Even as cryptocurrencies collapse and draw “I told you so” heckles from critics, a venerable development and antipoverty group is deepening its digital-cash fundraising. The goal: attract cryptodonations but also test new ways to build relationships with everyday donors.

The 78-year-old Heifer International recently acquired the assets of the BitGive Foundation, a nonprofit that connects Bitcoin holders with charities. Most significantly, Heifer takes over BitGive’s GiveTrack, a crowdfunding platform that has funded the projects of big international development organizations like Heifer and Save the Children as well as small groups such as the Water Project.

GiveTrack

GiveTrack lets donors follow cryptogifts to their endpoint, when they are put to use by the charity, thanks to the blockchain technology that undergirds Bitcoin and other digital cash. Donors get regular updates on the project’s impact and need through email or a feed not unlike a social-media feed.

Such transparency and reporting are essential for relationships with all donors, not just cryptophilanthropists, said Harper Grubbs, Heifer’s senior director of digital marketing. That includes the small-gift supporters whose donations through the organization’s famed holiday gift catalog go to purchase cows, sheep, and flocks of chicks for families in need.

“This is a big leap forward in the donation experience of the future,” Grubbs said. “We want to bring this experience to people who are not crypto donors as well. They’re looking for deeper level and engagement, and we think the GiveTrack platform provides that.”

Handoff From Start-Up to Giant

GiveTrack launched in 2015, more than a decade after the debut of GlobalGiving, a pioneering crowdfunding platform and one of the fastest-growing nonprofits of the past two decades. It has raised more than $730 million from some 1.6 million donors since 2002, funding more than 30,000 projects.

The two platforms are similar in purpose and look: Both raise funds for international development and promote projects through photos, videos, reports from staff, and more. GlobalGiving, however, does not accept cryptocurrency; donors have not sought to make gifts of digital cash, the organization said in a statement. “If we were to receive requests, we would consider enabling it, but we have other competing priorities at this moment as well.”

The BitGive acquisition — which wasn’t a purchase but a transfer of assets, intellectual property, and brand — had been in the works for more than six months, according to both groups. BitGive founder Connie Gallippi said the nine-year-old organization saw itself as a start-up that needed deeper pockets to expand.

BitGive had only about $257,000 in revenue in 2021, according to tax records. Heifer International’s total income, meanwhile, was nearly $141 million.

“This is a monumental step forward,” Gallippi said. Heifer, she added, is an organization widely known for its good work and impact. “For them to embrace this technology and this innovative way of approaching things is very legitimizing for the tech itself.”

Heifer, which began accepting cryptocurrency donations in 2016, said the acquisition is an evolution of its experiments with digital cash as well as blockchain technology, which locks together digital transactions in what amounts to a ledger. All transactions are secure and transparent, which for donors promises a sense that their funds will be used as designated.

Heifer CEO Pierre Ferrari’s enthusiasm for tech-driven innovation is such that he was profiled in Wired magazine under the headline: “The Nonprofit That’s Using Technology to Put Itself Out of Business.” Among the group’s blockchain efforts, its Chocolate4All program helps Honduran farmers track the production of cocoa beans to their sale — a process previously tracked through spreadsheets.

Courtesy of Heifer International

“Regardless of what happens with currencies, blockchain is critical to what we think the future looks like for infrastructure and organization and administration,” Grubbs said.

In late 2020, Heifer turned to GiveTrack for a crypto-crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $10,000 to buy a walk-behind tractor and other equipment that it loans to Heifer’s network of farmers in the American South.

Heifer will take six months or more to consider how best to use GiveTrack and its other new assets. Grubbs said it wants to add the capability to accept cryptocurrencies aside from Bitcoin. It also will decide whether to keep the crowdfunding platform open to projects from other organizations. “Everything’s on the table,” Grubbs said.

Gallippi and another BitGive staff member will join Heifer in consulting roles, while the organization’s acting executive director will remain with the group until the transfer of assets is formally complete.

A Soon-Irrelevant Currency?

The announcement of the BitGive acquisition arrives amid mounting fears about the viability of digital cash. The values of most cryptocurrencies have plummeted this year, affected by the same inflationary concerns and interest-rate worries that have hammered stocks. Bitcoin has lost more than two-thirds of its value since a high of more than $67,000 per coin in November.

“My guess is that crypto will never become wholly worthless, but it will eventually become irrelevant, like the Beanie Baby frenzy of the 1990s,” tweeted Matt Stoller, a frequent cryptocurrency critic and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.

Other concerns stem from what Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler last year deemed as a crypto market “rife with fraud, scams, and abuse.”

A few nonprofits are having second thoughts about cryptogiving. In January, the Mozilla Foundation, after blistering criticism from co-founder Jamie Zawinski, suspended digital-cash gifts. It announced last month that it would continue that pause, citing the currency’s volatility and the environmental costs of some energy-intensive cryptomining.

“This doesn’t preclude us from keeping the door open to greener cryptocurrency projects in the future,” it said. “But, for now, our donations policy is not the place to do it.”

Other organizations are continuing cryptofundraising programs, saying they are tapping into a new channel of philanthropy and meeting donors where they are. A third of crypto holders donate digital assets, according to a Fidelity Charitable survey of investors with more than $25,000 in all kinds of assets. The survey also suggests there’s potential for growth: More than half of investors don’t even know they can give digital cash to charity.

Unicef is nearing the end of a three-year pilot CryptoFund. Donations from a handful of donors now support entrepreneurs — many of them start-up or early-stage companies — developing open-source technologies that aim to accelerate results for the organization. Thanks to the transparency offered by blockchain, a website tracks the flow of cryptocash to and from the fund.

Unicef is evaluating the pilot to consider whether to continue it and is pleased with its efficiencies. International agencies often face weekslong delays and big expenses getting funds through government regulatory bodies and converted to a local currency for use in the field. By contrast, CryptoFund transactions take under 10 minutes with fees of less than 0.1 percent, according to Sunita Grote, the lead of Unicef Ventures.

“We are always looking for solutions to save on operational costs and deliver results,” Grote says.

Most nonprofits convert cryptodonations to traditional currency upon receipt, fearful that gifts could lose value almost overnight. Both Unicef and Heifer acknowledge the volatility of digital cash poses challenges but point to the advantage of moving funds with greater speed and efficiency.

“We don’t think those challenges are enough not to continue this work,” Grote said.

Millions of cryptodollars continue to be donated to charity despite the decline in value, noted Grubbs. “Even with the volatility, donors have a need to use their currency to do good things,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going away.”