Things 4 Good
- We sold 172 of the 180 Wicky Thing Candles we made. Last year we sold 134 candles.
- We sold all 50 bottles of Sweet Thing Honey.
- We sold 10 Jiggy Thing Puzzles, but it was the same puzzle we had in 2021 so a number of folks already had it. Last year we sold 26 puzzles.
- We had six Wicky Thing Candle scents this year: Winter Wonderland, Apple of my Eye, Oh my Darling, Tea Time (new), Red Hot (new), True North (new). Winter Wonderland and True North were nearly half of the 180 candles and together sold out the fastest.
- I’m not sure which vessel colors are the most popular, but it seems brown was likely the least popular.
- We achieved over 400% return on the expenses to buy supplies given the amount raised!
- Thus far 28 people have redeemed the Things 4 Good 2022 Fall Fundraiser POAP token. Printing out claim sheets with directions and the claim code was a much better way to distribute these.
- 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!
Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser Notes
We had a great Things 4 Good 2022 Fall Fundraiser. With the help of many friends and family we raised $5,217 to support four good causes.
Some notes from the event:
I’m already looking forward to the 2023 Fall Fundraiser! 🤩
Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser Distributed
The Things 4 Good 2022 Fall Fundraiser raised $5,217 to support good causes! That is a $460 increase over 2021. We had around 100 visitors as well as many email orders from people that couldn’t come in person. Today we distributed the proceeds to the four non-profits that we had selected.
As in previous years we shared the non-profits with each in-person visitor and they could select any number of the four organizations to support.
A huge thank you to everyone for being part of this fun event and help some organizations having a good impact in the world. 💛
I love that This Week in POAP highlighted our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser POAP in the Nov 15 edition! ❤️
“POAPs for good: a POAP at a family fundraiser.”
The POAP for this weekend’s Things 4 Good 2022 Fall Fundraiser is ready and it is awesome! This will be a fun collectible for those that come, as well as enabling holders to have input on next years candles! 🤩
We bottled Sweet Thing Honey tonight getting final preparations for our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser this weekend! Labels go on tomorrow.
I just wrapped up another Poapathon contest to get a design for our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser. The designers were amazing, creative, and put forward several options that were great fits for our event. If you need design help it is an amazing resource! 🎨
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!