Bitcoin 100: Developed Specifically for Non-Profits

[freedomno1]

Hi there, we've been working to get Canadian charities to accept bitcoin donations for around a month.    
We've got a few in the works but this is the first one that has fully implemented it.  

http://www.womenscentrecalgary.org/donate/donate-with-bitcoin/

The Women's Centre of Calgary provides a safe place for all women. They also offer a wide variety of services to help low income and immigrant families.

Checked, reviewed, approved, and donation sent: https://blockchain.info/tx/7058ab24b4f26a667c5250b13453cd0aabb6751d4c4444b8d5abbacbb182a504

Looking forward to a cool article on it in the Herald or Sun sometime
And its nice to see one get approved now and then

[BitcoinBrains]

Hi there, we've been working to get Canadian charities to accept bitcoin donations for around a month.    
We've got a few in the works but this is the first one that has fully implemented it.  

http://www.womenscentrecalgary.org/donate/donate-with-bitcoin/

The Women's Centre of Calgary provides a safe place for all women. They also offer a wide variety of services to help low income and immigrant families.

Checked, reviewed, approved, and donation sent: https://blockchain.info/tx/7058ab24b4f26a667c5250b13453cd0aabb6751d4c4444b8d5abbacbb182a504

Looking forward to a cool article on it in the Herald or Sun sometime
And its nice to see one get approved now and then

There should be some media attention coming in the next couple weeks.

[Rassah]

Hi there, we've been working to get Canadian charities to accept bitcoin donations for around a month.   
We've got a few in the works but this is the first one that has fully implemented it. 

http://www.womenscentrecalgary.org/donate/donate-with-bitcoin/

The Women's Centre of Calgary provides a safe place for all women. They also offer a wide variety of services to help low income and immigrant families.

Checked, reviewed, approved, and donation sent: https://blockchain.info/tx/7058ab24b4f26a667c5250b13453cd0aabb6751d4c4444b8d5abbacbb182a504

We've got a couple other charities signed up that haven't implemented it successfully yet. How long will this program continue?

Until our account runs out of money

Looking forward to a cool article on it in the Herald or Sun sometime
And its nice to see one get approved now and then

They were quite ecstatic about the donation! Here's the e-mail I got:

From: Susan G.
5:46 PM (16 hours ago)

to me
That's great Rassah. Thanks. Susan

--
Susan G.
Executive Director
Women’s Centre of Calgary

[ChessGuy]

Hi Bitcoin100-

I am on the board for a Non-Profit Chess Club in Greensboro, North Carolina.

http://greensborochess.org/

If we can be approved to receive a donation, I have convinced them to implement Bitcoin on the website.

Thanks for your time, and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

[drewdtom]

Hello again Bitcoin100,

I have been working with Libertopia.org on their upcoming event in San Diego this year and have been talking with them about the benefits of bitcoin over the last so many years. This annual educational program is in its 5th year and the organizers are happy to announce that they have formed and been approved as a 501c3 organization. Libertopia has been experimenting with bitcoin for a few years now but this year the ticket ordering process has been integrated with BitPay and the webmaster is working on getting a general donation widget and/or bitcoin logo on the site.

I wanted to know if you would consider this non political, educational operation for your endowment. In the past the event has played host to some well know speakers in the space including Trace Mayer, Jeff Berwick and others. This year is no exception with members of the bitcoin community presenting on a wide variety of topics.

You can learn more about the organization and this years event at Libertopia.org and if the 501c3 status needs to be provided I can follow up with Rassah on email and loop him in with the organizers.

This is from the bottom of the about page:

"Libertopia is a project of the Libertalia Foundation, Inc., a 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit organization, dedicated to spreading the principles of free-market economics and voluntaryism. Donations are tax-deductible. We respectfully ask for your help as we strive to expand and promote a society where all interactions are voluntary."

Thanks again for all you do.  Join us in San Diego if you can!

[BitcoinBrains]

Another good Canadian charity is now accepting bitcoin donations.

http://giveamile.org/donate/

From their website:

"Give A Mile is a Not-For-Profit looking to enable people to visit terminally ill friends & family through crowdfunding of flights via micro-donations of travel points."

[theatreworkspro]

Hi all,
I've got a question about eligibility.

I'm a board member of a small non-profit theatre company in Toronto. A few colleagues of mine in the nonprofit sector here have spoken highly of the bitcoin100 program, and I'm interested in seeing if our theatre company qualifies. We're registered as a Canadian charity (http://www.theatreworksproductions.com/support/), which I'm assuming is one of the minimum requirements for approval.

In terms of process/steps forward to see if we qualify, if I understand correctly, one we're approved, we can go ahead and set up a system to receive bitcoin donations?

Thanks in advance for your time,
Theatreworks Productions

[BitcoinBrains]

Hi all,
I've got a question about eligibility.

I'm a board member of a small non-profit theatre company in Toronto. A few colleagues of mine in the nonprofit sector here have spoken highly of the bitcoin100 program, and I'm interested in seeing if our theatre company qualifies. We're registered as a Canadian charity (http://www.theatreworksproductions.com/support/), which I'm assuming is one of the minimum requirements for approval.

In terms of process/steps forward to see if we qualify, if I understand correctly, one we're approved, we can go ahead and set up a system to receive bitcoin donations?

Thanks in advance for your time,
Theatreworks Productions

Let me know if you need any help getting set up to accept bitcoin. We are a bitcoin business in Calgary. I'd be happy to help you free of charge.

[tbt]

Hi Rassah.

I used to serve on the Board of Directors of the Northern California
DX Foundation (www.ncdxf.org).  This is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) charity
that promotes international scientific expeditions and education
through amateur radio.

I've been working on trying to convince NCDXF to accept bitcoin
donations, and I think I'm close.  If there's a chance they'd be
eligible for a $1000 donation from Bitcoin 100, that might just be the
last little nudge I'd need to get them to start accepting bitcoin
donations.

Please take a quick look at the NCDXF web site and see if you think
the organization might be a candidate for a Bitcoin 100 grant.  If so,
let me know the process, and I will put the idea back in front of the
current Board of Directors.

Regards,

Tim Totten

Quick glance at this and they also look ok, I guess. Maybe they can help set up some radios to broadcast bitcoin blocks around the world

Hi Rassah and team.  Just following up here.  NCDXF was approved back in August, I believe.  It took a while, but we finally got bitcoin donations up and running on our web site a few weeks ago.  We've been publicizing it in our newsletter, as well as Twitter, Facebook, etc., and we have already enjoyed a few donations as a result.

Is there something we need to do now to receive the $1000 Bitcoin 100 donation?  Thanks again for all your support!

Regards,
Tim

[hashman]

I just went through this thread and made a few more donations to recently posted organizations.  

People, if you want to receive coin give us your address!!  You want to make it easy for people to send you public cash.  This is total no brainer stuff.
  
A few of the organizations piped me to a website, asked me to pledge an amount in some odd unit I'm not familiar with, and made me mash the keyboard on fields that said "email" ..  "address"..  etc..  and to make matters worse it doesn't even look like it is the organization receiving the money because I saw links from coinbase, cavirtex, bitpay, etc..  who knows what fraction of any of that coin will make it to the intended recipient.  Many times I have started down that kind of path and stopped.  We have better things to do with our time and if the recipient doesn't have a clue what they are doing, probably your coin is better spent elsewhere.

I want to send you funds.  Why are you messing with web forms and third party limited liability corporations?  This is dead simple stuff.   

Just thought I would report my experience.  Bitcoin 100 team and charities, keep up the good work!  

  

[BitcoinBrains]

I just went through this thread and made a few more donations to recently posted organizations.  

People, if you want to receive coin give us your address!!  You want to make it easy for people to send you public cash.  This is total no brainer stuff.
  
A few of the organizations piped me to a website, asked me to pledge an amount in some odd unit I'm not familiar with, and made me mash the keyboard on fields that said "email" ..  "address"..  etc..  and to make matters worse it doesn't even look like it is the organization receiving the money because I saw links from coinbase, cavirtex, bitpay, etc..  who knows what fraction of any of that coin will make it to the intended recipient.  Many times I have started down that kind of path and stopped.  We have better things to do with our time and if the recipient doesn't have a clue what they are doing, probably your coin is better spent elsewhere.

I want to send you funds.  Why are you messing with web forms and third party limited liability corporations?  This is dead simple stuff.   

Just thought I would report my experience.  Bitcoin 100 team and charities, keep up the good work!  

  

These 3rd party payment processors make it easier for organizations who don't fully understand bitcoin to still make use of the technology.
As to how much makes it to the charity, all 3 of those companies that you mentioned do a great job with that I think.
Coinbase charges 0% fees for all merchants on the first $1,000,000 in volume and 1% after that.
Bitpay is free forever unless you want advanced features like quickbooks tie ins.
CAVIRTEX is free for the first $100,000 in volume for all merchants and 0.5% after that. Charities are free forever.

I do agree the donations systems could be easier to use though.
The last charity that I posted, http://giveamile.org/donate/ is using a pretty neat widget that I haven't seen before. I'm not sure if/when/where those BTC are being converted to fiat or at what cost though.

[MrCallahan]

I can chime in on the http://giveamile.org/donate/ aspect. (thanks BitcoinBrains for posting that!)

I volunteer for these guys, and I was the one that convinced them to accept it, took a few conversations, but eventually they caved in and opened up to the idea. The guy that started this organization has created a pretty awesome idea, and I'd love to see the bitcoin community show them some love!

The website is built by volunteers on their spare time, It's all people that want to help, but don't necessary have the full skill sets to implement it. So it's rough around the edges, but it's been getting the job done for now. They are trying out the QuadrigaCX exchange, due to the features it has. It offers the ability to have an auto-sell address (see below) which I haven't seen on the other Canadian exchange sites. Right now, the ability to auto-sell is important to them, because they require the fiat to pay for taxes on the flights they book for these people in need.

For the Bitcoin donation, I suggested to them to make it as easy as possible to donate, without having to go through any hurdles, So they implemented the widget on www.coinwidget.com. I wish there was an option for the size of the button, to make it a bit bigger. (if you guys know any, please share, and I'll pass it along to them)

But for the sake of making things easier, here is the Bitcoin address and QR code to help make things a bit smoother, hoping to get them to add it to their site soon.

https://i.imgur.com/BJbQOMB.png
BTC: 14wgXCgSN5Jj2eE5YxSULsavZJYvy29zQE

[Ente]

I just went through this thread and made a few more donations to recently posted organizations.  

People, if you want to receive coin give us your address!!  You want to make it easy for people to send you public cash.  This is total no brainer stuff.
  
A few of the organizations piped me to a website, asked me to pledge an amount in some odd unit I'm not familiar with, and made me mash the keyboard on fields that said "email" ..  "address"..  etc..  and to make matters worse it doesn't even look like it is the organization receiving the money because I saw links from coinbase, cavirtex, bitpay, etc..  who knows what fraction of any of that coin will make it to the intended recipient.  Many times I have started down that kind of path and stopped.  We have better things to do with our time and if the recipient doesn't have a clue what they are doing, probably your coin is better spent elsewhere.

I want to send you funds.  Why are you messing with web forms and third party limited liability corporations?  This is dead simple stuff.   

Just thought I would report my experience.  Bitcoin 100 team and charities, keep up the good work!  

Oh you are so right!
I would like to donate more. Regularly, small amounts, to many many projects.
For this, I need a simple list of bitcoin adresses. That's all. Every additional  step is just in the way.

How about a website which lists non-profit donation adresses?

Name - Field of work - Website - BTC Address

To make it manipulationproof, users could verify the entry and vote or flag, or the like.
I would check for new entries from time to time, check on their website if the entry is legit, and, if I like their cause, donate.

The thing about non-profits is that they need members (to have any influence) and a somewhat constant donation income they can calculate with. That 1000$ one-time donation is great, no question. I guess most would, however, prefer a 1$ donation every day for the next three years.

And that's what I want to do. Send small donations to a huge list of charities on a regular basis. Monthly, weekly, whatever. But for this, I, we, need a very simple way to do this. And this starts with a trusted central place to collect donation addresses.

Ente

[qwk]

I would like to donate more. Regularly, small amounts, to many many projects.
For this, I need a simple list of bitcoin adresses. That's all. Every additional  step is just in the way.

How about a website which lists non-profit donation adresses?

Name - Field of work - Website - BTC Address

To make it manipulationproof, users could verify the entry and vote or flag, or the like.
I would check for new entries from time to time, check on their website if the entry is legit, and, if I like their cause, donate.

The thing about non-profits is that they need members (to have any influence) and a somewhat constant donation income they can calculate with. That 1000$ one-time donation is great, no question. I guess most would, however, prefer a 1$ donation every day for the next three years.

And that's what I want to do. Send small donations to a huge list of charities on a regular basis. Monthly, weekly, whatever. But for this, I, we, need a very simple way to do this. And this starts with a trusted central place to collect donation addresses.

I still would like to see this happen:

Just an idea I always wanted to see come to life:

1. make charities accept bitcoin over a public address.
2. top all donations toward that particular address with some more bitcoins from our funds, based on the ratio of received donations.

E.g. you have 2 organizations who accept bitcoin donations over addresses 1abc… and 1xyz…
In one month, charity 1abc… receives 6 BTC in donations, charity 1xyz receives 4 BTC in donations.
Out of our funds we donate 1 BTC per month (or some percentage of whatever we have) to all the charities, so 1abc… will receive 0.6 BTC from us and charity 1xyz.. will receive 0.4.

That way, we'd not only incentivize charities to accept bitcoin donations, we would also incentivize them to do so in a very transparent way over a public bitcoin address, which is one of the things I'd like to see from charities anyways. Also, donators would be incentivized to donate bitcoins rather than Euros or Dollars, since that would result in a higher donation from us chipping in.

I still have an open pledge of 10 BTC towards Bitcoin 100.
I'm willing to donate those funds fully or partially to anyone who dedicates himself to making it happen.

[Ente]

It will be difficult to prevent cheating, with insiders "donating" solely to receive the top-up from btc-100.

And I would prefer to have many people donate little, instead of the other way round.

But then our two ideas don't contradict each other. They'll coexist just fine, and both get more moneyz to charity and more bitcoins moving through the ecosystem :-)

Ente

[qwk]

It will be difficult to prevent cheating, with insiders "donating" solely to receive the top-up from btc-100.

From the bitcoin-only perspective, absolutely.
But for a charity, they'd have to account for the donations they received.
So, even if they "cheated", the charity would still receive 100% of the fake donations.
I'm okay with that

We'll still have to have some mechanism in place to check if our charities are for real, no doubt about that.

And I would prefer to have many people donate little, instead of the other way round.

I see what you mean.
Maybe something like diminishing returns for higher amounts?
I.e., the top receiving charity will receive a lower percentage than the lowest receiving ones?

But then our two ideas don't contradict each other. They'll coexist just fine, and both get more moneyz to charity and more bitcoins moving through the ecosystem :-)

That's the spirit.
If any system we come up with encourages people to donate to charities rather by Bitcoin than by Paypal or whatever, this is the way to go.
If we can make people exchange their dollars into BTC because they know that finally that will result in a higher donation towards their chosen charity, this is the way to go.
If whatever we do encourages charities to handle their donations in the most transparent way possible, i.e. over the blockchain, this is definitely the way to go.

[BitcoinBrains]

The Women's Centre of Calgary is now testing out Lighthouse with a crowd funding campaign. 
http://bitcoinbrains.com/womenscentre/

So far it looks like Lighthouse works pretty well. I'd recommend any charities try it out.

[WompRat]

Is there a UK equivalent of Bitcoin 100 ? 

[Ente]

Is there a UK equivalent of Bitcoin 100 ? 

Depends on what you have in mind. By itself, Bitcoin100 is international and borderless - just like Bitcoin.

Ente

[WompRat]

Is there a UK equivalent of Bitcoin 100 ? 

Depends on what you have in mind. By itself, Bitcoin100 is international and borderless - just like Bitcoin.

Ente

Sure I get that, but the site (http://bitcoin100.org) seems very US biased.  Charity laws, regulations and even culture can vary quite a bit country to country and I just wondered if there was anybody doing the same in other regions.  The charity list doesn't include the RNLI (as far as I could see anyway) which are the biggest UK charity I know of accepting bitcoin and there is no regional or topical breakdown.  This is not a criticism, but I it seemed like it would be helpful to start collating some information that was more locally focused.