Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell

Why Nonprofits Should Care About Crypto with Pat Duffy

June 01, 2022 Julia Campbell Season 1 Episode 39
Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Why Nonprofits Should Care About Crypto with Pat Duffy
Show Notes Transcript

On top of all the other fundraising strategies nonprofits have to master, you may be thinking that the additional hassle of figuring out cryptocurrency donations may not be worth it.

However, 220,000,000+ people use cryptocurrency today. And half of millennials prefer crypto investing to stocks. And in a recent study, Fidelity Charitable found crypto owners to be more charitable than the typical investor, but 46% of these donors noted it was difficult to find nonprofits that accept cryptocurrency donations.

With so many ways for nonprofits to accept cryptocurrency donations, you don’t need to turn away donors who wish to donate their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other coins. It’s a new technology that is constantly evolving, and it’s understandable if you have some apprehension or confusion about how it all works. However, with so many tools available it is easier than ever to get started.

Pat Duffy created The Giving Block with Co-Founder Alex Wilson in 2018, developing the leading solutions that charities, universities and other nonprofits use to fundraise cryptocurrencies. They quickly established themselves as the leading crypto fundraising experts through the explosive growth of their programs at Save the Children and United Way Worldwide. Over the last four years, The Giving Block has turned cryptocurrency into the fastest growing donation method, founding the industry’s giving pledge, giving days and crowdfunding platform.

Here are some of the topics we discussed:

  • How can a nonprofit get started accepting crypto donations
  • Bitcoin currently being the most popular among cryptocurrencies, how can nonprofits ask for Bitcoin donations
  • What is Blockchain-based NFTs and how can nonprofits use NFTs
  • What are the trends on the next coming years

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About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements. Julia’s online courses, webinars, and talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and raise more money online.

Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, ​3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts

Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts

Julia Campbell:

Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact than you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, everybody, welcome back to another episode of nonprofit nation. As usual, I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I am thrilled that you have me in your earbuds today in your car, folding your laundry driving, working out whatever you're doing, I'm just so excited that you're going to be spending some time with me today. Now, my guest is a very special guest because this is a topic that I actually really don't know anything about. So if you don't know anything about cryptocurrency, crypto philanthropy, if you don't know anything about the giving block, if all of this kind of just makes your head spin, then this is definitely an episode for you. So I'm going to be learning along with you. My guest is Pat Duffy. And Pat created the giving block with co founder Alex Wilson in 2018. To develop the leading solutions that charities universities and other nonprofits used to fundraise cryptocurrencies, and they quickly established themselves as the leading crypto fundraising experts through the explosive growth of their programs at Save the Children and United Way Worldwide. And over the last four years, the giving block has turned cryptocurrency into the fastest growing donation method, founding the industries Giving Pledge giving days and crowdfunding platform, so I can't wait to dive in. And just a quick, Pat tip to Josh Hirsch, who is the Social Media Manager for Susan G. Komen for introducing us. And I know that they do a lot with crypto fundraising, and I can't wait to hear all about it. So, Pat, welcome to the show.

Pat Duffy:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Julia Campbell:

Yes. How so how did you get into this work? What spurred the giving block?

Pat Duffy:

Oh, my God into the nonprofit sector. I just kind of stumbled into it, like a lot of us do. I was working with pharmaceutical consultants and lobbyists just kind of helping them work with nonprofits on Capitol Hill. So anytime there was a bill that would affect patient access, whatever it might be, we put them all together kind of into coalition's you go knock on doors, that meant a lot of charities they're doing that work in the early days ended up at one the Lupus Foundation, as their integration director, just kind of a leadership transition. So building out the departments there with a new leadership framework, figuring out fundraising Best Practices was a good kind of crash course on nonprofit fundraising. And then Alex, my co founder is the one who got me into trading crypto got me in end of 2017, which is like the best and the worst time to get into crypto because it's when it exploded up to $20,000 a unit so I of course yellowed into all my positions at the top and just wrote him down right into the dirt. But learned a lot. You know, we saw a couple 100 million dollars in crypto donations that were pretty public during that window. And stars kind of aligned around that we figured it would be a good place to start investing time and energy at that intersection.

Julia Campbell:

I think this is something that a lot of especially smaller organizations, or maybe not to stereotype older generations, but people are not as familiar with, they hear a lot about it. They see the headlines, they know that it's being talked about everywhere. So for me, my audience, their fundraisers, their marketers, and on top of everything else that they have to master. I'm sure they might be thinking that, you know, the additional hassle of figuring out this new form of donation. You know, cryptocurrency donations may not be worth it. So, in your opinion, why should nonprofits care about crypto?

Pat Duffy:

I mean, they're correct in a vacuum that like to try to do it from scratch doesn't make sense. There's a lot of nonprofits who took that approach in the early days. The first I'd say, we interviewed a couple dozen nonprofits in early 2018. Before we started the company and trying to figure out how they were doing crypto and they were kind of putting together all the pieces like some Frankenstein monster, from a technical standpoint and in best practices, gift acceptance, policies, etc. It doesn't make sense to go all in on something like crypto 95% of the time, like, it's gotta be something, you can kind of dip your toe in and open up to new audience. And then you identify kind of high ROI, low bandwidth efforts that parallel your existing fundraising framework. So a simpler way of putting it for nonprofits who are interested in this if you are good at the Internet, in any basic sense. And if you're good at fundraising in any basic sense, then you absolutely shouldn't be fundraising crypto, because the pieces we put together here make it super easy. We've got about 1400, nonprofits doing it now, building active programs. And if you're not, you know, good at fundraising and good at the Internet, then crypto is probably going to be like a lottery ticket for you. And you shouldn't run toward it. Like all the other shiny objects, like we tell a lot of nonprofits no through the sales process, they usually under half a million dollars, let's say annual budget, and they're looking for kind of get out of jail free card. So I'll just say know yourself and who you are, right, if you don't have a stable fundraising framework and stewardship model, crypto is probably a little early. If you have any, you know, stability and a full time social person, it's actually pretty easy to get into.

Julia Campbell:

So if you are sort of spinning your wheels chasing all the shiny objects, like you said, if you don't have an established fundraising, program infrastructure, and if you don't even have a website, or if you're not using your website, and effectively, those are kind of red flags, right?

Pat Duffy:

Yeah. And for context that off that's like the way that Nonprofits Fundraise crypto generally speaking, you fundraise like an individual giving model these people are, you know, Twitter and Reddit. They're running campaigns on social crowdfunding campaigns Giving Tuesday. Type moments are conducive to this crypto is a very fun, exciting thing for especially millennials and Gen Z's to attach onto about 83% of millennial millionaires have crypto at this point. So in terms of like major gift millennial and Gen Z prospecting, it's one of the best tools in your tool belt. And then you just need to staple it into your existing campaign. So like, if you're building a Giving Tuesday campaign from scratch, because you want to do crypto Giving Tuesday, it's going to feel like a big lift. But if you've got a whole GivingTuesday campaign already built out, and you want to sprinkle in some, you know, crypto messaging for that audience demographic and steer them accordingly. It's a pretty late lift, and the average gift size is about $10,500. So it makes it worth it. So you got to know pretty much and through conversations with us and other folks. How are you from a general fundraising standpoint, like today, and you can kind of staple it into you know, your end of your campaign, your Gala, taxis and messaging social frameworks like it becomes this very light lift sprinkling in if you've got some of your infrastructural components in place already.

Julia Campbell:

That's a really great point. And you say on your website, something I found really interesting that accepting cryptocurrency donations is easier than stocks. So how can a nonprofit get started? If they're interested accepting crypto donations like what needs to be in place?

Pat Duffy:

I mean, the way that our system works like you would come to if you go to like the giving block.com, there's an accept crypto button. And that starts with like a book a demo type process, where it's like a q&a and sort of needs assessment. The first thing you want to do is what we just described, just have someone who does it professionally run through a series of questions like What are your fundraising goals? How do you fundraise? Which departments are your core strengths? Like how's your social media presence? What does your team look like? Figure out if you're innovative in other areas, figure out okay, you are a very innovative nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area with a super young audience or an older audience in the finance sector, and you're trying to get younger, okay, and you have 2 million followers on Twitter, okay, and you run big end of year campaigns, okay. And you've celebrity partners, and a strong corporate partnerships arm, it's like, yeah, okay, crypto is the greatest thing that'll ever happen to you. And then all of the dots along that chart down to the many kind of million dollar type nonprofits who have a strong Twitter presence and know the social media game, but they're in a local area, and they started building their international audience using crypto. So step one is just having a pro run through in which areas are your strengths and weaknesses when it's going to come to getting into crypto. So you don't start doing like low ROI, high bandwidth, things like running an NFT drop on your first day. And then if you decide to accept crypto at that point, it's pretty much the same as opening a bank account. That's why we say it's easier than stocks. It'll be like an hour for the application, probably just to get through the compliance process. misconception that crypto isn't regulated, it's aggressively regulated, which is good. That's what keeps everybody safe. But other than filling out that app for an hour, we would generate a widget which is copy and paste that goes on the nonprofit site, the nonprofit paste that on their site, and then everything beyond that is just strategy, which is again, proportionate to what works best for you. Some nonprofits do very little. On the crypto front, they do a little bit they get a little bit and they just kind of dip their toe in other nonprofits build it into, you know, a seven eight figure revenue stream in their first year things like American Cancer Society are saved to children's.

Julia Campbell:

So this is going to totally show my kind of ignorance of cryptocurrency. But with stocks when someone donates the stock, really it could go up or down at that point. So is the same for cryptocurrency?

Pat Duffy:

Yeah, the beauty of the way we do it, most nonprofits use our auto cell function. So pretty much we're setting up an account that's like a brokerage account. It's like an Exchange account. But without all the people in the brokers, it's all just automated. It's just tech instead of people. So that account exists. And what happens is like if a donor sends you cryptocurrency, as soon as it hits the account, it sells immediately for US dollars so that there isn't a difference in price between the point in which it enters the system and the point in which it cashes out.

Julia Campbell:

Okay, that's really important to know, because the prices of all of these different cryptocurrencies are changing and fluctuating so wildly, that that's really important for nonprofits to know. Because to me, for the listener, they might be interested in this, but they're trying to formulate a plan, like how can I bring this to my board? You know, how can I bring this to my executive director? How can I convince them that this isn't like playing the stock market, you know, that this is a pretty secure form of donations? And that's actually really, really interesting. And I think we should even take a step back and talk about some of the types of cryptocurrencies. So I know that you wrote that Bitcoin is currently the most popular, and that nonprofits should actively be asking for Bitcoin donations at year end. So can you talk more about about that, and maybe some of the other currencies? We should be thinking about?

Pat Duffy:

Yeah, in the nonprofit sector, like the space has gotten so big at this point that Aetherium is the second largest by market cap, but it's actually the most commonly donated at this point. So last year, and our annual report, which we released Aetherium past Bitcoin in terms of total donation volume we processed, which is pretty wild, considering how dominant we used to call our crypto GivingTuesday campaign with the Giving Tuesday foundation we used to literally call it Bitcoin Tuesday, because Bitcoin was so dominant. So Bitcoin and Aetherium are like the two top ones, those two cryptocurrencies, the best way to explain is bitcoin is sort of like a digital gold, you can't make any more of it, it was the first one that existed, it has brand recognition. And because it uses blockchain, you can't alter transaction records. So long story short, is it's like a very safe way to store value digitally, I don't mean safe in terms of price volatility, more so that, like with gold, you know, there won't ever be a surge in supply that comes out of nowhere, like what happens with dollars. And if you hold it, you know, that no one can move, you know, fake gold onto or off of the system. That's the function that Bitcoin kind of plays Aetherium is more being built upon. So their code was written in a way where you can build smart contracts, and then what are called like layer two protocols. But generally speaking, you just launch different tokens off of Aetherium, which have become very popular, and they experiment with new technologies that make transactions go faster, make them a little more secure, whatever might be. And then a big thing that happened on the Ethereum network, especially last year was the rise of NF T's. So non fungible tokens pretty much digital art that's tied to a specific cryptocurrency, and can be traced along that ledger system so that if you own this digital art, just like when you own a unit of Bitcoin, it's undeniable that you are holding it in this position at this time, with a perfectly unchangeable record. They're doing that with art on a theorem in a really effective way. So,

Julia Campbell:

right, I just listened to the Kara Swisher podcast. And she interviewed people said his name, the artists that sold his NFT artwork at Christie's Auction, which I think a lot of people are familiar with, for $69 million, but it was in Aetherium. And I thought that was really interesting. And a lot of my listeners might not know what NF T's are. Can you expound on that a little bit. And NF T's are not a cryptocurrency they are a thing you sell?

Pat Duffy:

Yeah, it kind of is. And it kind of isn't, in the sense that like a crypto currency shouldn't even be called a currency. It's really kind of a unit of value, that can be transferred from position A to position B. But they're uniform, right? When you have a unit of Aetherium or Bitcoin it's always a theorem or Bitcoin, right? This is a, it's a fungible token, like when you have a US dollar, it's a US dollar and every US dollar is worth the same thing at the same point in time, like fungibility of an asset. That's really kind of the core difference. So when you're when you're trading Bitcoin, or Aetherium, or all of these other cryptocurrencies, when you're sending the back and forth, you can drop that Bitcoin or Aetherium onto any exchange, right? You can deposit into an account to sell it for US dollars. And it's worth the same amount across all of these networks. And when you moved your Ford stock from like a Charles Schwab account over To fidelity AmeriTrade. So it's more like a share of something. It's kind of like a unit of stock or a unit of gold, that sometimes gets using a currency. But it blends a lot of features of different assets. So think about that more closely associated to like stocks or money. But you can use that same immutability, that same tracking system for things that aren't fungible for things that aren't just like an asset or a stock or a unit of currency, you can do that with a piece of digital art. And that's all that's happening in the same way that you can use blockchain. If you sent me a unit of Bitcoin, Julia, I could follow it back to its origins on the network. And I could see every wallet have ever gone into and out of, and none of those transaction records in the 11 year history of Bitcoin have ever been changed. It's that secure of a network like there is no way to change transaction records, which makes it again, a very safe way to move money around. If you're concerned with people changing records and claiming down something that they don't like that can't happen with crypto, that also makes it very compelling for digital art, right? Like, if you buy a digital art piece, and someone goes, No, I have the original, if they can claim they have the original, it makes the whole engagement pretty much useless. But if they can't, you can now create economies of scale where people can transact into and out of a unique piece of art that's released on one of these networks. And if you own it, you really own it. And no one at any point ever can say that you don't own it, they own it, or that some fake version of it is actually the original, it becomes an impossible proposition, which makes it a really interesting way to you know, trade art back and forth.

Julia Campbell:

And it might also be a form of security, because, you know, people that collect famous works of art is seen as an investment, you know, or collecting property, it's just seen as an investment that's going to grow over time, and become more valuable over time. do agree with that.

Pat Duffy:

Yeah. And the record keeping can be tied to physical items, too. So like that's, that gets deep into the weeds on blockchain. But pretty much imagine you buy a house. And instead of you getting a deed, they give you like an NFT, or crypto equivalents. You have something that's stored in a wallet, and someone's like, No, I own this house. But what you have is like a transaction record for the purchase of it that's unchangeable, versus like a piece of paper that burns down, you know, and a house fire. So like, it's a record keeping system is pretty much what underlies a cryptocurrency or NF Ts, like that's the value prop of people go, you know, it's vaporware. Like it isn't backed by anything. That's what it's backed by, it's the only form of assets of money of art that have ever been immutably tracked in a way where you cannot alter transaction records like the code is written in a way where that becomes impossible.

Julia Campbell:

So are there additional, like legal or accounting burdens that nonprofits need to know about when they are thinking about trying to, you know, create the system to accept crypto donations?

Pat Duffy:

No, not if they're taking assets. So if a nonprofit accepts stocks, they know the deal where there's like, you know, 8280, twos and 8283 is on the donor and the nonprofit side, respectively, we have a process that automates that. And then tax receipt that the donor needs gets automatically generated. So that's taken care of, it's just a matter of like, your bookkeeping, which is just like a report that you pull off of our dashboard, which has off the transaction data. And then you reconcile that the same way you would with stocks or other assets. So it's all super similar from a compliance standpoint? Yes. Like, if you open up a wallet somewhere, that can be an issue, but like the way we do it is with an exchange. So we've pretty much our whole platform is built on top of a crypto Exchange, which is the equivalent of like Fidelity, but for crypto. So all of those considerations, terrorism like KYC, AML. And then like sock one sock to compliance, blocking transactions from sanction countries, all of the concern points, those get handled on the exchange level.

Julia Campbell:

This is going to sound like a silly question to you. But I'm sure some of my listeners are wondering. So you do get all of the information on this donor, and you can then cultivate them after

Pat Duffy:

sure if you want to, we actually have an anonymous option that nonprofits can turn on or off the majority of our clients. Funny enough, we'll leave the anonymous option on which I know people are always like, Can we do that? Nonprofit. So we said it's like if you do it already, then fine. If you don't then just turn it off. It's always kind of surprising to people like how many nonprofits except the anonymous option, we've always put it out there just because like for a donor privacy rights standpoint, it seems appropriate. One of our biggest early donors, for context, was a closeted gay man from the south and sent a couple million dollars to a nonprofit, like an LGBTQ org, and wrote like the most beautiful note of all time, where they're just like, I've never been able to do anything like this because I don't have an anonymous option. And I'm absolutely not going to trust a nonprofit with like all of my personal information tied to this big transaction that's like related to their lifestyle. So anyway, if you're a nonprofit who doesn't want to To anonymous guests, do you just turn that off, that obviously creates more friction. But you turn that off. And then yes, you get all of the details that they enter into their donor form coupled with the transaction data, and you still read them in accordance with your policies.

Julia Campbell:

This just goes into the mindset shift that needs to start happening, and hopefully has happened, because I work with a lot of my clients on Facebook, fundraising, or Instagram fundraising, and you don't get the donor data. And that's the huge point of contention for a lot of organizations. And to me, if you're going to get $2 million from someone that's worth it to keep that name anonymous. Yes. You want to steward them? Yes, you want to call them up and ask them for gifts again, and take them out to lunch and do all that stuff. But everything right now is on the donors terms. And for instance, if there wasn't an anonymous option at this particular organization, I'm sure this gentleman would have looked for another organization where it would be anonymous, because that was that important to him. So we need to really start shifting our thinking around, you know, are we doing things because we want them to because it's always been this way because of status quo? Or are we doing things because it's going to benefit the donor, and it's actually going to help us raise this discretionary funding that we desperately need that we can then turn and help grow our organization? So that's really interesting. I agree. I think that the nonprofits should have an anonymous option, because like you said, it removes friction. And money is money at the end of the day. That's really how I think about it, I send you a $20 bill in the mail, without a name on it, you're still going to cash it, hopefully and still use it. And what I really found interesting is I read the study by fidelity, charitable that found that crypto owners are actually more charitable than the typical investor. But sadly, 46% of these donors found it difficult to find nonprofits that accepted donations. Is that your experience as well?

Pat Duffy:

Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of why we exist. So on top of like, setting up nonprofits to take it like we built the main crowdfunding platform where donors go to find nonprofits to donate crypto to, we've we've operated that since like 2019. We created the industry's Giving Pledge, which like Tony Hawk, the skateboarder Rainn Wilson who's Dwight from the office, or like some notable people who have taken it, and then FTX you know, the crypto exchange that bought the Miami Heat stadium with these big companies and crypto millionaires and billionaires, but they didn't have an industry Giving Pledge. They didn't have a platform to find nonprofits to give to they didn't have crypto GivingTuesday from the GivingTuesday. Foundation, we created a community campaign with them. We created NF Tuesday for the NF T community. The back season on fear campaign, the tax season education with like Friedman and taxpayer the software companies like the bridge between nonprofits and donors like that connective tissue that infrastructure hasn't existed. So it's this really bizarre position that we're in where not only for us, but for the nonprofit's like this isn't a donation amount that it's a donor demographic and the nonprofit to get that our fundraising crypto actively their fundraising from crypto donors in the way that you wouldn't say it's a stock donor, it's a stock donation. Crypto isn't like that, like it's a it's a donor community. There's 300 million of these people who have crypto now, like the size and scale of the I guess, donor side, and then the amount of transaction volume versus how many nonprofits are even trying to get into it is like absurdly out of whack, and unsustainable. So it's a tremendous opportunity for nonprofits. And most of it just comes from not paying attention. Like if you told a nonprofit, you were like Aetherium did $1.2 trillion more in transaction volume than visa last year? It's like they did 11 point 6 trillion in one year of transaction volume, they nonprofits probably wouldn't believe or understand that. Or if you were like 95% of hedge funds either have or are investing into crypto actively when you talk to like a university endowment, and they're like, Should we be looking at this crypto thing? When you're like, it's the best performing asset class of the last decade? You know, it's been around 11 years, like it's older than Instagram, like, Yeah, you should probably I'm not saying buy it. At any given point in time. It could be overvalued, undervalued, but there's hundreds of millions of people using it. And the market caps are getting pretty absurd.

Julia Campbell:

It's so interesting. To me, it seems like when fundraising on Twitch was just starting out. And so many of the creators on Twitch the world's largest live streaming platform, if people don't know Twitch, they were raising millions of dollars for some of the early adopters, some of the nonprofits that were sort of early adopters and really understood the power and the potential that could come with it. And I think the challenge has always been for nonprofits especially, is that they feel like they don't have the full control over it. Like they don't have the control over the message. They don't have the full control over the donor experience, they don't have the donors information. And so that tends to frighten them at least more traditional organizations. But you're absolutely right. I do think it's our responsibility, especially as there's going to be, you know, the biggest wealth transfer in history, from Boomers to Millennials to Gen Z. I think it's our responsibility as fundraisers to at least learn about these things. And, you know, make a decision make an educated decision as to whether or not we're going to set it up or not. I want to hear more about crypto Giving Tuesday. I think that sounds really fun. Yeah,

Pat Duffy:

just one comment on the Twitch thing that you were touching on to like we are integration with tilta phi is going live soon. So tilta. Phi is the main solution provider for for streaming, fundraising, and what you're hitting on Julia like control over the experience and everything else. Like we're doing all of these integrations. And it has nothing to do with crypto, which is really fun. A lot of the value we provide has nothing to do with crypto. It's just like general fundraising best practices and designing platforms that work for donors kind of period. The control over the experience aspect, a different integration that we're working on, with like a live events software provider, they were talking about how nonprofits don't want recurring gifts at events, because the event won't get credited for the donation volume. And pretty much like people in their roles at the nonprofit are getting measured on the success of the event. So they'd rather have larger in person transactions, even if it means less volume for the nonprofit over an annual period. Because then it looks like their individual success is measured. And then we're talking about as a solution provider, you're selling to those people. So now you have to provide products that make those people on the nonprofit say, oh, that's what I want, even though it's obviously worse for the donor experience and is reducing the nonprofit's donation volume and like a very tangible way. And they're like, but if you build it that way, you sell more of this product. And they were explaining like, from an ethical standpoint, and then like a product development standpoint, how like the people working at nonprofits are creating these really perverse incentive models from a software development standpoint, which I just found really compelling. Like you were saying control over the experience for the person buying the software, I think nonprofits definitely need to do a better job thinking about like what is best for the donor, and what increases the nonprofit's donation volume over the long term. So just a bit of a rant. Oh, I

Julia Campbell:

love a good rant. And I completely agree. And I then that development director that has worked events, and you are 100% responsible for the return on investment of that event. And they didn't even want I remember when I worked a certain event, it was years ago, my executive director didn't even want pledges. They wanted the money right then and there. And I said, Well, if they're gonna pay me $5,000 Tonight, or like put, you know, pay towards make a donation? Or if they're gonna do $20,000 over three years, don't you think that might be a little bit better for us. But the entire I think you're so right, that the incentives are, this is what we need to do. Now. This is how we, we've always done it, we need to put this on the books right now. And then the other thing that you're talking about, what I'm hearing is, what I see in the sector a lot is who's gonna get credit? You know, is it the marketing department? Is it the fundraising department? Is it the events person? Is it the volunteer person, and the constant fighting over you know, who's going to get credit for this, because when I think of Twitch, I think of fundraising. But I also think of marketing, it's a fantastic opportunity to market your organization to millions of people that might not have heard of you, and to get exposure and visibility. So I do think that opportunities like crypto philanthropy and crypto Giving Tuesday and Tuesday, are opportunities to reach a new, more diverse younger audience, which is what nonprofits so desperately want.

Pat Duffy:

Oh, 100% on the the attention piece, which is also why twitch and crypto. everything aligns. We've had one nonprofit ever who did like a press release on accepting crypto where it wasn't their best performing of the year. So like, just saying, Hey, we take this stuff, I'm sure that's unsustainable. Obviously, long term, it's it's getting to the point where it's mainstream enough where it's not that earth shattering to just be taking it. But like, we could just go down the list of like, when when American Cancer Society just tweeted, we accept Doge that when we listed Dogecoin, which is like a meme coin, but it's got a very exciting online following, super active. They when they tweeted out that they accept it. We just created this copy and paste message for all our charities to say, hey, we accept this now. Like their tweet, like 12,000 retweets, like, immediately, which is absurd. I think it was their second best performing piece of social content ever. And then, like the leadership at ACS, which is kind of funny, they were like, how do we go all in on toach? And we were like, don't do that. Like don't don't be a mean Like I know it's Dojo is very fun, like let's just take it as a win and keep moving. Keep the identity but in short to get to your point about these campaigns, like, they're not just the most exciting part of like our clients day like which is a cool part of doing crypto philanthropy right like we're the most exciting vendor they get to work with the campaign's we work on are the most exciting, they get the most engagement, they get the youngest audience, it's just kind of fun. And there's a silliness to it, but also just like an activity level that can be inspiring, crypto Giving Tuesday. And then like our end of year campaign in December, generally speaking, we do like a quarter of our volume in the last month of the year. But we've had despite that our volume has increased every quarter. Other than a slight drop off between q4 of 2020 into q1 of 2021. So with that one slight step down over the last six quarters, it's gone up quarter after quarter after quarter after quarter, despite the fact that we usually see that end of year search. So this quarter is going to beat out our end of year last year. And then hopefully that ball keeps rolling. We do 10s of millions of dollars just on like our internal campaign for crypto GivingTuesday into back season that month of December long campaign. And then like the campaign we're running now the carrying with crypto one, we've raised a little under $10 million in I guess it's been a little under three weeks that we've been running this campaign, the water project actually we just highlighted them. They're amazing beater and their team are like super innovative, but they raised on their end a million dollars in crypto in less than two weeks. And then that's matched. We have a $10 million magical right now from shift four. So they had a$4.4 million budget, right that they set for this year like their revenue target. They raised half of that in two weeks through a crypto campaign through like activating their their OG crypto base in Shoreditch. They've been fundraising crypto for many years. They switched to us after a couple of years of doing it. And so they've been building a crypto audience for like a four year period. The longer people fundraise crypto obviously to the more they fundraise as they build up their base. But yeah, that one activation of his donor base for a big carry with crypto campaign that we ran raised half their organization's budget in two weeks.

Julia Campbell:

I see fundraising as knocking down obstacles to giving and creating a great donor experience, and letting them tell you on their terms how they want to give and a man, if any listeners view agree with that, definitely, definitely, definitely check out the given block. Pat, where can people connect with you? Where can they learn more about what you do and your services?

Pat Duffy:

Yeah, I kind of mentioned at the beginning when we talk about endowments, which is like we have like a University of Alabama and like UNC and some big schools who are building programs with us now. But like when we get to the endowment office, I'll just use this analogy to segue into how they can find us. We set up the nonprofits like the arm of the university to accept crypto and then the endowment always come to us and they're like, Should we be looking at crypto and we're like, your job is to manage a big pile of money, like really effectively, right? And over the last 10 years, crypto is the best performing asset class over the last five years, it's the best performing asset class, just create like a multi year block, and then compare it to everything else you can put money into. It's outperformed that for more than a decade. So yeah, you should probably be looking at it. However, the final point here is like you can say no, like no is fine. At least a short term. No, I'm sure every nonprofit over any extended period of time will accept crypto, but maybe not now, right? Like maybe you have to mobile optimize your site more effectively, or you've got a need to take Venmo on college campuses, like you should have a list of innovative priorities and put them in order and attack them accordingly. But you should get to a yes or no on crypto as quickly as possible, right? Because the the ratio of donors to nonprofits is unsustainable. And the groups who are doing this right now are fundraising really effectively. So to answer your question, I would go to the giving block.com click the Accept crypto button and just get on the phone with someone who can run you through a needs assessment. And pretty much figure out if like your needs and opportunities, make sense. And then just like take that away, and figure out if you want to attack it or not in accordance with your other priorities that you have as an organization, I would do that as quickly as possible. And of course, especially if you're a smaller nonprofit with a bunch of foundational stuff to build, like it might not be time for you to get into it. But at the very least figure out if it is

Julia Campbell:

figured out if it does. Well, on that note, thank you so much for being here today. I really learned a lot my mind has been completely opened. And I hope that everyone's listening with an open mind and get to check out the given block. So thanks again, Pat for being here.

Pat Duffy:

Yeah, thanks. Really appreciate it.

Julia Campbell:

Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, you Make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app, and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven, seven. Keep changing the world. Nonprofit unicorn