Things 4 Good
- Constellation Fund (Donate)
- Free Bikes 4 Kidz (Donate)
- Appetite for Change (Donate
- Feed My Starving Children (Donate)
- Oh My Darling: Sugar-y and Citrus-y, this candle will brighten and energize your day as soon as you set it burning!
- Mind Like Water: Made with a calming cashmere vanilla fragrance, this candle will have you deep in meditation in minutes.
- Apple of my Eye: And this candle is sure to be the apple of yours! Heavenly apple and cinnamon scents combine to create that rich, full aroma we all love!
- Winter Wonderland: Crisp and pine-y, this fragrance will transport you directly to that snow-covered pine forest of your dreams!
We made another 90 Wicky Thing candles today for a total of 180 ready for the Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser!
Things 4 Good on Endaoment
I had been thinking it would be really cool if Donor Advised Funds (DAF) were open to accepting crypto tokens as deposits. There has been a lot of wealth built up in crypto and it would be very beneficial to create simple means to move some portion of that to non-profit organizations. Shortly after this I stumbled upon Endaoment.
Endaoment describes itself as “We’re a tax-exempt Community Foundation built for decentralized finance and focused on social impact.” Endaoment is a DeFi version of a DAF like Schwab Charitable. This morning, while Ethereum gas prices were predictably low, I sat down to play with this first hand.
Setting up your Fund
I went to Endaoment and connected to my wallet. Easy enough, just like any other Web3 application. I then created my own fund. This was super simple. I needed a name, I chose Things 4 Good. Gave it a tagline. I then associated my name and address. There were no credit checks, no social security numbers, just basic contact information. After this I submitted a transaction that deployed the smart contract for my DAF.
Now I had my own contract associated with Things 4 Good, and it was time to provide an initial deposit to the fund. Endaoment requires a minimum $500 transfer so I sent in 0.15 ETH. When Endaoment receives the ETH they immediately transfer that to USD Coin (USDC). They sent me a receipt for tax purposes for the full value of the 0.15 ETH. Endaoment takes a 0.5% transaction fee, and there are some fees associated with the transactions to USDC, which are taken out after.
With that done, my DAF was fully established on the Ethereum mainnet, funded, and ready to use.
Granting Funds
Now that Things 4 Good was setup I wanted to try issuing a grant. The Internet Archive is an organization I have supported for a long time and I thought it would be a fitting organization to make a first donation to. I picked them off the list of organizations registered on Endaoment. This was fun to me, because this is also on-chain, so to send the grant you interact with the smart contract.
I appreciated this as it felt like a much different level of control than a typical DAF. We use Schwab Charitable and you make recommendations, they send checks, and you get emails saying it all happened but you can’t actually see it yourself. With Endaoment I can see my transaction and know exactly what happened when.
With very little effort I have my DAF setup on the Ethereum mainnet, funded, and already distributed a grant. This is holy crap amazing. 🤯
This seems like a powerful and needed capability as you manage your crypto assets. Plus it is an incredible example of the power of DeFi applications built on Web3 technology.
Deploying Organizations
After chatting with some of the Endaoment team on Discord they showed how you can deploy any existing 501(c)(3) organization. Any user can fund the deployment of the smart contract for that group. So I went ahead and deployed Constellation Fund and Minnestar on Endaoment.
Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser
Our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser was a great success this weekend! We had more than 100 people stop in to buy Wicky Thing Candles, Jiggy Thing Puzzle #001, Four Bees Honey, and fresh baked cookies. We all had a lot of fun hosting people. The kids particularly enjoyed walking guests through the various options and checking people out.
All the proceeds are going to non-profits, and we raised…
$4,757
We gave everyone the opportunity to choose to direct their sale to any number of the great organizations that we had identified.
Seems that non-profits closest to kids and food got more engagement than the others.
We made four distinct Wicky Thing Candles for the sale: 🔥
We also sold our very first Jiggy Thing Puzzle #001, “Celebration City”! 🧩 Sure to be a collectors item. Hand drawn digital art, 500-piece puzzle perfect for anyone.
Tammy and the kids made a bunch of cookies which was a great touch so people could have a little something fun to eat as they left. Tammy’s sister Angie was also kind enough to allow us to resell some of her amazing Four Bees Honey that she makes with the bees in her yard!
Overall everything went great. We did capture some learnings to make it better next year. We are considering making this an annual tradition that we do! In the meantime, we still have some puzzles to sell…
We had a great first day of the Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser! We had a steady stream of people most of the day and sold a lot of Wicky Thing Candles, Jiggy Thing Puzzles, Four Bees Honey, and fresh baked goods to raise money for good causes! Open tomorrow too!
All four of us “Things” are working away getting ready for this weekends Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser! Wicky Thing Candles being labeled, fresh cookies baking, and signage being produced. 😎
Custom Puzzle Box
Our upcoming Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser is going to have a lot of our Wicky Thing Candles, but we are also introducing a new custom product that our family created — the first Jiggy Thing Puzzle! We received the order today and I was very anxious to see how the box art came out. We’ve done puzzles before so I wasn’t worried about that, but we had never done a custom box design. I love how it turned out!
Our family is hosting our first Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser! We’ll be raising money for four good causes by selling Wicky Thing Candles, Jiggy Thing Puzzles, and some additional surprises! Great for presents or home!