Mona's Crypto Story

GIVE CRYPTO TO EDUCATE. EMPOWER. TRANSFORM.

When cryptocurrency was becoming more mainstream several years ago, our team at Mona Foundation, like many non-profits, had lots of questions: How does crypto work? Can it be used for charitable giving? How would we receive a crypto donation? Do we need a special account? What is a “digital wallet”? Should it be converted to cash on receipt or held as an investment? While curious, we were also content to watch from the sidelines and see what developed. But everything changed four years ago when our dear friend and champion Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute on the NBC sitcom The Office) introduced an unexpected opportunity.

On December 14, 2017, Rainn told us about the Pineapple Fund, an anonymous donor who had just posted on Reddit offering generous crypto grants to proven nonprofits. With his encouragement, we quickly wrote a request and submitted our application. We received a response only 3 days later: Mona Foundation was granted $1M towards the education and empowerment of women! WOW! We were honored – and in a state of disbelief – to be among the first 10 nonprofits selected by the Pineapple Fund for this very generous grant. Ultimately only 60 nonprofits received grants from among 10,000 applicants. All of a sudden, the questions we had been idly curious about now needed immediate answers. Our forward-thinking Board of Directors quickly consulted and agreed on a strategy to manage and allocate the grant, and our very capable Treasurer set up an institutional account with Bitcoin Pro to receive it legally and securely.

This whirlwind introduction was just the beginning of Mona’s journey of learning about digital currencies. Over the past few years, our engagement with the multi-faceted crypto donor community has deepened and expanded. Here’s how:

Partnering with The Giving Block – When The Giving Block launched in 2018, Mona Foundation was among its very first customers. We realized we did not know enough to process future crypto donations or manage the ever-growing number of digital currencies. We needed help and The Giving Block was our lifeboat. With their deep understanding of all things crypto, their industry connections (including collaboration with Gemini as the Exchange serving nonprofits), their Gen Y outlook on the future of a global digital community, and their no-nonsense marketing support, The Giving Block helped answer all our questions and has made navigating the world of crypto easy and doable.

Rainn Wilson’s ongoing vocal support – Whether posting about Mona Foundation on social media or promoting the Crypto Giving Pledge (and taking it himself), Rainn’s dedication to using his celebrity voice to encourage crypto donors to consider Mona for their charitable giving has been invaluable.

Enabling crypto giving online – We embedded TGB’s Crypto Donation Widget on a new “Give Crypto” page on our website and linked the widget to a crypto option on the site’s primary Donate button. This simple step has expanded Mona’s ability to accept a growing list of crypto currencies.

Staying open to new opportunities – The crypto community is “generous by default” and seems to regularly come up with new approaches to charitable giving and fundraising -- like philanthropy-minded NFT projects. Last December, Mona became one of the first nonprofits in the world to benefit from the crypto sale of an NFT when artist @_Dkleine (https://twitter.com/_DKleine) donated the proceeds from the sale of his Star Wars/Zombie-inspired piece "I find your lack of flesh disturbing...". More on this in our next blog on Mona’s NFT story.

Keeping donors informed of their impact – Sharing concrete examples of impact lets donors know their support is making a difference in the world. For example, in 2017, Mona and local partner Study Hall Educational Foundation (India) began the GyanSetu program to start informal one-room schools for kids living in abject poverty to bring them up to grade level and transition to public school. In the first year, at the low cost of $7/month per student (about $3,000/year per school), we opened 14 GyanSetu schools serving 490 students. By 2020, in response to community need and despite the devastating impact of COVID19, we had scaled to 63 schools serving 2,089 students by learning to leverage the power of accessible technology. In 2021, we are thrilled to now support 100 schools serving 2,698 students. An additional 684 students have transitioned to public schools. GyanSetu schools have become true centers of community transformation with classes on digital literacy, trained counselors to help women tackle gender issues in their communities, and piloting employment skills classes.

The ability to show and scale impact is one reason Rainn Wilson and many other industry leaders support us and encourage the Crypto community to give to Mona. They have seen firsthand that every dollar goes a very long way when it is invested with Mona Foundation.

"No matter what it is that you want to combat: racism, the environment, economics, or healthcare – lack of education is at the root of that, and so Mona Foundation supports education all around the world."

– Rainn Wilson

“As a philanthropist I am always looking for worthy nonprofits and to me Mona is a no-brainer. Here are the things I love about Mona: You are very conservative with money, you are spiritually oriented, you are working with the communities and empowering communities, and everything you do is really well done. [I]t is very, very hard in this world…to find an organization that is so pure and worthy as the Mona Foundation. I consider it an honor to give to you and a privilege.”

- Steve Sarowitz, Founder and Chairman of Paylocity, CEO of Blue Marble, and philanthropist

“Anyone can sign a check, but successfully fighting poverty requires careful stewarding of the Cotopaxi Foundation’s philanthropic funds towards partners with proven and traceable programs. After an intensive review process, Mona Foundation quickly demonstrated qualities that convinced our leadership of the organization’s ability to close the gender gap and eliminate poverty. We’re honored to partner with Mahnaz and her team.”

- Annie Agle, Director of Impact and Brand, Cotopaxi

If you're a crypto owner, please remember Mona Foundation on #CryptoGivingTuesday and help us grow and further scale our critical mission and work. GIVE CRYPTO TO EDUCATE. EMPOWER. TRANSFORM.

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