Category: General News

This bit of news about our new partnership is a long time in the making, but I'm excited to finally share it!

The Partnership

The Outer Banks Community Foundation is the most important nonprofit down here in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where we set up shop and call home. Their tagline is "Connecting people who care with causes that matter." Some years ago they ran a giving circle that our family participated in. Each family would throw $250 per year into the hat, and collectively decide on which nonprofits to send the money. Sound familiar?!

We are humbled here at Charitocracy that OBCF has decided to breathe life back into their giving circle in the form of Charitocracy OBX. We will continue to offer participation for as little as $1 per month, embracing Charitocracy's mission of making philanthropy accessible to everyone. That's always been a popular option, and as always, each donor gets one vote regardless of how much they donate. However, as always, a bigger donation doesn't have a louder voice at Charitocracy, but it does have a bigger impact...

So we'll also offer donation "bundles" at the $250 per year "Golden" level, familiar to past participants in OBCF's giving circle, as well as a new $100 per year "Silver" level. These bundles include monthly contributions to the OBX and USA monthly grant pots, so you can vote on both monthly grants, locally and nationally. They also include contributions to OBCF's Community Fund as well as "tips" to help offset Charitocracy's expenses. (Remember, we're an all-volunteer nonprofit ourselves, and have to pay the costs of credit card processing, servers, insurance, etc., so these tips, while optional, are very important to keep us afloat!) Finally, the bundles include contributions to our new endowment!

The Endowment

The former giving circle at OBCF just happened to have some funds left over and looking for a new home, to the tune of over $6000. As part of our partnership they're going to assign those funds over to Charitocracy! We'll be able to withdraw a small percentage annually, and use that to top off the monthly pots, cover expenses, or whatever is our biggest need in fulfilling our charitable purpose. We'll also keep track of how much of the new endowment deposits are coming from Charitocracy OBX vs. Charitocracy USA, by looking at the monthly pot contributions accompanying each endowment contribution. That way we can maintain a fair distribution of those funds back out into the OBX and national nonprofit sectors.

This is how I like to think of it: You can give $1 now, and we'll put it in the next grant check. You can give $20, and we can continue to put it into upcoming grant checks. Or you can give $20, and we can put it into the endowment, and now that becomes the same as $1 every year... forever*.

*For some rough approximation of forever, and some rough guess at how the endowment investments perform over time. But at least OBCF has been going for 40 years now and knows a thing or two about managing endowments! They hold over $22,000,000 in ~200 charitable endowments.

The Cake... and $4000!

I'm glad I got your attention. The cake is not a lie, and neither is the $4000 grant. On Saturday October 15, from 2pm to 6pm, at the Outer Banks Brewing Station, we'll be celebrating OBCF's 40th anniversary with a backyard birthday bash! Let's raise pints of our favorite cold beverages to toast the next 40 years of charitable giving in the Outer Banks! And eat cake, and take this new partnership for a spin...

We'll be hijacking Charitocracy OBX that day in order to vote on a special $4k grant from OBCF to some lucky local nonprofit with the most votes! Every OBX nonprofit nominated on Charitocracy OBX is eligible, even if they've already won in the past 12 months. And any local 501(c)(3) that needs a nomination can either join up and self-nominate the good old-fashioned way, or email scout@obcf.org before October 1st to be auto-nominated. After the event, we'll narrow to the Top 10 for the usual October grant, and it'll be back to our normal schedule. (Charitocracy USA will remain unaffected by any of these shenanigans!)

I look forward to seeing you there! In the meantime, consider logging in and switching your annual donation to one of our new pre-configured bundles, or customizing your own perfect combination of monthly pot, endowment, tip, and Community Fund contributions. Your continued generosity shouldn't surprise me any more, but it always does. Thank you. ❤️

The Outer Banks Community Foundation invites the public to its 40th Birthday Backyard Bash at the Outer Banks Brewing Station on Saturday, October 15 from 2 – 6 pm. The free event will feature live music, birthday cake, and a $4,000 grant to be awarded to one local charity by event-goers. This community grant kicks off a new partnership with Charitocracy OBX, our new, local, online giving circle, where donors pool their contributions, nominate, and vote for local nonprofits to receive grants each month.

“Our Community Foundation was built on a model of many people making modest contributions, for the betterment of the entire community,” said President and CEO Chris Sawin. “As we reflect on 40 years of giving, we are humbled by the efforts of others and inspired to do our part to position this extraordinary organization into its next 40 years of service. We are very pleased to mark this auspicious occasion by launching a new giving platform the whole community can be involved in, starting at just $1 a month.”

[Read the whole news post here on OBCF's website.]

We reached the 100 donor mark during our first month of operation back in September 2016. We reached the 200 donor mark one year later in September 2017. And that's where it stayed for 2018 and 2019, with our new donor attraction rate in rough equilibrium with our attrition rate.

Now, in early 2021, we have crossed the 300 donor mark. 🥳

Sea Change OBX, named the winner one year ago last week, ushered in a new era. An era of nominees encouraging their own networks of donors, members, and followers to join Charitocracy and vote. In fact, the past twelve months have been largely dominated by winners that won by introducing new donors to Charitocracy. And that goes for our most recent February 2021 USA winner, too!

Another driver of new donors has been this new OBX site! While most OBX donors were already USA donors, we've also attracted some newcomers to this regional spin-off. If you haven't already thrown a buck in the OBX pot, come join us in the voting here each month, too. Or you can redirect some/all of your current monthly USA donation over to OBX, no additional charge. Adjust your monthly donation here.

Statistical breakdown of 300+ donors

For those who are curious, here's the break-down as of today:

• USA-only donors: 241
• OBX-only donors: 19
• Donors to both pots: 50
• Total USA donors: 291
• Total OBX donors: 69
• Total donors: 310

Where we go from here: 400!

There's nothing stopping us from doing it again in the next 12 months! The #1 thing about Charitocracy that donors like most is how they can amplify their donations. Even at the $1 per month level, their donations when combined with everyone else's add up to over $500. And when nominating their favorite cause, or "cheerleading" for one particular nominee they feel strongly about, it becomes a real easy sell to attract friends and family.

You invite all your friends with easy to generate social media and/or email invitations. Your friends chip in as little as $12 for the year, and vote for your cause. Once there's a couple dozen of them, you're in a very strong position to have those donations amplified, easily by an order of magnitude. Never mind the next 11 months and beyond of voting in other great causes to win monthly grants!

Do I hear 500? Benj needs a haircut...

I've been saying for a while now that once we hit the 500 active donor mark, I'd be open to cutting my long hair. And perhaps even cutting my hair to a style selected by the most successful Charitocracy recruiter helping to hit the 500 mark!

We've been keeping track of referrals since the beginning, so if you don't see someone listed in your Giving Tree branches that you recruited, or you don't see your recruiter as the root of your tree, give me a yell and I'll patch it up so you get due credit.

But first, see you at 400! The sooner the better.

Our trademarks actually registered last summer. The days were warm, the sun was shining, and I had better things to do than write blog posts about... paperwork. Today, it's cold and the sun is shining on and off. Writing about Charitocracy's trademark registrations might turn out to be this winter day's highlight. 🎉

Check out the fancy new Circle Rs below!

Origins of the name

When coming up with the concept for this nonprofit in early 2011, I purchased a couple domain names just in case: azillion.org and onlyadollar.org. One of these would have worked fine, but I couldn't get super excited about them. They were missing that certain something. And my brainstorming wasn't coming up with anything better, at least not anything with an available domain name!

Over dinner with my friend and Apple coworker, Jeremy Sandmel, at some point between 2011 and 2015, I described the meta-charity I wanted to create some day. A mix of charity and democracy, where donors would mod charities up and down to decide which get crowdfunded.

"What's it called?"

"I don't have a name for it yet... Just a few lame possibilities."

"How about Charitocracy?"

In the moment I thanked him for the suggestion and laughed it off as a mouthful. But on the drive back from dinner, it clicked with me. Rhyming with meritocracy was almost certainly Jeremy's intention, but I was slow to get it. Better late than never! And most importantly, the .com and .org domains were available. ✅

Years later when reminding Jeremy of his important naming contribution to Charitocracy, he didn't even remember it came from him. Or perhaps he regretted sticking me with a five syllable name that's difficult to say and spell? Regardless, I'll never forget! It might take a while, but hopefully it grows on you... I think I'm finally getting used to it.

Origins of the logo

Unlike the name, I fell in love with our logo the moment I saw it.

I commissioned a logo on Crowdspring, asking for some sort of mix of charity, voting, and the power of the people. I also noted how I'm partial to bold lines a la Keith Haring. Over two dozen artists generated over one hundred entries, fine-tuned with my continual feedback. One of them by Connie Zegers of the Netherlands was clearly it. Thank you, Connie!! ❤️

It cost me less than $300. You can read some of the details of my Crowdspring journey if you're curious.

Registering the trademarks

I'm a DIY kind of guy, especially when it means saving Charitocracy from unnecessary expenses. So when I discovered the series of videos on the United States Patent and Trademark Office's website walking viewers through the process of registering trademarks, I binged them all. They are outrageously goofy, and it gave me some confidence that the bar might not be too high when it comes to completing this paperwork.

That's not to say that hiring an attorney is a bad idea for most people. If you want to be sure it's done right, and you have the budget for it, don't let me talk you out of it. But if you have a reasonably high attention to detail, no fear of handling digital art files, and the patience to hunt down all possible conflicting names and logos in the database of already registered trademarks, you could save hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The entire process took a couple days of learning and doing, and then over 6 months of waiting. Piece of cake!

You can see our trademark (service mark, actually, if you want to be a nerd about it) registration certificates, applications, etc. at these links for our word mark and design mark, respectively.

I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and belated celebration of our successful registrations. My baby Charitocracy® is all growed up. 😍