The Interledger Community 🌱: Becks Boone

Rootable — Final Grant Report

Becks Boone — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 20:54:17 +0000

Rootable is a donation-based, fair exchange software that provides food distribution logistics to any community-based group, regardless of ability to pay. In exchange for software, an organization contributes time, skills, money, or some combination of the three. With this funding, we explored how Web Monetization might support funding of Rootable and the organizations that use it.

Project Update

Web Monetization for Rootable

"Food Justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food" - justfood.org

Fair exchange software is an important option when thinking about Food Justice. While national food assistance programs are life-saving institutions for people experiencing food insecurity, they are often barriered, stressful, inequitable, and inconvenient for users. Shame, stigma, and stress of using these traditional systems also increase health disparities. Smaller, community-based organizations reduce barriers to food access, like transportation, paperwork, and stigma. Rootable supports organizations with the relationships and local knowledge to improve food access. Those organizations should have access to tools that help them organize around eating healthy food. At the same time, software is expensive to build and maintain. In the past, we've gotten by with volunteer developers. But, we've learned the importance of compensated, dedicated development.

I won't go into the ins and outs of funding nonprofits, you're welcome to read more about it here and here. For many different reasons, we are interested in earned-income models. We see the potential in using Web Monetization to support those models.

Before we concluded that Web Monetization was a viable option, we considered what content we could provide. Community-based nonprofits struggle with educating the public on their mission and services. We see an opportunity to support this goal through automatic content generation based on the data produced by their daily logistics. Here's our research to back that up and our brainstorming session around content.

Web Monetization for Nonprofits

The Food Rescue Alliance (FRA) is a network of food rescue initiatives working towards a more just and less wasteful food system, locally and regionally. It's the organization that created Rootable. FRA facilitates the development and growth of community-based food rescues. Our network believes that healthy food access and food waste are best addressed at the local level by member organizations that hold strong intra-community relationships. FRA members share resources, best practices, and innovative approaches toward actualizing common goals and values. The network's members redistribute an average of 20,000,000+ pounds of food to 600,000+ low-income individuals annually.

We concluded that Web Monetization also has the potential for funding FRA member organizations. Influenced by Coil & Colorado Gives Day, we imagine an implementation with the following technical parts:

A platform where interested individual donors (users) could view the offerings of various FRA members and connect their wallets.
A browser extension that would be installed by the interested donors. The browser extension would automatically detect when a user was on an FRA member webpage.
For an FRA member, the platform would host web pages linked to the Web Monetization API. These web pages could host engaging digital content (e.g., resources, videos, games, and live streams for fundraising). FRA members could also link to their own hosted web apps and resources. By utilizing Web Monetization, users can connect their payment stream from the browser extension.

Read a more detailed account here.

How it Went

Our team came from many different perspectives, and we spent a lot of time learning from one another:

Casey Hunt & Aarjav Chauhan, two masters students from the University of Colorado Boulder's ATLAS Institute. They performed the majority of the research into how web monetization might be applied to nonprofit software.
Hayden Dansky, executive director of Boulder Food Rescue. They provided context into how nonprofits get funded.
Becks Boone, product manager of Rootable. They attempted to guide the conversations and research.
Food Rescue Alliance member organizations. They contributed to the conversation as needed.

We found the challenges of coming together on a new topic, from different contexts, during Covid & remote meetings tough to navigate at times. It slowed us down, and we needed twice the amount of time we initially estimated to complete the project.

Progress on objectives

We successfully completed our main objective, produce a white paper that answered the following questions:

Will Web Monetization help nonprofits diversify funding for critical logistics software?
What are possible models?
How might nonprofits implement Web Monetization?

The last question was meant to get into the implementation details, which we did not have the opportunity to explore in-depth.

Key activities

Weekly Meetings to share insights.
Understanding the nuts & bolts of web monetization.
Literature review of nonprofit funding models.
Literature review of social enterprise models.
Domain expert perspective on nonprofit funding models.
Brainstorm digital content from daily logistics data.
In-depth examination of funding models & web monetization.
Interview FRA member organizations to understand needs.
White paper summarizing research.

Communications and marketing

We did not have a marketing budget and have not yet communicated about our work beyond the web monetization community. However, we have some ideas. But, we will need to find the organizational capacity to make our learnings digestible to those unfamiliar with the topic. Here are some thoughts:

Sharing work through university channels.
Write a post about how fundings structures/organizational * structures reflect institutional power and how FRA is trying to change that, using web monetization as a case study.
FRA Social Media: steps of the process, Web Monetization 101, link to Web Monetization community blog posts, FRA member workshop
Follow up with FRA members who we interviewed to let them know how the project went

What’s next?

The realm of possibilities from different members of our team:

Build a Coil alternative to address the issues we would need/overcome the challenges we face.
Engage in broader research with the nonprofit community about potential use cases of Web Monetization:
- Collaborate on Coil alternative?
- Explore how Web Monetization makes the transfer of grants/funds to International organizations more transparent/easier.
Build prototypes of solutions proposed:
- Coil/Colorado Gives Day inspired platform.
- Content: Games, Data Visualizations, Maps, educative materials, etc

Before we implement Web Monetization, we need to flesh out our content. Short-term next steps:

Apply for art grants to implement digital art content generated from data.
Create a plain-language summation of our work.
Share our work with FRA member organizations & platform co-op owners.
Explore the viability of our earned-income business model.
Identify established funding technology to use alongside Web Monetization until it's more widely adopted.

What community support would benefit your project?

Avenues of support identified by our team:

Connect with someone who has implemented Web Monetization in a native mobile application.
Understand how the onboarding process to Web Monetization might change in the near future.
Access to developers of Coil to know how to build another link/alternative.
Connect to other nonprofit organizations interested in implementing Web Monetization/being part of follow-up studies.
Connect with folks who started Web Monetization to hear how they address systems change challenges of pushing this idea forward.

Additional comments

Additional thoughts from our team:

Accessibility of Web Monetization. The idea is amazing and could change the web. However, our research showed that very few users utilize browser extensions. Mobile users are the largest portion of the market. In addition, because mobile use requires users to download a second browsing application and then the extension, I worry that this makes it difficult for people to utilize Coil.
Systems Change. Web Monetization & Coil are big ideas/values/experiments for an alternative system on the web. It mirrors some of the same motivations we have for Rootable. Building a system different from the one we're operating in. There are some challenges operating in an unknown space. Some lessons learned might be beneficial to one another. Recognizing we're working on a minuscule budget, while Web Monetization has a lot of money behind it.

Nonprofit Fundraising Tactics

Becks Boone — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 16:26:30 +0000

This is the second post in a two-post series from Hayden Dansky @hdansky. Dansky shares their experience as the Executive Director of Boulder Food Rescue and took the organization from an underfunded grassroots effort to a sustainably funded nonprofit. This post explores revenue sources typically available to nonprofits. The first post in this series specifically explores philanthropy as a funding source.

Ready to start fundraising but have no idea where to begin? Let’s examine some ways nonprofits are doing this and the pros and cons of opportunities.

Grants (Foundation and Government)

Many people think this is the primary revenue source for nonprofits. But it’s not always the biggest line item, nor should it be. First of all, if you’re getting started, it’s tough to secure grants. But once you do, they can be pretty sweet to sustain your operation. They take some time to write and become realistic to get, but it’s worth the payout usually. Well, it’s definitely worth considering if it’s worth the payout. Foundation funding can be significant, especially if you share goals and long-term vision. Where this gets tricky is everything listed in the previous post's Challenges in Philanthropy section.

Pros	Cons
Usually, more significant amounts of money	Usually cannot qualify for the first few years of nonprofit’s existence
Clear deliverables, timelines	Depending on the grant, could be a decent amount of work
Can build relationships with funders with similar goals	Often 1 year of funding
Could have multi-year funding	Sometimes program-specific
Could also be a pro -->	Foundation could change their priorities, which usually happens after more extensive strategy sessions
	If you know one funder, you know one funder

More context on that last con. There’s no one-size-fits-all for grant writing and relationship building in this space. Each funder has different goals and wants to see different things in a proposal. You should really work directly with the funder to understand this, which is both a pro and a con in that it may take more time.

Individual Donors

This is my favorite way to fundraise! It could be because it’s the easiest and costs the least in time and money, but I think it’s also because I like getting to know people. Individual donations are often the backbone of nonprofit fundraising strategies. People give because of one or all of these reasons (hopefully all):

(a) Ask: You ask! Turns out, this is really important for getting people to give. It can be scary, but usually, people want to help. And if they cannot, they will express that. And if they get annoyed, hopefully, they will share that too!

(b) Belief in the mission: They care about your cause, don’t have time to work on it themselves, and they want to see you make it happen. It’s also a huge ego boost - it turns out you have some dope ideas that other people want to see in the world. So all you have to do is keep being awesome. Oh, and build relationships… see (c).

(c) Connection to you: They know you, the asker, and care about you. It’s not great to develop your organization only based on the people most deeply involved because if they leave, that could be really unsustainable, but it’s a great way to get started. Over time as you build out your presence in the community, this will change. You will get to know other donors, build relationships, and eventually have a solid donor base. A large number of small gifts can keep an organization alive.

Pros	Cons
Built-in relationships	People’s incomes change, priorities change
People want to give out of the sweetness of their hearts and belief in your mission. If they give, they believe in you and your cause already.	Often 1 donation, doesn’t ensure ongoing funding - you have to do the work to ask again
A lot of people giving a little adds up
Goes to general operating
You can start asking for money right away
Not a lot of work for the payout

Events

Everyone loves a good gala, right?! Okay, maybe not all of us. There are certainly benefits to throwing an event, but ironically, they aren’t necessarily fundraising. Honestly, the biggest payout is throwing donors a really good time and sharing more about your organization so that you can ask them for money later. A line item in your revenue budget is a bonus.

Pros	Cons
General operating	They are SO MUCH WORK for not that much money
You give people a good time on top of raising funds	They also cost a lot of money to put on
Opportunity to cultivate relationships with donors	It takes a long time to build a high-profile event
Opportunity to reach new donors, volunteers, or other stakeholders in the community	Competing with other nonprofits doing events around the same time
You can throw an event whenever

More context for that last pro, if you’re just getting started, it’s actually really great to throw an event because you are also trying to build awareness of what you are doing, but you may not have big donors right away.

Business

Businesses like to give to nonprofits too! They do this in several ways. Some businesses give out of the sweet kindness of their hearts (and probably a pretty sweet tax write-off). Other companies give because, well, it promotes them. This is called “cause-marketing” and is trendy. It goes along with the rise of neoliberalism and the growing love for concepts like consumer-driven change models (i.e., shop with your values in mind). This isn’t necessarily bad, supporting black-owned and POC-owned (and insert under-represented identity) businesses, small businesses, and local businesses. This is great! The businesses donate to nonprofits and then tell their customers how awesome they are because they give back to the community. Many of these businesses are actually awesome. It becomes problematic when used as a form of marketing and a way to diverge attention away from and cover up problematic business practices. My favorite example of this is Walmart, which loves to give money to Feeding America. Feeding America is the national network of food banks, working to “solve” hunger (working to distribute food to people, which doesn’t actually solve the root causes of hunger). Simultaneously, Walmart pays their employees minimum wage and even signs them up for food stamps upon employment. They put their brand on food bank trucks and tell customers they care about solving hunger, without taking action within their own system. Raising their employees' wages and benefits would significantly impact hunger.

Pros	Cons
Can be more significant amounts for not that much work	Potential values misalignment
Matching employee donations make individual contributions go twice as far	Often businesses are looking to get some marketing strategy out of it (unless you don’t care)
Can help with getting your brand out to the larger community of potential individual donors	Harder to develop a relationship because it is more transactional
Ex. Round up campaigns at cash registers	Could be harder to challenge problematic business practices if a nonprofit becomes reliant on their money
	Sometimes it’s more work for you.

More context on that last con, businesses may say, “we will donate a percentage of our funds, and you should market this event also.” Or worse: “We will donate a percentage of our funds coming in from only your people.” This means the only money you make relies on your extra work, and it’s usually a lot of work to market an event that you weren’t planning on having in the first place.

Earned-Income Models

Trendy new-ish ideas in the nonprofit space. Suppose a nonprofit is already offering a service to its community. Are there ways to sell that service (or another service in line with their mission) to make an income to support their charitable programming? For example, a nonprofit may have a for-profit business side or sell their products to some people to sustain a free program for other people.

Pros	Cons
Sell services you are already doing	Need for a business model and mindset that many nonprofit leaders (like myself) lack!
People buy a product instead of a “value,” which tends to be more popular under capitalism	Can be a lot of upfront work, with payout coming later. Finding the time can be challenging for a lot of nonprofits that are already overworked.
More reliable income once the program is established and proven to be effective

Web Monetization could fit in with earned-income models and individual donors.

Philanthropy Dynamics In Nonprofits

Becks Boone — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 15:14:17 +0000

This is the first post in a two-post series from @hdansky. Dansky shares their experience as the Executive Director of Boulder Food Rescue and took the organization from an underfunded grassroots effort to a sustainably funded nonprofit. This post explores 1) the history of philanthropy 2) challenges associated with using philanthropy as a funding source, and 3) alternatives to the traditional philanthropic funding source. The second post in this series explores revenue sources typically available to nonprofits.

Like many of the U.S.’s great institutions, philanthropy also has a deep history in white supremacist and patriarchal values, many of which still persist today. Yet, there are movers and shakers flipping charity on its head and giving power to people, communities, and nonprofits organizing for a better future. To understand fundraising and philanthropy models, we are going to look at: the history of philanthropy, the dynamics that still persist today, and radical changemakers in the philanthropic space.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

I. History of Philanthropy

Before the Civil War, individuals, not institutions, did most charitable work. The acceleration of industrialization coincided with increased poverty, violence, and income inequality. Organizations formed to assist individuals thought to be “deserving” of assistance. They were focused on ameliorating the effects of poverty but did not address poverty on a systemic level. Specifically, they addressed the impacts of low wages (lack of housing, hunger, disease) but didn’t organize or campaign to raise wages.

Many foundations were created in the early 1900s to support charitable giving, such as the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Oftentime, white men set up foundations while their wives ran charities. We still see the remnants of this in the nonprofit sector today through racial and gender demographics of nonprofit leadership, with most Executive Director staff consisting of white women.

These foundations started to support the charities and got the sweet benefits of being able to: (1) shield their earnings from taxation, (2) determine what issues and organizations money got directed towards, including those that support personal wealth building, (3) portray a positive, charitable image of businesses or industries, even if they don’t serve a social good and (4) address symptoms of social issues in ways that don’t challenge capitalism.

Let’s look at an example from these historical times to better understand this. If you drive down I-25 in Southern Colorado, you’ll pass a sign that says “site of the Ludlow Massacre.” It’s a marker of the hypocrisy of philanthropy.

In 1914, Colorado miners went on strike to protest dangerous working conditions at Colorado Fuel and Iron. John D Rockefeller was a majority stockholder in that company. Colorado militia entered the camp, and violence broke out. The militia set fire to the tent colony. At least 26 people were killed, including the women and children camped there, which gained national attention. Rockefeller provided and publicized humanitarian aid to fire victims while suppressing reports about the massacre itself.

Sound familiar? Many of these issues still persist today, so let’s take a look at nonprofit organizations’ troubles seeking out funding.

II. Challenges of Philanthropy and the Dynamics that Persist Today

Disconnect from what’s happening while maintaining a paternalistic attitude: Often, funders don’t know the lived experiences and challenges of people facing the issues they are trying to solve. This video created by the Chinook Fund (specific to sharing about their Giving Project model) helps cover some of traditional philanthropy’s problematic nature. If you want to understand this better, watch up until 4:30. Ultimately, this can result in a lot of wasted dollars supporting communities with things they don’t need and not addressing the things they do.
Power Dynamic: Money is power. Not only do these foundations often not understand the needs, but they also have the power. Nonprofit and grantmaker dynamics can feel sticky and hard to navigate, especially if the funder wants a specific outcome that isn’t in line with what the nonprofit would do otherwise. Nonprofits have to stay firm in their values and theories of change to ultimately not drift away from their mission to chase funds. That can be difficult when you’re struggling to keep your doors open. Connected to the first point listed above, you can see how this is really problematic.
Looking for “low overhead”: There’s a societal conception that you are not supposed to give to nonprofits that have a “high overhead.” Your money should go directly to programs and the people they serve. However, to run effective programs, the organization needs basic things to keep them functioning, like an office, management software, insurance, and great personnel. These administrative and general operating costs are absolutely essential to get the work done. Where it is especially problematic is when the concept extends to payroll. Nonprofit staff is expected to serve the community on low wages and hard work, leading to saviorism and burnout. We deserve to live in the world we are trying to create. If donors want to see effective programs, they should value treating people well so they can run effective programs. I could write an entire separate article on this alone! One more resource for this concept is Dan Pallotta’s Ted Talk that explores the problematic nature of “low overhead.”
Program Specific Funding: Individual donors, foundations, and government agencies are all guilty of this. It’s connected to low overhead and funders’ desires to see specific programs run. It helps put money where the donor wants to see it. It doesn’t help the nonprofit fund general operating expenses. Fundable programs might reflect ideas attractive to funders instead of the best ideas or those that deserve support. It can also take a lot of time to organize and track dollars to specific programs.
More data, more numbers, more programs, more people served, more: Year after year, nonprofits feel pressure to increase their deliverables. How many more people will you serve this year? How many more pounds of food will you distribute? How many more people will you educate? If the goal is to grow, this can be a great way to measure success. But sometimes, that goal is set by the funder, not the nonprofit. For example, at Boulder Food Rescue, where I’m executive director, we actually started serving people better when we reduced the number we served. We put more time and energy into building relationships, which takes a lot of time. It means we don’t have higher numbers, but our work is so much more in line with our values and respects the dignity of the folks we work with. That should be valued even though it’s not quantifiable.
Crisis Funding:
- Communities left behind: When a crisis hits, donors can suddenly unlock dollars and flood nonprofits to respond to emergencies. Where the hell were these dollars previously, and why have we not had access to them all along?! We see time and time again that charities show up to communities to “serve” them, and then when the funding runs out, they leave. The community is left in the same situation they were in before. Crisis funding for disaster relief is essential. However, damages of crises last long after the problem. Without a long-term restoration plan, people who are already disproportionately affected by oppression will carry the weight of that for many years to come.
- Crunched timelines: Furthermore, donors set goals and timelines around this crisis money that can be really restrictive. The flooding of money does support short-term relief, such as thousands of people being able to go to a food bank in a pinch. However, the long-term solutions will not be addressed. Hunger, among other oppressions, are long-term systemic problems and will continue to persist regardless of how awesome our short-term solutions are. We do need the crisis funding and expansion efforts. However, restrictions on spending won’t help nonprofits build sustainable systems for the next disaster.
Tax evasion vs. changing systems: Spoken about before, foundations started to support the charities and got the sweet benefits of being able to: (1) shield their earnings from taxation, (2) determine what issues and organizations money got directed towards, including those that support personal wealth building, (3) portray a positive, charitable image of businesses or industries, even if they don’t serve a social good and (4) address symptoms of social issues in ways that don’t challenge capitalism. What are the implications of mega-wealthy people being able to evade taxes for the general social good by donating vast amounts of money to a charity they choose? We know that lower-income people donate a more significant percentage of their income, but it’s also a really big deal for a person with a lower income to donate $100 to a cause they believe in and might benefit from. What does it mean for charitable efforts, meager benefits, and crowdfunding to be the effective social safety net for people with low income? Especially considering the absence of comprehensive social safety nets or more equitable economic systems.

III. Alternatives in the Space: It's not all Bad!

Some foundations are changing things up. In fact, their mottos are “Change, not charity.” They work to dismantle bias. They give grantmaking decisions to the community, fund general operating support, and let organizations be the knowledge-holders of what their communities need most.

A great example, and my biggest philanthropy crush, is the Chinook Fund. I participated in one of their programs, the Giving Project. It helped deepen my understanding of racism and classism, gifting me an opportunity to unlearn internalized identities, both in terms of oppression and superiority. The Chinook Fund uses community members to allocate funds, focusing on constituent-led, community-wide organizations and systems change. This results in a shift of power that is inclusive and diverse of all identities and recognizes the importance of long-term organizing. They prioritize Black and Indigenous-led groups and fund younger and smaller organizations. There are actually budget limits on the high end, which is radically different than most foundations who want to see you are “sustainable” before they fund you. They believe in people!

Besides the Chinook Fund, here are some examples of foundations that are socially just, work together and collaborate to share ideas, models, and more.

Some organizations exist to help individual donors give in ways that are ethical and make a significant change. For example, Resource Generation facilitates the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power. They help donors under 35 learn how to move their wealth and resources to changemakers, organizations, and movements. They help these donors find organizations that align with the values of equity and wealth distribution. Resource Generation supports giving to community-based groups that decide how funds are distributed instead of those decisions being in the hands of people with access to wealth.

Even beyond individuals with access to wealth and class privilege, most people genuinely believe in an organization’s mission and vision and will give, without restriction. Lower-income people often give higher percentages of their incomes to nonprofits they believe in.

All radical organizations aside, there is starting to be a shift in philanthropy, even in the most basic foundations. It’s slow, but it is happening. Community Foundations are certainly trying to understand the needs and landscapes of the organizations they support. For example, the Community Foundation of Boulder County does its own research on trends and experiences. Many are looking to see an increase in DEI work at nonprofits, sit down and talk to nonprofits, build relationships, and ultimately want to change to better their practices. Sometimes it may feel slow, but change is happening. And hopefully, over time, as radical nonprofits keep pushing funders to question the power dynamic and look at some of these issues, we will see the shift.

Our research is exploring how web monetization might fit into these dynamics.

Starting Line

Becks Boone — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:04:52 +0000

Food Rescue Alliance hired two Research Assistance from the University of Colorado Boulder to explore how nonprofits might use Web Monetization. Our goal is to boost resiliency by diversifying how we fund our software (Rootable) and member organizations. Although we're focusing on our own needs, we hope whatever we produce will be useful to other nonprofits.

Our first goal is to create a one-page document explaining the basics of web monetization. What it is, how it works, who is using it now. Our audience is member organizations of the Food Rescue Alliance. It needs to be readable, visual, and accessible. Our first iteration is below, and hopefully, our next round of edits will simplify the content, focus, and remove jargon.

With that under our belt, we'll identify different models that might work with our multitenancy open source software, Rootable. What traditional nonprofit fundraising campaign models can we tweak to fit? Is there a social enterprise route? This step is more about identifying candidates than understanding them in detail.

After reviewing our list of models, we'll pick a couple to fully explore. We'll talk to FRA member organizations to understand their preferences. For example, how much should go to organizations and how much to alleviate the burden of maintaining software?

Our stretch goal is to pick one model and nail down some of the implementation details. If you have any ideas for us, we're open to input.