Robbie Heeger: Endaoment’s Donor-Advised Funds Enable Crypto Charitable Donations For 1.5M Organizations

Chain Reaction Host Tom Shaughnessy hosts Robbie Heeger, the CEO and President of Endaoment. Endaoment is a new Community Foundation & public charity offering Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) built atop the Ethereum blockchain, allowing you to donate to almost any U.S. nonprofit organization.

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Show Notes:

Broad Topics:

• Educate about DAFs and how they work.
• Share process of opening a DAF with Endaoment.
• Discuss why DAFs can be advantageous.
• Talk about Endaoment’s origin, mission and vision.
• Share about future roadmap and long term vision for the technology behind Endaoment.
• Discuss the charitable/philanthropic space inside of the crypto/defi industry.

Endaoment Background & Roadmap:

• Created by Robbie Heeger in 2019 originally as hacking project as I was teaching myself to code.
• Recieved 501(c)(3) – the first public charity on chain – in June 2020.
• Released MVP DAF product in October 2020, audited by Open Zeppelin.
• Built to be a DAF that is powered by smart contracts.
• Accepts over 135 different ethereum assets + ETH.
• Lowest cost, lowest donation minimum DAF provider in US.
• Built atop Uniswap’s open source front end, Gidestar API + USDC API.
• Enables giving to 1.5 million + US organizations.
• Consider our current DAF product an MVP of what’s possible using Ethereum/DeFi to power charitable giving
• Down the road, User will choose either giving to Pooled Capital Community Fund (Endaoment Community Fund) or to an individual Endaoment DAF.
• Endaoment Community Fund to be the first DAO powered Community Foundation & Endowment Fund where token holders choose investment allocations across yield farming strategies in DeFi, grant awards to nonprofits and select Endaoment policies and board members using tokens.
• Looking to bring those same investment options to the individual Endaoment DAF as well, without the same token based voting weights.

DAF History/Background:

• Donor Advised Funds are charitable accounts owned and managed by a public charity.
• Allows a donor to donate an asset to charity without selling it first.
• Over 750k DAFs in the US.
• Fastest-growing method to give to charity in the united states in 2019.
• Over 120 BN in DAF assets in the US.
• DAFs can be controversial … many people park assets there, take the deduction and let it sit. Many people think DAF capital should more quickly flow into communities.

Crypto Giving Landscape Background:

• Several large DAF providers accept “blue chip” crypto, but no long tail of tokens.
• Most crypto giving platforms either are crowdfunding derivatives, public goods funding projects, or going one organization at a time to support giving.
• Many community foundations in the US are still running off paper checks and desire to modernize their financial infrastructure but are intimidated by crypto.
• Many organizations are intrigued by crypto but scared away by the fluctuation in value and unknowns about custodianship…delivering grants in USD is prime concern.

Resources:

• Guest’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobbieHeeger
• Guest’s Website: https://endaoment.org/
• Tom’s Twitter: