How Tech Is Transforming Philanthropy Innovation

Transcript

Please help me welcome him. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me here. Actually, I'm the only thing standing between you and lunch, but I'll try to keep it dynamic and uh interesting enough, I hope. So, yeah, bear with me. It's the first time we're actually using this new deck, so I hope there won't be any surprises or anything like that. Um I'm here actually to tell you today about uh how we actually fundraising and philanthropy is being redefined by technology and um there's going to be another session later on with Mikle right there where I'll be talking more about uh this part of philanthropy using data and how we can do uh amazing things like offsetting and

things like that. So today I will be focusing on our major project so far which is a stake pool. I'll tell you more about it. I'm Alberto Gossi as you heard about it. The name doesn't say it. I'm actually from Geneva. So with a Spanish mother and uh what actually uh this says is like I come from a very multicultural background with stories of forcibly displaced people in my generations as well. So that's something that really um was important for a lot of people like how can you do impact with today's technology. I'm part of Switzerland for INHR. So, as you can see it over there, the Switzerland 4 is super important. Not only because I'm I'm very proud of coming from such an amazing country, but also for the fact that we're a kind of a spin-off joint

venture uh foundation, Swiss foundation from UNR, the UN refugee agency. And that means a lot because uh we can actually work as a kind of a sandbox to try and fail and learn and do things before we actually scale it up. So the UN doesn't get like too nervous and given a times it's a good thing. So here we are. Uh I don't know where we are actually. Here we are. Okay. So you probably heard in the news everywhere we've we're facing quite a few challenges and uh so we work for the UN refugee agency which is taking care of refugees. What is a refugee? is someone who is fleeing their

home because of persecution or war. So as soon as they cross a border, they are defined as a refugee. When they stay within the borders of a country, they are defined as an internally displaced person. So it's a same mandate, same protection with different like outcomes and different things we can actually do for them. Uh three big challenges ma main ones. Uh if you thought that the US are the only ones cutting funds, you're wrong. Actually, we do that too in Switzerland. Uh people are getting nervous everywhere. So funds are being diverted to other priorities and that's actually one of the fact one of the results here. Uh another thing uh going uh badly for us is the fact that the

number of people for civil displaced around the world is increasing exponentially. So I remember like speaking about these projects a few months ago even year and uh the main issue was well you know we've got like more people we need to serve uh but the budgets are actually staying the same now I'm coming to you here talking to you actually it's about budgets are being cut not even like staying the same so third big challenge is what we call ear marking so if you don't work in philanthropy or fundraising you might never have seen this but ear marking is super important I'll give you a very straightforward example. There is a correlation between mediated crisis and the fund we get. So if you let's say you get funding for Ukraine a lot and all of

a sudden you have like this area where you need even more funds and they get less funds. Well, you cannot spend what you receive for Ukraine in another country. So what you're seeing here is actually uh that the ear mark is a small green part there. That's the only thing we get for countries that are less mediated or less let's say yeah talked about. So the issue when you work for an organization like the UN refugee agency is that we're not like really an organization that goes like uh that only goes to places where crisis hit or war. We also stay behind when the you know the country is not in media anymore because we manage refugee camps. We make sure that refugees uh rights are respected. So what happens when you

don't talk about it? Like think about Central African Republic, think about Congo. I mean Sudan now it's a bit better unfortunately because things are going bad again there. But so lots of countries that where we present don't get fund at all. So we need to fund them and we don't know how to do that. I mean we know but we we do whatever we have but it's my colleague. So let's so I'm senior innovation lead and uh how what what did we come up for with is actually one of our ideas that came up like I think two years ago with the Carano Foundation which uh essentially you know I told you about this sandbox uh things that tries to avoid making my uh bosses nervous at UNHQ and uh we pretty much

you know they told me don't don't do crypto it's bad reputationally it's risky all that and we say okay let's try to do crypto without doing crypto that was the the basis of the briefing and how did we do that by actually creating a stake bowl together with the Cardano Foundation which uh back in the days actually proof of stake great for us you know the difference between proof of work proof of stake so better sustainability wise better repetitionally and we said let's open like a stake pool uh you operate it by a financial actor called Taurus and we don't hold any crypto. People can delegate their cryptocurrencies and give us the rewards are generated

through the proof ofstake process. So this opened the way to a new idea uh new let's say product fundraising product which was either you can direct stake meaning people delegating their funds and it pretty much yeah I mean generates interest or rewards for us that are then sent on a monthly base in Swiss Franks so I'm not doing any crypto anywhere so or actually done it to stake we can also receive funds that will be pledged and actually staked in our stake pool.

So two different things. So reward allocation was also quite straightforward. 80% was most pressing refugee needs and 14 undefunded countries. So the countries I was telling you about before and 20% towards innovation funds. UNHR is developing uh uh innovation for innovation funds. And uh we say that 20% of the of that was actually funny enough earmarked towards those funds. today that's uh where we are with uh a bit more than six million ADAS delegated uh from 207 wallets. So that's something I point I'll get back to as well. It means also 207 donors uh that we usually never speak to. So that's also an interesting fact. And uh we it's not

there there but we generated around 340,000 ADA so far in less than two years. So for us it's very interesting. We're in the process of scaling it up. As I was telling you, we're testing things now. We can actually it's okay uh to hold a little bit of crypto to start trying new things and explore and innovate. And um the interesting thing about this is really about uh ADA and Cordano allows you to actually uh keep people in control of their funds. So that's a big plus as well in terms of you know FEMA financial institutions because if we get out of Switzerland which we're actually doing scaling up this project that's something very important you know the fact that they're always in control they

can take it away they can put it back that's super important the sustainable impact I'll get back to to this afterwards as well uh we also building you have to imagine that we're building this project is kind of at the centerpiece and we're building like all around other pilot projects that are actually linked to that and traceability obviously is one of them. So here you you can hear more this afternoon if you come at 2 p.m. after lunch. Uh cost free assistance again it's something we uh I started actually my career in advertising. So I like you know like little bit of taglines stuff like that and our first tagline was stake instead of donate you know like it didn't work but uh it was fun. So it was a little

bit like the continuation of this explain a bit more like institutionally you know like cost free systems doesn't cost anything okay how do we spend it uh emergency shelter materials clean water access educational supplies infrastructure medical assistance and other like more I would say boring but very important jobs actually and often it's uh my comm's colleagues will probably be nervous if I if they hear me talk like that but it's it's a fact And it's it's also like the mediation part the is the crisis in the news is it not is it a lot of the times you see humanitarians you think about you know the old like r bag of rice helping kids things like that. Well actually one of the most important

things we do at UNHR is actually providing people with an ID like uh and like a small card that allows them to actually cross a border and get services. So that also requires fund but it's less I mean for some people it's not as as I mean at least not media. Um something we're developing right now is actually a dashboard for you to see exactly actually we spend uh the funds how much you've been uh generating in terms of rewards and also for us to be able to actually engage with donors. And that's an aspect of of this project that uh that we like more and more is the fact that we can actually engage with more donors and the donors that we usually never speak to new audiences in

other countries as well and also younger audiences. If you you if you live in Switzerland and it's probably not the case of everyone here, you get that typical like envelope every Christmas time that pretty much nobody opens. Uh that's the former way and it's still 96% of the way that people donate today in terms of individuals. So my parents do that. Uh when they were my age and I'm 43, they were doing it. I'm not doing that. I mean and I know less and less people doing it. So that means that we're facing like a market problem that with like an audience like a target audience is actually decreasing here on the earth because unfortunately these people are yeah dying. Um so how do we renew that

basis? So we can't afford not to come up with new ideas and explore and test new things. Um as I was telling you this is a centerpiece and we tried other things as well to engage with the with the with the audiences. So for us NFTs it wasn't really about selling about making money out of it. It was more an engagement one. And uh what's fantastic about uh in particular the Kardano foundation that I mean the Colano community is the fact that as soon as you were saying okay I'm open uh I'm looking for interesting projects I mean people are getting super motivated and we're super happy about you know having like an organization like ours uh being you know like active in the community. So we got like amazing project like a mapping project of of

areas where we're active. Uh so it was like an educational project as well. You can see like on the map we even had the typical profile picture goats collaboration. We did an exhibition of art basel on the right which was you know like a based on the on the numbers of refugees in country being buildings. And the first one that you have on your left is actually an AI generated with a simple not complex prompt that by an artist saying okay what the world will look like without displacement taken as an example of every underfunded country like the major underfunded countries. So that's one of the results. This one is actually uh Iran. So last but not least and uh you can

recognize me there. That was last week. Uh that's a little bit more, you know, when I was telling you about not scaring my uh leadership at UN and things like that. Well, that that was a little bit scary for them because uh I mean that's a little bit of a a personal like satisfaction in particular because I come from Switzerland. It's bringing uh cowbell within the UN building. Um so, you know, bring a bit of Swissness into it. We got you know, as you can imagine, you can see the UN security there. when they uh opened the box and saw that it was a cowbell, they say, "Okay, what is this?

What are you doing? What's happening?" And actually it's maybe you recognize it but it's the Swiss stock market bell to officially launch NetP which is a first um you know and again thanks to our partner Cardon Foundation and the issue Swiss uh we tried a new thing which was during a conference I'm talking conference with permanent missions and whether the US Switzerland confeder confederation academia and everyone we say you know what let's celebrate a new like innovative way to fund raise at least we're trying something new by uh launching officially a new ETP live during the conference by ringing the bell and yeah that rings and the sound is super super loud I confirm and uh how

does it work it's the collateral of the ETP uh being staked on our st pool so that's a new product launched last week and yeah we're looking for more and more and we're working on more uh on other ways to actually uh explore new ways to s I mean to support the refugee cost. Thank you. I don't know if you have questions. Yeah. Oh, okay. So, where like location? But actually, I can tell you both.

Yeah. Um so the difficult part now is obviously with the budget cuts everything is frozen meaning like if I want to do something I have to do it on my own or find like super partners like hey here Sandro so that's that's a difficult part because I'm quite hyperactive and I like to you know really work on a lot of things and then uh you know at home people are getting mad the kids three years old and seven year old if you see what I mean so but what is Um so we're trying to focus on things that really make sense immediately in a way.

So we're scaling this up uh and we're testing it as a potential uh B2B solution something that institutional and private sector like we're talking about companies can offer to the clients. So think about digital asset holders like big banks and so far we started like really uh reaching out to them last week as well and the first result we're getting are super interesting. We're talking about cannot mention but we're talking about big actors who really I was like okay I thought they were quite having cold feet with that but the the guys are like okay we're venturing to this we're interesting in this and actually this makes sense the ETP and the sleep pool because for uh individual clients but also actually for you know institutional

partners so that's super encouraging so we're continuing that way we're expanding geographically so we have areas of the world as a UN agency the issue is that some countries are more favorable than others regarding cryptocurrency or blockchain. We are definitely in a great place because it's a transparent and and clear legal framework in Switzerland. So we can do a lot of things when you go to other countries and as a UN agency you're everywhere. Uh people are less that comfortable with. So the next step right now is really going to those countries where actually it's you have also a kind of a like clear framework and expand the stick pool reach. So that that will be so you have the geographically you have the product like expansion and then yes

we also did some parallel projects uh we worked with um launch notes and launched a stick pool and we didn't launch a stick pool but we actually able to stick for impact on ETH as well. We just launched this and uh and obviously we we also developing other other projects that allows you to donate to stake to uh also track your donation things like that. Thank you so much Alvo. We actually got to help launch one of his NFT projects with the UNHCR at Decentral House in Geneva uh just last year which was really fun to see all the activity around that as well. So um we're always excited to see what you guys are coming up with next. Um, and now say thank you Elro. Thank you so much.