Stellar Community Fund

By IDUNU: Help Kids Thrive

IDUNU: Help Kids Thrive

SCF #25

$15.0K

Legacy v5.0 Community Award

Awarded

IDUNU: A fundraising and fund distribution platform for high-impact, cost-effective charities working with underprivileged kids.

Products & Services

IDUNU: A fundraising and fund distribution platform for high-impact, cost-effective charities working with underprivileged kids.

Goal: Empowering charities focused on underprivileged children through a sustainable and transparent, Stellar-powered fundraising and fund distribution platform.

The Problem We're Solving: There are over 98 million out-of-school children in Africa (200 million worldwide), and those still in school lack basic learning materials to achieve their dreams. The next generation of digital technologists needs help. NGOs like The Helpmates Foundation and Teens Trust Foundation struggle to raise funds for their annual school initiatives due to the country's dire economic situation.

Summarily: - NGOs face significant challenges in raising funds for educational initiatives due to economic constraints. - There is a high number of out-of-school children, and those in school often need more essential learning materials. - Raising and distributing funds needs more transparency, affecting donor confidence and willingness to contribute.

Overall results with Activation stage: 1. Beta Phase: We started the beta phase with two NGOs, The Helpmates Foundation and Teen Trust Foundation where we refined our product development and also submitted tens of transactions to the Stellar Testnet Network. We also started signing up NGOs on our waitlist during this period.

2. Public Launch: We launched! Our public launch has been with great praise. Here are our results so far and counting: A - We've signed 20 NGOs/charities on our platform. These NGOs have a combined outreach of 1 million kids across Nigeria. We're currently in talks with onboarding NGOs in other African countries like Ghana. B - Over 1,000,000 naira has been raised from campaigns. We currently support XLM and USDC donations. We're working on integrating more currencies like Naira and Ghana's Cedis. C - The platform has reduced the average time from fundraising to fund distribution to under 1 hour, a significant improvement over traditional methods. For example, GoFundMe takes 3-5 business days. D - More people now know how blazingly fast and cheap the Stellar blockchain is. Compared to traditional platforms like GoFundMe, which charge 2-3% for donations, our transactions vary between 0.00001 and 0.0005 XLM! How amazing!

The heart of IDUNU's success lies in its integration with the Stellar blockchain network. Stellar's open blockchain payment system offers unparalleled price, security, and transparency for online transactions, making it an ideal backbone for a platform like IDUNU. By bridging the gap between donors' generosity and children's needs, IDUNU stands as a testament to the power of technology to drive social change.

For the community stage, we will be building the following features: 1. Charity Pay - Simplifying Donations: This payment link feature allows NGOs to create standalone payment pages independent of specific campaigns. It will build upon the Stellar transactions system we've built. This flexibility enables organizations to receive funds for general purposes, catering to operational costs or emergent needs that might not be tied to a particular project. 2. Support for more currencies - Broadening Donor Base: We currently support USDC and XLM. This works really well now because it caters to the platform's biggest donors, who are from the diaspora community. In 2023, over 200 million migrant workers sent $669 billion to people back home in low- and middle-income countries. Integration to Stellar Anchor, Busha has helped with fund distribution, but as we expand to more African countries, we need to support more currencies. We will do this by integrating more of Busha's Stellar Anchor facilities and exploring integrations with Stellar Anchors in other countries like Ghana, such as Flutterwave and Yellowcard. Our integration with LINK.io's NGN token was put on hold because of current Nigerian regulatory issues and their restrictive integration policies, but we plan to revisit our collaboration. 3. Diverse Wallet Integrations - Support for more wallets: We currently only do Stellar Freighter Wallet. For the community awards stage, we will support Xbull, Albedo, Ledger, WalletConnect, etc. 4. Receipts for Tax purposes - Donation tax deduction receipt: To encourage and reward charitable giving, the platform will provide auto-generated donation tax deduction receipts showing verifiable Stellar chain-based proof, making it easier for donors to claim tax benefits. 5. Proof of donation NFT: When we finish our core deliverables for this stage, we will provide Proof of donation NFTs to donors using Soroban smart contracts. This feature offers a novel digital token of appreciation that serves as a memento of their generosity and opens up new avenues for engaging and motivating the donor community. This will be done freely as a volunteer act and is not included in our budget. 6. Personalized Charity Page: Each NGO will have its own page, just like a GoFundMe charity page, showing all its campaigns, donations, and community updates from the charity. 7. Extensive Donation Subscription System - Ensuring Sustained Support: NGOs can get a consistent/ongoing stream of donations from donors interested in their mission. We will set up a system that accepts donors' emails, automatically creates payment links, and sends periodic (weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual) reminders to the specified donor lists.

These features are critical to the long-term sustainability of the charities and our platform, and we're excited to get started!