Improving Charity Transparency via NEO

Nick Hershey, Vicki Niu Feb 24-25, 2018

NeoCharity

Charities receive hundreds of billions of dollars in donor money, yet

​

1. Donors can’t earmark their donations
2. Charities don’t report itemized purchases

Why Blockchain?

Donor:

Decentralization and transparency ensure his money is used as desired

Red Cross:

Automatic, secure purchase reporting

(no accounting hassle)

Motivating Use Case

Bob wants to contribute to Hurricane Maria efforts, but wants to ensure Red Cross spends his money directly on those efforts and he can track their purchases.

Architecture

NeoCharity

• Donate - Put money in tagged charity account, logging donor and amount
• Spend - Send money from tagged account to destination, logging recipient and amount
• GetTotal - amount in account
• GetDonors - all contributors to account
• GetSpenders - all recipients from account
• GetDonation - specific donor contribution
• GetExpense - specific recipient amount

Charity 2

Donor 1

Bob

Donor 2

Red Cross

Charity 1

Gen Mills

Recipient 2

Recipient 1

Who decides which payments satisfy a tag?

Charities define their own tags, and can make payments to any infrastructure

Vendors label themselves with certain tags, and only payments in accounts with those tags work

• Example: Redcross makes account for various disaster funds and operations; Homeless organization has for different cities
• Pro: Far greater flexibility/specificity , doesn’t require all possible vendors on platform
• Con: Unusual spending, though transparent, would have to be searched and found

• Example: General Mills labels themsle
• Pro: Greater security
• Con: Every vendor would have to create many tags to work with every charity with whom they do business, still subject to vague purchases

Generalization

Earmarked, transparent payments

Thanks!