Concept

[serapath]

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Project steps

• Information gathering
• Concept
• Project Specification
• Sprints

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Transparency in charity organisations

• user can track her/his donation (like you can track your DHL package shipping)
• it would provide real time feedback to donors
• it would be the tool charities can implement easily into their existing systems (widget) or a platform where charities "apply" for the tracking service
• it doesn't need to be public (it's enough if donor can just track her/his own donation)
• charity gets a certificate/badge that they are "transparent & socially responsible" (aka reputation)

[ninabreznik]

Additional (from Ashraf):

• The app will be owned by the charity???;
• The charity shall have a backend solution that talk with the application and feed it with information;
• It will promote it to its current and potential donors as a tool to be more attractive to them by being transparent about the use of the donations;
• Donors can download the app from stores (Q: shall we make the app a white label product that each charity will put its name on it? Or what could be other alternatives?); - Donors will be registered to the app by email/Facebook/LinkedIn???
• Who will initiate the process of tracking? The donor send to the charity through the app the amount of donation then the charity starts to report back to the donor? Or the charity will initiate the process for all the donors?
• If the donor donate to build a school/hospital, s/he should receive a regular update (text or preferably photos) of the development of the construction;
• If the donor donate to support orphans/poor families, s/he should receive a confirmation about the exact support provided (cash or in-kind);
• We need to think and provide tracking solution for each donation type;
• The app should have the option of promoting new project by the charity and request donations from its donors?
• The backend solution should be nimble enough to communicate with any existing system used by the charity;

[ninabreznik]

Idea??

• Maybe it could even be a Facebook app - easy to integrate & communicate & also update donors (with picture and texts - posts notify donors). Question is only how to connect to their backend/database...

[serapath]

So we need to put together an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that has in mind that we can grow and extend it later. I saw some stand-alone apps in general are also available as an "iframed" facebook app.

Nina thinks even the most "conservative" charities are more open to technology on facebook.

I think its maybe even smart to break the app down into multiple apps - think "microservices" or even different user facing frontends depending on who has which needs. e.g. charity, donor, beneficiary, aga khan, .... and then again based on which people will interact with the app for which purpose...

[ninabreznik]

BRAINSTORM

Donor Management Software

• Name: Network for good
• Function: CRM
• ToDo:
  • Maybe to attach to their API and develop the tracking system,
  • We should also find out which charities use the software and maybe they could be the first target market

BlockchainDB

• donor pays through blockchain
• possible usage of BigchainDB (@sbellem)
• blockchain charity tracking search keywords

[serapath]

Hey, just saw @mitar created this https://github.com/peer/donate/issues/1
It's maybe related

[mitar]

Mine is just personal donation manager. I do not believe in systems where you have to get non-profit/charity to register anywhere. And they should not. They already have a way to donate. And my proposal is an app which abstracts those various ways away. And then you can donate to them from one central place, knowing exactly what and how much you are donating. And when your credit card expires you have only one place to change it.

So this what I do not believe in:

• it would be the tool charities can implement easily into their existing systems (widget) or a platform where charities "apply" for the tracking service

So my approach will be a simple app with many bots for various charities in. And bots will submit payments for in your name. Also, this will allow easy recurrent donations even if target non-profit system dos not support them natively.

Later on we can make it better to find charities to donate to. And discovery. And sharing of your list of donations and stuff. But for now just making it less time-consuming to donate.

Also, no unnecessary blockchain stuff. Supporting cryptocurrency as payments for those donors and charities who support it, but there is no need to store data into a blockchain in my opinion. But this is because I am not solving the "transparency" problem you are trying to address as well. But even in that case a centralized database might be good enough for start. You will be and independent organization from charities and this could already be enough to trust your database. Do not make it more complicated than necessary for MVP. You can introduce blockchain later on, if you really see that users are demanding it.

[serapath]

The bot idea sounds cool. Actually might work well. I like it.

Maybe there can be an app that you can sign up for, that offers you donating (potentially re-occuring) to charities, but in order to make an account, you do not sign in with email or facebook, or twitter, or whatever... but create an "identity" (maybe https://onename.com/ or https://blockstack.org/ or something) where you are in full control of your identity.

So the "blockchain stuff" would not be for payments, but to manage your identity.

[mitar]

To me signing-in question is orthogonal to the app itself. App should allow pluggable authentication systems and whoever installs an instance of it (user for themselves, or somebody offering a public service) can decides which authentication mechanisms they want to allow. My personal view is that you should allow as many as possible, and then users choose. I really do not see why we would enforce some type of authentication for users, even if we believe that some type of authentication is "better" (in some meaning of this word) than some other. These days there is really no reason why an app should be tightly coupled with an authentication provider. So yes, if there is a blockchain based authentication provider, consider allowing admins to enable it, but I would definitely not be implementing such a provider as part of an app itself. This is for some other project to do.

[serapath]

I'd totally like users to offer that themselves - but a service that could be easily hosted by someone people trust - and that later makes it easy to transition ones identity into ones own hands - would be great.

I publish a "public key" and hold my "private key".
I can verify my account by others signing my "realness" and/or linking my existing profiles to it (maybe facebook, twitter, github, ... - maybe a phone number and/or address?). Maybe the public/private key can be bound or derived from a picture of me if i want. If i loose my public/private key, i can use my friends and linked accounts to take away credibility from my lost identity and give it to a new identity.

.... there needs to be all kinds of thought to be put into a way of being able to having an online identity with which i can proof to apps who I am - so people can finally stop to make signups via email or facebook/twitter/etc...

Maybe many approaches can compete for this - but I wonder if there is already something that can be used or that started gathering criteria that need to be met my such a ideally self hosted service.

And yes - it's for sure for some other project to do. Was just wondering if there is something that is already used more widely that i could start to use/offer

[mitar]

I publish a "public key" and hold my "private key". I can verify my account by others signing my "realness" and/or linking my existing profiles to it (maybe facebook, twitter, github, ... - maybe a phone number and/or address?).

I think you are describing Keybase.

[serapath]

really?

• are you sure i can use keybase to sign people into my app?
• can I host it myself? think i need to use their service, or not?

[mitar]

can I host it myself? think i need to use their service, or not?

Not yet. But one could probably build something on top of their API.

can I host it myself? think i need to use their service, or not?

I think this is the goal of a common service, that all users are sharing it? But, data is also pushed to blockchain, so you can probably create a service against that as well.

[serapath]

puh, sounds kind of not ready yet...