From Quadratic Funding to Philanthropy Mining: Open-Source Communities Empowering Small Nonprofits

Craig Anderson
5 min readFeb 13, 2021

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Gitcoin Grants Matching Rd8: Pandemic Pods & Distance Learning

🏳 Prologue

Spoiler Headline: AmwFund receives over $1300 USD equiv. in GR8 with the help of Commons Stack & Panvala. But just a little context setting before we dive in…

For those unawares, AmwFund is the digital asset fundraising arm of the A.M. Winn Community Guild (Guild). The Guild, in more common terms, is the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO)that supports A.M. Winn ek-8 Public Waldorf School in Sacramento, CA. The Guild is a registered 501c3 nonprofit (EIN 81–2138952) and the primary fundraising entity responsible for financially supporting multiple facets of the entire A.M. Winn community, ranging from basic school supplies all the way to specialty teacher salaries. Huh!? As part of a public school district, aren’t basic necessities and teacher salaries covered through federal, state, and local funding pools? The simple answer is no, we have funding gaps in those areas and many more.

🚍 2 primary drivers in our situation:

🌱 Hybrid Approach | Waldorf-inspired Public School

While our school district realigned some of its core learning standards to better match the Public Waldorf objectives, the funding necessary to implement a comprehensive program focused on experiential learning has not kept pace.

🏛 Title I School | Income Limited School Community

Title I is a US federal program with the aim of Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged. In plain speak, Title I schools are composed of economically and otherwise disadvantaged communities. A.M Winn School is an official Title I school largely serving already disadvantaged communities.

👩🏼‍🤝‍🧑🏿 So…The Guild is the primary fundraising entity charged with supplementing the budget shortfalls driven by our unique Public Waldorf, Title I status. While our local community is hands-on strong with ample volunteer participation and numerous traditional fundraising efforts, we annually fall short of our ever-increasing financial needs. Under the current funding structure, our school is not able to effectively support even the basic components of our Public Waldorf curriculum, making continuity and integration even more challenging.

Funding from Pandemic Pods & Distance Learning is helping us to bridge these institutional funding gaps in public education.

AmwFund | Digital Asset Fundraiser

📰 AmwFund receives over $1300 USD equiv. in Gitcoin Grants Matching Rd 8

Back to the real story here☝☝

We are excited to announce that with the support of Gitcoin, Commons Stack, and Panvala, the open-source community with the help of matching sponsors provided contributions totaling approx. $1300 to our GR8 grant 👇

🌰 Pandemic Pods & Distance Learning

Sincerest GRATITUDE to all contributors and matching sponsors for the ongoing community support in helping us grow and prosper.

💸 The donation flow is mindbogglingly cool and somewhat complicated for the unacquainted. To simplify:

gitcoin.co
  1. Pandemic Pods Grant on Gitcoin
    - 20.85 $DAI
    - 1206 $PAN
    - 8.48 $DAI Match (quadratic funding)
    - $137 USD Total (~)

Gitcoin is growing open-source software development/projects & supporting public goods 👀
A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods, Buterin et al 2018
Experiments with Liberal Radicalism, Singh 2019

commonsstack.org

2. Commons Stack Community Fund
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Special Gitcoin Matching Grant
- Part of Panvala League Match
- Top 15 projects selected by Trusted Seed with Conviction Voting

The Commons Stack is building commons-based microeconomies to sustain public goods through incentive alignment, continuous funding and community governance👀
Automating Ostrom for Effective DAO Management, Emmett 2019
Scaling the Commons to Re-Prioritize People and the Planet, Decoodt 2019

panvala.com

3. Panvala League
- Philanthropy mining with $PAN
- Conviction Voting with $CSTK
- Matching on top of matching
- Multi-layered community support leveraged

Panvala issues funds to match donations in $PAN on top of the already amazing matching that Gitcoin provides 👀
Cultivating Civic Life in Cyberspace, Babaloa 2020
Commons Stack Community Fund Rd2, Griff Green

After 2 weeks on Gitcoin Grants, an additional 2-week staking period on Panvala, and a 1-week voting period on Commons Stack, AmwFund’s Pandemic Pods & Distance Learning finished 12th overall

💥 Yielding an additional 11,776.19 $PAN (~$1206 USD) from the Commons Stack Community Fund via the Panvala League. That’s an 8.9x multiplier on top of the GR8 matching contributions!!!

Panvala League GR8 rankings

📣 Calling all PTOs / PTAs / and all other Educational Fundraising Nonprofits 📢

Does your school’s fundraising portfolio include digital assets? Well, it really should if you want to tap into global philanthropic communities and regenerative economies

Help AmwFund build community and leverage numbers allowing access to a burgeoning ecosystem of local economies, public goods, and community collectives by checking out our new Educational Fundraising Cooperative

🍇 Raisin Education

Fill out our Typeform or reach out directly!

Raisin Education | Community Collaborative of Digital Asset Enable Educational Fundraisers

❓Find Out More

AmwFund has been around in one form or another (previously Happy Kids Dirty Hands) since Oct 2018. Open-source communities have been an integral part in our growth from a tiny seedling. We appreciate everybody’s support. Check out our list of accomplishments and milestones here👇

💎 https://www.amwwaldorf.org/milestones

AmwFund
🌐 https://www.amwwaldorf.org/digital-donations
🕊 https://twitter.com/AmwFund
🌉 DeFi Bridge https://www.amwwaldorf.org/defi-bridge
🍇 Raisin Education https://www.raisineducation.org/
🏫 AM Winn ek-8 Public Waldorf https://www.amwwaldorf.org/

Commons Stack
https://commonsstack.org/#ids
https://twitter.com/commonsstack

Gitcoin
https://gitcoin.co/
https://twitter.com/gitcoin

Panvala
https://panvala.com/
https://twitter.com/PanvalaHQ

Token Engineering Commons
https://forum.tecommons.org/
https://twitter.com/tecmns

Quadratic Funding | Its the Math
https://wtfisqf.com/?grant=&grant=&grant=&grant=&match=1000

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