The world is faced with never ending crisis, communities are struggling, drowning in debt, despair and climate chaos. Every dollar spent ends up in one of 3 pockets. This is not a sustainable future. We need to think and organise differently. We need to do this together, we need to do this now. Welcome to the future, welcome to the Respair Project.
Respair for Open Projects: We support Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects— vital infrastructure, often challenging to govern due to inherent decentralization. Small-scale projects offer huge value but struggle to establish governance and sustainability. Larger projects face difficulties with feature creep and solidifying direction for the public good. We believe in preserving independence and building resilience through best practices and trusted infrastructure.
Respair for Open Leaders: Founders in the realm of social change often face a point where they must move on due to success or the emergence of new challenges. We aim to provide a home that enables these exceptional leaders to continue their work in the open space without bureaucratic overhead, fostering an environment conducive to their continued work.
Respair for Crisis: Unexpected crisis demands urgent and agile response. Incumbent structures for emergency response are often limited in scope and hindered by bureaucracy. Our aim is to swiftly mobilise and direct both resources and support to critical areas. We prioritize a nimble response for as long as needed and a prompt wind-down once the crisis abates.
Politics, trends and needless friction make supporting social change difficult. Projects struggle to secure funding. Traditional funding leans towards burdensome structures, fleeting trends, and away from what truly matters.
What if we offered independence instead? What if we could supercharge thinking about long-term issues with immediate impact? What if we decentralised decision-making on who and what to support for the greater good? What if those decisions weren’t mostly made by a privileged few, but by locals and stakeholders who cared about these issues before the world took notice? What if solutions included a future beyond the current crisis?
This future is possible. The Respair Project facilitates these solutions.
The Respair Project is an innovative approach to philanthropy that harnesses the power of blockchain technology and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) to drive impactful, timely, positive change worldwide.
About Us: @hlkt @karienbez @seanbonner @teleyinex.eth. A team with a storied history, a commitment to better, and an unwavering belief in the power of community and the power of open, ready to leverage the potential for trust-based philanthropy in the landscape of web3.
Century of experience: Collectively we have over 100 years of experience on both the fundraising and grant giving sides of philanthropy and nonprofit efforts. We have seen first hand what is effective and what is useless.
Global Reach and Perspective: Truly global team and scope. Between us we cover Europe, Africa, Asia, Americas and with our networks cover everywhere else.
Proven and Varied Fundraising Expertise: History raising funds from the entire spectrum of resource pools, millions from foundations and billionaires to tens of thousands from small dollar crowdsourced campaigns. We understand there is no one size that fits all, and have done the work to find the right fit in the past.
Nuanced Understanding of Effective Philanthropy: Deep understanding that the key to solving global challenges isn't just about money but about trusting and moving those resources to those closer to the problem, closer to the solution.
Navigating Challenging Terrains: First hand experience with transferring money in traditionally “difficult to fund” regions like the Middle East.
Pioneering Trust-Based Philanthropy: History of pushing power to the fringes, giving grants and support, then helping towards a goal vs getting those with solutions to jump through hoops to adhere to a distant boardrooms version of success.
Risk-Favourable Approach: Risk favourable. We’ve seen how traditional funding runs from anything risky and how that prevents action from being taken. In all of our previous efforts we’ve run towards the risk and the things people said aren’t possible. We’re not afraid to fail while trying, and understand the only way new ground can be covered is by taking, and learning from, these less surefooted steps.
Crypto-Native Pioneers: Crypto-native. Over a decade of Bitcoin, the team began exploring digital currency as an independent and agnostic funding source in 2014, as well as blockchains as trustless data repositories pre-ethereum. Deep web3 involvement, including setting up and participating in numerous DAOs.
Rethinking Philanthropy with Web3: With all its faults, philanthropic giving can still be an important enabler of social change. The sum of our experiences give us a clear understanding of current frictions and the new opportunities offered through Web3.
Transparent and Doxxed Team: Our commitment to transparency is reflected in our doxxed team, where each member has a well documented history of contribution and dedication to the causes we champion.
Decade-Long Collaborative Journey: For over a decade the team has worked together, traveled together, laughed, cried, taken chances, and found solutions together. This isn’t a new team with people just meeting each other and learning if they click. We’ve done this successfully together for years, and have no plans to stop.
Open in philosophy and in practice: We wrote the book on effective philanthropy, literally.