in unique ways, or you have questions about setting up a 501, or one of the things we do is fiscal sponsorships. So if you're setting up a DAO and you think that it is socially oriented, educational, or something along those lines, and you're looking to get that tax deductible status or have a legal entity surrounding you, we'll do official sponsorship. We were the ones that were doing the ConstitutionDAO bidding. We were the legal entity because it was an educational endeavor. So Yeah. Any questions, any thoughts, any ideas related to nonprofits and crypto, definitely jump in our Discord. If you are a frontend developer, a backend, any full stack, you know, a designer, reach out. We might have a spot for you.

I can't believe that. Who is doing all of this over-the-counter customer service? And the, you guys do, I can't believe fiscal sponsorship. That's so, Crazy to me, but also awesome. Like, I'm, I'm gonna give you a— I gotta stand up for that. I'm clapping and standing. That is incredible. Seriously.

Well, all props really go to Zach, our COO, in terms of like facilitating over-the-counter donations and fiscal sponsorships, but we're trying to help him out. So if you're somebody that is interested in helping nonprofits get into this space, You don't need to be a technical person. You don't even necessarily need to be a Web3 person. We're looking for a slew of people and definitely, yeah, we are doing, we offer a lot and we're trying to do a lot. So get involved if you want and if you can.

I work with foundations as well and there's a really, there's a cool movement among foundations called trust-based philanthropy. And it's, uh, it's generally when, when nonprofits apply for granting, it's like very labor intensive. Like you have to, you have, you hire staff just to apply for grants. Like you have a team of grant writers, grant researchers, all this stuff who report on results of the money that comes in, you know, it, and it's very much, uh, frustrating waste of money potentially. I understand there's checks and balances in it. Yeah. And that's also positive, but trust-based philanthropy in the, in this, like, um, you can, to apply for a grant, just send them any application that you've used for another grant and it works. And as far as reporting goes, it's more of just like check-ins and how can the foundation better support your, um, your endeavor as a nonprofit. And so, uh, I see this, I'm in your Discord and I see like GM philanthropists, but I guess that's, you're talking, that's, is that what you call People who use Endowment as philanthropists. That's very cool. But I wonder if you have like a foundation arm or anything, if you've worked with any foundations.

That's a good question. No, I'm not sure that we have, but it's something that we're always interested in finding new tools for nonprofits and making getting money easier for nonprofits. And if you're interested in getting involved, even, you know, at any level, like just hop in our Discord, there's a link on the Endowment website and we're Really, really responsive. So yeah, we'd love to have everyone GM philanthropists. Yeah, we just call, I guess, everybody philanthropists, but that's really just like for GMs. But I think the, you know, post in general, or there's Donor Org Connect if you're looking to hook up an org that you think is meaningful. Some of the other, you know, brainstorms, Twitter, share your Twitter. We're trying to also like expand our Discord. So if you have ideas for channels, like, We're, you know, we're in, we're Web3, you know, this is a community. This is how do we do this as a group of people and expand our impact. So don't, you know, feel shy asking questions. Don't feel like you need complete crypto knowledge to get involved at all. Just ask your question, shoot your shot, and we'll help you. And if you have a specific, you know, maybe a question specific to endowment or something you don't want to ask in the public channel, you can open up a ticket in our Discord and that'll come directly to the team. And we can talk, I guess, sort of, yeah, in private in there.

That brings up, and you answered Smart Investor's question. There's a question in the Discord listener about how can newbies get involved? How can people who are new to crypto in the space, but really vibe with that nonprofit, world-changing aspect, how can they get involved? And that, so, so you, you answered that as like, just hop in the Discord and that, that'd be a really great way to start see— getting ideas and providing ideas and kind of working together on that. But I'm wondering that, that question sparked like, why not take credit cards as well? Like, why not take ACH donations? You're already taking crypto, which is the hardest thing to do. So why not take the easier stuff?

Yeah, we do on some orgs facilitate PayPal payments, but I think it's a good question and it's something that seems to make sense. Like, just because the money, you know, comes from, can come from, or can, you know, maybe like we're building smart contract infrastructure doesn't mean that introducing external money is like a bad thing for us. I think that's a good idea. And I think that money can be part of any sort of interesting distributive funding system that, you know, might be introduced.

Yeah, 'cause I think I love that the social aspect is built in with crypto. Like you're seeing the wallets that are doing it, you're seeing kind of the social, yeah, crypto has that DAO. Where's the Discord? How can I get involved? Already baked into it. Noah, we are wrapping up now. We are coming to the end of our time, but But I noticed that you, we have some questions in the Discord that you were referencing. I don't know if I asked them, so I just always like to ask, hey, do we need to talk about something that you wanted to talk about that you think is really important that I might have missed?

I think that I see several questions about, you know, other DeFi protocols or other, you know, projects in the space connecting with Endowment. And one interesting statistic that I like to bring up is that 6% of philanthropy in the United States comes from corporations. So 94% of all money that's donated to nonprofits in the United States is coming from individuals. And I think something that Web3 can change is let's get a lot of that money directed towards mission-driven causes. you know, there's insane treasuries out there, you know, that could benefit themselves from creating a cause around what they're trying to do. So whether that means opening a fund or talking to us about how they can integrate with our contracts or, you know, just sending money to endow.eth and saying, let's get this to this specific org. I think that one of the really exciting things about Web3 is that a lot of people are very interested in impact and social equity inequality. And we're working our best to integrate with other protocols, whether that means, yeah, like splitting their treasury or their income with a fund, which benefits them in terms of tax in the long term anyway. I think we really want to create in this new economic superstructure more ways to get money to nonprofits and more of a a social incentive to do that.

Do you do marketing, Noah? 'Cause that, I love that line about that, or that stat, that storytelling about how 94% of, I have to fact-check you obviously, but 94% of donations— I'm

gonna say 6 or 9%, but I'm pretty sure it's 6%. But yeah.

Over 90% of all donations to nonprofits in the US are from individuals, and Web3 can change that. Like Web3 can sway that. Like what if, you know, it was baked into the DNA and the values of these DAOs, which it is, to seek the good and betterment. And so yeah, that's what I love the multi-gig delegator tool of PoolTogether. Not that, no, I don't wrap everything up and point it back at PoolTogether, but I do see, I like the idea of like, hey, you can win prizes in this savings account. And you can be generous even with those prizes. Like you can give them out, you can give them away to other people, other wallets, which is really cool at no loss to you. So anyway, it's just, there's a, this is a warm fuzzy call and I appreciate the work you're doing, Noah. Like this is really exciting. I'm like really jazzed about this. Gotta do some research. I'm in your Discord. I want to talk more about foundations and other ways I can help. But thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, one last time, like, join our Discord if you— even if you just, you know, are lightly interested and want to see some cool ideas. But yeah, thanks again for having me. I look forward to, you know, working with the PoolTogether community, see how we can create more impact. Yeah, hope everyone has a good one.

Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. None of this was financial advice. We really appreciate your attention. That's the royal we. I appreciate your attention, but the PoolTogether community appreciates your attention. Thanks for listening. And hey, why not go over to pooltogether.com and deposit, huh? Bye. Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the PoolTogether Discord and let us know.