Living in a constantly developing and challenging world, we need to come up with innovative ideas to place fundraising in people’s minds again.
It is important to follow current trends in order to reach new target groups and stay relevant in the market. Therefore, with the rising popularity of NFTs, some NGOs found a way to fundraise with this technology. In this article, we will look closely at fundraising with NFT and what it actually means for the NGOs.
What are NFTs?
NFT is short for ‘Non-fungible token’ and it acts as a uniqueness certificate for given digital assets like pictures, images, or video. All the information about the asset is stored in the blockchain network where they persist forever and are accessible. In easy language, having an NFT means that you own the original version of the online item and all the other ones will always be copies.
The uniqueness of the NFT is that it cannot be falsified, therefore the owner is sure that the purchased item is the one and only original. Additionally, all previous ownerships are stored in blockchain which creates full transparency and prevents fraud.
How does that work?
The seller posts an original version of the digital asset and sets selling terms which can be for example an auction where buyers bid on price, or it can be also a defined price that cannot be changed. The seller also needs to connect their cryptocurrency wallet to be able to receive the income from the sale. However, although most of the website allows the creation of NFTs for free, the actual transaction is rather expensive and should be considered in the expected revenue.
To showcase the success of NFT’s it is worth mentioning the prices of sold assets. The most expensive NFT ever sold is called “The Merge” which scored $91.8 mln and was purchased collectively by almost 30 000 collectors. Another great example of NFTs scale is a digital artwork by Beeple that was purchased by an individual collector for over $69.3m. Those two cases excellently show how significant is the market for the tokens, hence placing fundraising in this field is a very smart move.
Examples of fundraising with NFTs
Probably the most known fundraising action with NFT is run by UNICEF in connection to their 75th anniversary. They have created a great NFT collection of 1000 digital artworks that are sold for a stated amount of Etherum cryptocurrency. The whole action has a purpose in making fundraising even more attractive for younger generations. Read more about UNICEF’s campaign here. Similarly, across the ocean, Macy’s has partnered with Make-a-Wish Foundation to sell NFTs from Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades. All profits from sales are donated to Make-a-Wish, but the fundraising doesn’t stop there. Each time the NFTs are re-sold, small portions of the profits are donated to that foundation as well. More information can be found here.
Currently, NFTs are treated as an investment, and as the reselling rate is high, the charities are granted a continuous flow of donations. Therefore NGOs can use this advantage to perform effective fundraising while the toked is resold, as the income does not stop at the sale moment. Any valuable and recognizable item associated with a given NGO can be sold as NFTs in a form of donations. It is a great opportunity to raise funds in a nonconventional way that in the nearest future will become even more popular.