‘NFTs for good’: When non-fungible tokens become a safety net for non-profits

By Gaia Lamperti

Along with fans and enthusiastic investors, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), one of the hottest trends of the year, have also attracted harsh criticism due to the complexity, arbitrariness and, at times, even presumption of their nature.

Quickly reaching incredibly high valuations, they lead to a real craze that made them almost look sketchy in the eyes of regulators and more traditional financial observers. In addition, NFTs suffered from environmentalists’ backlash due to the immense computing power (and, therefore, energy consumption) they require to power every transaction that involves them.

Yet, a new trend of ‘NFTs for good’, along the lines of cryptos’ propensity towards philanthropy, might change the narrative around these controversial items.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, charities, NGOs and non-profits are still a long way from recovering, with 54% of charities not expected to be back to pre-pandemic levels of fundraising by the end of 2021, according to a study by Pro Bono Economics. This is going to have a profound effect on the marginalised communities who rely on the support of these organisations.

For this reason, platforms like The Giving Block, a crypto donation solution that provides an ecosystem for non-profits and charities to fundraise Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, have already facilitated $100 million in cryptocurrency donations in 2021, projecting $1 billion in cryptocurrency donations to be processed in 2022.

Following these steps, more and more NFT companies are seeing an opportunity to make a better investment of their continuous income by directing it towards non-profit projects. DoinGud, an NFT marketplace is connecting over 200+ non-profits with creators so that every NFT sale will provide impact organisations with continuous income from a minimum of 5% up to 95% of primary NFT sales and 2.5% of future sales. And this setting is fully controlled by creators so they can give as much as they want.

“What unites our launch creators beyond their incredible talent is their desire to be a beacon of change. We’re seeing a continuous trend where creators feel compelled to support, nurture, and give to others, and the DoinGud approach is to facilitate this,” said Kyle Gordon, Co-founder and Curator at DoinGud, during a panel at the Token 2049 conference held in London a couple of weeks ago.

Every social impact organization the company contributes to is verified to ensure it aligns with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Applying the DoinGud model, the social impact that could have been generated from the entirety of Q3 $10.67bn NFT trading volume would be in the tune of a minimum of $533.5 million.

“The opportunity is huge here, we aim to ensure that a much larger % share of sales than this is donated from our platform and we want to lead the industry to do the same. Just imagine what we could achieve if we all came together on this common mission of doing good,” added Manu Gonzalez Alzuru, Co-founder of DoinGud.

A big supporter of NFTs for charitable purposes is popular digital artist Pplpleaser who already worked with non-profits like Freedom of the Press Foundation, Stand with Asians, and PleasrFund, dropping NFTs to fund their projects.

“I’ve grown up with family values of charity and goodwill, so I’m helping people that don’t have access to the same resources,” the artist, who was also on the panel commented when talking about her work. “It’s a superpower to create something that’s worth six figures immediately and I have artists being inspired by what I did.”

Through an auction she raised money for the Stand with Asians movement to end hate crimes against Asian minorities, having artists like James Jean and the art director of Blizzard, Samwise Didier, donating their NFTs’ drops to the same fund. “Hopefully it becomes a perpetual fund that continues to benefit subsets of the community.”

The work of socially aware creators and charitable NFT platforms is proving that these tokens are much more than a hobby for rich collectors and that, if leveraged in the right way, the attention they are getting can really make an impact. “Crypto is associated with something good that helps spread the message and if people’s lives can be improved by the NFT movement, then I hope that it continues,” Plpleaser concluded.