Introducing the future of philanthropy on Blockchain

Heritage, a solution developed by the Airbus Foundation, is a decentralized framework that allows the Airbus Foundation to receive and manage donations and provide this functionality to other charities it works with using the Ethereum blockchain.

Heritage is open source and designed to provide an end-to-end solution for charitable organizations based on Ethereum. Developed by A3 from Airbus, it combines the functionality of Ethereum smart contracts, Web3 Javascript library, tools developer, as well as a decentralized application (dApp) for managing cryptocurrency donations and interacting with their donors. Since March 2013, when the project was launched by Airbus, it has been used to help the Foundation raise funds for disaster relief and emergency response around the world.

As part of the Airbus Foundation's 10th anniversary, it will be integrated with Airbus's internal fundraising platform as an open source project under the BSD3. This will be done to stimulate replication, expansion and independent development of the project by the blockchain developer community.

The modern paradigm of philanthropy inevitably involves the participation of several intermediaries, since the narrow competence of non-profit organizations forces them to outsource some of their secondary functions. Expectedly, this creates accounting issues and raises questions about the integrity of the charitable disbursement process, as well as raising reporting issues.

Heritage proposes to solve this fundamental problem facing the charity industry by using blockchain to make the entire process transparent and automatic. Within the framework, each donation stores information about the purpose of the donation, the donor's Ethereum wallet address, the amount of the donation, and even tax information necessary for corporate tax deductions.

Instead of recording donations as simple blockchain entries, Heritage records them as ERC-721 tokens (a type of non-interoperable token - NFT), which is then owned by the donor.. This allows the donor to maintain an immutable record of their charitable giving in the form of a unique token in their “charitable portfolio,” which can be used for a variety of purposes, including 501 giving certificates and tax documents.

The full transparency of the platform and the ability for investors to create a “portfolio” of their charitable activities is an attempt to solve the main issues associated with charitable donations, using a system that is fundamentally different from those currently available on the market. It addresses the increasingly serious issue of trust within the philanthropic space, as people turn away from charitable fundraising due to fears that funds will not reach the intended recipients.

Role of Ethereum

At a time when blockchain technology development in the aviation ecosystem is largely focused on logistics and supply chain management, the Airbus Foundation was the first strategic partner to see the value in the Heritage framework. This is due in no small part to Heritage's use of Ethereum, which opens up space for a new class of investors.

With Ethereum, smart contracts can be incorporated into the fundraising process, which opens up a new range of possibilities due to their impartial nature. Combined with the Web3 Javascript library, development tools and dApps, Ethereum smart contracts are the ideal tool for managing and interacting with the blockchain, cryptocurrency donations and donors in the philanthropic space.

One of the significant aspects of Heritage issuing non-compliant tokens to manage charitable portfolios is to store all data in a manner that is significantly more secure than any off-chain storage option.

Partners

In an effort to open up more giving opportunities and raise standards of service, Heritage works with a growing list of charities.

These organizations include representatives of airlines and non-profit organizations that use aviation industry partnerships to provide humanitarian assistance and medical support to vulnerable children.. Heritage also works with HartSong Ranch Animal Sanctuary and the Museum of Art, Design and Entertainment (MADE).

Already, some charities are accepting cryptocurrency donations, one of which is Fidelity Charitable, owned by Fidelity Investments. The organization began receiving donations in cryptocurrency in 2015, and in 2017 it reported a tenfold increase in cryptocurrency donations, indicating the growing importance of crypto technologies for philanthropy. Last year, it was revealed that Fidelity Charitable received $69 million in cryptocurrency donations, which came as a surprise even to the company's management. Fidelity Charitable executives say they expect giving to continue to grow as cryptocurrencies make it easier for philanthropy to reach a wider range of investors.

While crypto donations are not yet mainstream, the Airbus Foundation believes that the introduction of platforms like Heritage will accelerate this trend and make crypto donations more popular. Other organizations Heritage works with are Maker, 0x Protocol and Plasma. Finally, Heritage is collaborating with UNICEF on an upcoming hackathon focused on blockchain development for charitable causes.

According to BTCManager