Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Ben Simon, the Director of NFT and Crypto Community at Crypto for Charity, a zero fee platform to donating crypto assets to charity. Ben, thank you so much for joining the show. This is definitely not a, a common project that, that we have on the show, and it's really exciting to dive into the whole world of crypto and, and the way it's really splintered off into so many different segments.

So fascinated to learn about your background within the space and, and get into all the mechanics around, you know, why. You know, gift to charity, crypto assets what are the benefits of it? And, and what are the mechanic, like I said, what are the mechanics behind it? But before we get into all that, what were you doing before you started or you jumped and, and joined this project to crypto, to charity?

Ben: First I should say, you know, thanks for, thanks for having me. It's fun to be here. So I, my sort of this. Thing I'm working on now at Crypto for Charity is kind of the, the blend of a lot of my past career and then my present interests, right? So I spent most of the last decade as a campaigns consultant for big global nonprofits.

So groups like Greenpeace and UNICEF and Amnesty International and save the Children and that sort of thing working. Like campaign strategy, like how to, yeah, how to try and move the needle on x issue in, in Y way. And on organizational strategies. So how to, how to work better together and how to be more collaborative and all that sort of stuff.

Both internally and with supporters. Yeah. And then in the last couple years I've got, as you know, as is the case with many other people got much more deep into sort of crypto space. I'd gotten in a bit in 2017 but then, you know, followed this pattern that many people did of like, I got in and then I saw number go up, and then I saw number go down, and then I just kind of left it alone for three years.

You know, really since, quite sincerely wish I hadn't in retrospect, but, but, but here we are. And then, , you know, got back involved more in in 2021 with some of the decentralized finance stuff. And then in the summer got really into specifically generative art NFTs, which is generative art, is the idea of algorithmic art.

So, you know, art, art meets code and where there's this Greek, this great sort of marrying of blockchain technology. with art where you can sort of have the al, you know, the algorithm firing to create a unique piece based on a blockchain interaction. And then that, you know, causes a, a new token to be created, which is then the sort of, has the, has the provenance and the code is stored in the token and all this sort of stuff.

Yeah. And that was the thing that really made NFTs like real and powerful for me. And so that then that was this whole journey into NFT space and I remained pretty active in a bunch of, Especially generative art and photography, nft collecting communities. And then I was having conversation in sort of in the fall last year and then again in, in the spring of this year with a friend of mine who is the founder of a company called Free Will which is.

A it's, does, does what it says on the label, which is to say, if you go to free will.com, you can make a legal will for free. And the, the whole model there is, it's, it's about nudging people. It's about making it easier for people to create wills. So there's a bunch of reasons why that's helpful. And then when they're doing it, people are nudged to donate to charity, right?

So, Creating, and so far it's created something like five or $6 billion of bequests to charity. I'm actually not sure what the updated number is, but that was sort of, it's in my head from the last time there was an update. And so, so Free Will is involved in planned giving is what that's called, when sort of people leaving money in their wills.

And then is also getting into and thinking about. Facilitating non-cash, real time giving like crypto as well as stocks. And so Patrick, the co CEO at Free Will and I were our old, old colleagues and, and friends and we were chatting about crypto cuz I was down in New York for a, for an NFT thing.

And you know, he was talking about, they were thinking about getting started with on the crypto side and it just seemed really. Serendipitous, right. Of like yeah. This non-profit world that I know very well and have tons of, of connections into with the sort of the space that I'm currently really involved in and have a lot you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm deep into certain slices of and I, as you mentioned, you know, it's like there's a a million different directions you can go Yeah.

In crypto, crypto world and only so many any one person can be involved in. But it's a space that I'm excited about and Eager to spend time in. And so, yeah.  

Julian: And it's, it's so fascinating coming from the non-profit side because I feel like the mechanics of non-profits have, have definitely their own specializations.

And so I'm curious from your experience and, and the structure of these companies, you know, you mentioned you know, having moving the needle on, on X issue to Y place. I can't remember how you phrased it, but it was perfect how you phrase it. What, what goes into being able to drive towards a goal? Because, you know, you know, in the tech space or in most B2B businesses, right, for profit companies it's, it's fairly simple.

You know, it's fairly regimented. You know, you build a product, you either raise money or you bootstrap. You go get clients, you grow those clients, you accelerate, you build, and you continue this momentum. Is it, is it the same type of process in non-profit space or is there, is there more involvement?

Ben: Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's similar but different. And the, the ways it's similar are, you can kind of abstract out some of the processes you just described into sort of broader strategic principles and, and objective, you know, terminology like strategy and tactics and stuff. And then you get into it's, and then, and then that's also what you map onto.

A non-profit process, right? But, so if you are, if you're a green piece and you are convening people to sit to think about how to, whatever, let's talk about our, you know, more sustainable agriculture system. You probably start with some version of, you know, what is our vision? Like, what is the thing we're trying to create and or what is the problem we're trying to solve?

And then you think about, okay, what are the core drivers of that problem? Like what are the core things kind of standing in. And then you maybe think, okay, what are the if we look at that problem, what is the thing that's, what are the things that are actually enabling it to be in place? Like if, if we wanted to shift the status quo on that thing, what would need to change?

Yeah. And then we think, okay, of those things, what's within our sort of, you know, how can we project. Into that, that that thing in some way. Right. And move and actually like, physically move it. Right. And like, and so maybe that's raising awareness about something. Maybe it's shifting opinion about something.

Maybe it's making some. Corporate sectors life miserable. So they just, so they make the shift themselves. Right. Maybe, maybe it's get company, get a company that, you know, is like generally happy to do the right thing, but sometimes they don't. Get them on board first and then, and then they'll help you push some other companies and then, All the major companies are on board, they have the incentive to get something passed into law so that there won't be smaller operators who avoid the things they've had to commit to for reasons of grand reputation or whatever.

And so there's, there's definitely, there's a few different playbooks that exist on how you plan the social change campaigns like that. But there's like, you know, you could also, you could put everything I just described, you could put in terms of. A business model canvas and a go to market strategy and all that sort of stuff.

It's just like a different, a different way of conceiving of it and thinking about Yeah. Sort of supporters and movements and sort of levers to create change rather than products and users and you know, the market.  

Julian: Yeah. What are, I guess, what initially got you into this space? You know, it seems like.

It seems like work that is rewarding of course, when you, you know, hit your goal. But a lot of the work that you, you, you have in today, like, are you, are you seeing the achievements, you know, incrementally over time? Is it, are you so passionate about whatever you're, you know, you're going after and trying to change to be able to you know, move the needle or, I, I'm just so fascinated on how you got into non-profit.

Ben: Yeah. And that, I mean, it's, so I got into, I always kind of had in mind that like, I wanted to like make a difference in that sort of grander way. Right. Sort of, I was raised with that ethos. You know, there's this, like my mother passed when I was young and she has she left us a, left me and my brother a like, A letter for when we're older about how we should live and like, and, you know, letter really I, beautiful, deep impact on me on like what's, what's important and what's not, and all that sort of thing.

And when I was in college I got involved in a senate campaign. Like I just wanted elections campaign and it really just like gave me the bug for campaigns. Like there's just a, there's an adrenaline and and you know, it happened that we won, you know, and then we lost, but we won. And like that, like euphoric adrenaline rush was just like, it just hooked me, you know?

Like it might as well have been Coke, right? Yeah. And the, and so then I sort of decided that, like I had been thinking I wanted to go into more of like an academic, like, you know, development economics or something like that. And that got me more into like, I wanted to do campaigns. I want to, there's enough smart people trying to come up with solutions to things.

I wanna help make the solutions actually happen. And. Kind of bounce back and forth between like issue based stuff and electoral based stuff. So I spent some time working in DC for the Democratic National Committee and for, in sort of Obama, Obama campaign world for a bit. I spent some time working on tech organizing with Mozilla, which is the, the makers of the Firefox browser.

And then landed this great role at Greenpeace. That put me, that sort of helped, like I really wanted to work on climate stuff and it helped me, yeah, put me in a position to kind of have my finger. Different pies and work with offices and campaigns around the world. And so, you know, there's definitely, there's like in that kind of space, right?

I mean, objectively like green pieces losing, right? Like, there's like envi, there's like catastrophe bear bearing down on us at, at, at massive scale. And also it's the case that in micro, you know, there, there are wins and there. There are, there are signs of progress you can point to. And, and the forces at play on both sides are kind of much bigger than any one organization can seek to, sort of influence on their own. Yeah. But I think there is, this kind of sense of, of like the struggle mm-hmm. , but also. There's interesting stuff you can see happening. Yeah. And, and ways to track progress over time and all that sort of stuff, which,

Julian: yeah, and Go ahead. Yeah, I'm, I'm so fascinated.

Where does crypto come into play in regards to like, you know, obviously I think a lot of people have a huge You know, they think of crypto in a way that really offers people freedom, freedom of, of assets and choice, privacy. You know, kind of, kind of having agency in yourself to be able to own something and, and do what you want with it.

Where, where do you see the benefits of crypto in, in a, in a broader scale as you think about it's positive effects for people? And then I guess, what are the challenges of, of crypto and, and moving these assets around so that you can actually either seek these benefits out or you know, distribute these in, in a, you know, I guess, I don't wanna say in a humanitarian way, but in a way that's fairly.

Equal and, and, and honest and, and decentralized.  

Ben: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a space that is not universally lauded on the, in, in my former circles. Right. There's, and there's some good reason, you know, I mean, like, Bitcoin's energy uses is massive, right? And you know, with, with some of this stuff, I think there's like, like the thing with something like Bitcoin's energy usage is.

Ever gonna convince someone who thinks Bitcoin is idiotic, that the energy usage isn't that bad. It's like, if it's idiotic, then any energy usage in its service is bad. Right? And especially, it actually is quite a substantial amount of energy. However, if you can be convinced that actually Bitcoin is an important part of a financial future that is less reliant.

Big, giant, sort of fairly evil institutions. Then maybe, or, or even that it might be, then we can have a conversation about the like relative worthwhileness of or ability of energy expended on that pursuit versus energy expended on, and even number of pursuits that we as humanity decide, you know, like YouTube costs a lot of.

Right. And it's like, but, but we also recognize that like there's at least some good that comes from YouTube and so we think it's worthwhile. But like, you know, there's a lot of the debate I think is people talking past each other because it's like, there's just this massive schism of like, is this idiotic or is there some validity here?

And if. There's some validity here, then we can have a different conversation. Right? Yeah. And you know, from, from my perspective, the thing that is like, I think there's sort of, there's two, two big things to me. One is this like substantial flexibility around financial assets that is that in a lot more people's hands that is very clearly a double edged sword, right?

I mean, we are, I know this will come out a little bit later and people listen to podcast on. This week when we're recording is when ftx, the whole end of FTX explosion happened where, you know, a lot of people lost a lot of money, who thought it was in a very safe place. And, you know, there's like, it's not great, right?

And, and, and most of the, most of the things that have gone wrong this year in crypto have been of the type of like a sort of centralized entity trying to put a rapper on decentralized crypto. Crypto. Made people feel safer getting into it. And in fact it was less safe, right? Like the actual DeFi protocols have all, are all fine if they're all just trucking along doing their thing.

It's the like fact that, you know, FTX is, or, or Celsius or whatever was like out there doing super risky shit with customer money that they shouldn't have been doing. That, that sort of gets us in this place. And so, you know, I actually think like getting beyond that, getting to where people actually have.

Where we, we've both figured out like the on ramps, so it's not super scary to set up a meta mass wallet and, and, and self custody those assets. And also making it so that like, and part of that is tools and making it both more secure and easier for people. But then also there's this, all this sort of interesting potential unlocks there for people in terms of more financial freedom.

And then the, the, the separate thing is like, I actually, I really think the. The underlying idea of MFTs, of like sort of provable ownership of digital assets is a really big unlock. Like I think there is, I'm most, I care like the piece of it that I'm most excited about is on the art side, like less of that sort of utility side.

But like I'm really excited to see what ultimately happens in all sorts of industries that like, there's sort of predictable, obvious things now like gaming, which is like clearly there's gonna be a bunch of this stuff in gaming. Clearly there's gonna be a bunch of the stuff in like ticketing. Clearly there's gonna be a bunch of this stuff in music in some way or another.

But also just like there's all these people who are able to make a living as artists now who, who weren't before because people can actually buy their digital art in a way that like makes sense. And that's really, you know, as, as the market has tanked over the last 10 months, like art has actually been one of the things that people have really fucked to cuz like there's no, there's no additional promises.

Know, like, this is going to give you all this extra utility and you're gonna get, it's like, no, the utility is art. You know, it's like you have art now, it's cool . And there's also things, you know, I'm, I do like most of my stuff on E you know, Tezos is a, is a, another sort of layer one blockchain that has, and like, sorry.

And, and to say like, if NFTs on E tend to be fairly expensive because there's fairly high transaction fees, right. You know, it'll cost you like 10 bucks to buy a. where like the 10 bucks isn't the cost of the thing, the 10 bucks is the buying of the thing. And the reason for that is that e e is viewed, Ethereum is viewed as like a very long term secure blockchain.

Yeah. Where the assets will persist sort of in perpetuity. Whereas Tezos generally is like vastly cheaper. And there's this really nice sort of bohemian art scene on Tezos as well, where you can get like great art for legitimately like five bucks. And then, you know, you have that art piece now and you can display it and you can get a print of it.

That's just really cool. And I think it's, it's sort of making this accessible to people in a really fun way. And I'm meeting tons and tons of people who have never, like arts have always been fairly present in my life. My wife is an art historian. It's, I've always been someone who's like, when I'm visiting a city, I'll go to the art museums and stuff, but that's not true of a lot of people.

And like, I'm, I'm meeting a lot of people at community meetups and that sort of things who are like, this is the first time, like NFTs is the first time they're. Adding into art at all. And it's sort of approachable and accessible in a very different way.  

Julian: Yeah. What are some of the, you know, shifting focus onto you know, the way you kind of give crypto assets and distribute them?

What are some nonprofits that I guess move towards crypto assets and, and you know, utilize them in ways, ways of giving and how are they using them and how are they?  

Ben: Sure. Well, let me, I can take a step back and just describe sort of Crypto for Charity a little bit. Right. So we are as sort of as you mentioned at the top a zero fee platform for donating crypto assets.

And what that means is we provide a way for anyone who holds, you know, whether it's e or BTC or Bitcoin or you know, an NFT or any of the number of other tokens to donate. Directly to charity. And the, and then for the, sorry, I've getting of this cold, and then for the charity joining in support of, to simply receive cash, right?

So we did some, we surveyed a bunch of non-profits about around crypto and like, you know, where's, where was our head at on crypto? And the, the general response we heard back was like, well, I, I know we need to figure it out. Boy would I prefer to not have to figure it out, . And and so what we've, what we have is, so Crypto for Charity is a product of free will, a company that I sort of mentioned before, and we work very closely with a charity called Free Will Impact Fund.

And so when you make a donation on Crypto fraternity, what you're actually doing is making a donation to Free Will Impact Fund. Which then receives the asset, liquidates it to cash, and then makes a cash grant out to, in support of the charity or a set of charities that were specified in the gift.

As long as those charities are like eligible to receive gifts. And so the, and so the, the zero fee piece is that there, there are, we are not the only people, we're not the only platform that provides a service sort of like this. But we are the only one where, We don't take anything out of that flow.

Right? So like what you donate, you know, there's a teeny bit lost when we sell the E to USD on Gemini or whatever. But that's just like the Gemini transaction cut. But then all the cash we get out is granted out. Yeah. And then the, the nonprofit just gets a check or an ACH transfer. Yeah. If it, in the case of a donated nft, we, we will then like sell the.

You, you donate the actual token to us. Not to a Gemini wallet, cuz Gemini Wallet can't handle nft. But then we will we will then auction the, we'll, we'll sell the asset and then donate and then sort of process that Yeah. Result the resulting e or Tezos or whatever into, into USD and send it over. As as to, as to why, like why, why would someone donate in crypto instead of cash?

There are, there are three reasons that we generally hear, right? One is general sort of like combo of ease and low cost, right? So that's like, I want to donating crypto cuz that's where I have my assets, right? It's like they're. E or they're as SDC or whatever. Like I don't wanna have to get it off of exchange to, off of exchange to then make the, make my gift is like where I have my stuff.

And then the low cost thing is, again, it's like if you think about the flow I just described where there's nothing removed except for maybe it's like a 0.25% or whatever the Gemini takes, that's, that means that way more of your money actually gets to its destination than donating with a credit card online.

Right? Where like credit card processing fees is usually, it's like, 3% or whatever. Yeah. A second reason is sort of as a political statement, right? It's like people in the crypto space want people who are not in the crypto space to see the crypto space as like kinder and more social good oriented and all this sort of stuff, right?

And so just the act of using the crypto assets you have to donate to charity is in itself sort of a political statement about the space where you're spending time. Yeah. And then the third thing is. The big one is that is for us taxpayers only. We're talking about here, but for us taxpayers only if you have a crypto asset that you've held for more than 12 months, which has increased in value donating directly is hugely tax advantaged.

And what that means is that whether you donate in cash or you donate in crypto if you're eligible for tax deductions, you can take and you like, you itemize. , you can take a tax deduction for the market value of your donation. Mm, however, so that's like the same. However, if it's an appreciated crypto asset, you can do so while not owing any capital gains tax on the appreciated value.

Ah, so what that means is imagine you had like a hundred dollars a Bitcoin for which you paid $10 back in 2016, and imagine. You have a hundred dollars in cash and you were, and you want to donate a hundred dollars to Oxfam, right? In that world, you could donate the hundred dollars to Oxfam in cash and get a hundred dollars OX deduction, or you could donate the a hundred dollars of Bitcoin to Oxfam and get the hundred dollars tax deduction and, and use your a hundred dollars of cash to buy Bitcoin with a new cost basis of $100.

Wow. Which would mean. Any future appreciation, you'll only be taxed on the value from a hundred dollars up rather than being taxed on the value from $10 up. Got. Right. So you can basically use it, you can like substitute stuff you're planning to do with in a, in a way that like basic. So basically you can like tax free, reset your cost basis to present value.

Julian: Yeah, it's fascinating the different, you know, ways that you. Even like compliance and regulation is coming about within the crypto community and also the ways that it's becoming its whole own asset class and asset classes underneath it and, and the benefits that you can take from it. You know, I, I, I mean, the question that comes to mind is what are the challenges that.

That that you face today? Is it more regulatory? Is it more getting the word out for people to be able to do this?  

Ben: Is it all the above? It's, it's it's market forces and getting the word out right? I mean, a lot of people are just demolished right now, right? Like, if, if you and like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm among them in various ways, right?

Like if you, if you bought if, or BTC right now at the top in the, like the 20 17, 18 cycle, like. Right now in dollar terms right. And so like obviously there are, if you bought in 2019, you're, you're doing great still. But like there's, you know, we definitely saw giving kind of fall off a cliff a little bit after the Luna collapse back in May when the, when numbers went down a lot.

We've seen some really nice spikes around. Sort of newsy events. So like the Ukraine crisis was a huge driver of on chain giving. The government of Ukraine encouraged it directly. Which to your question before about like use cases and that sort of thing, like, I think it was a really nice proof point of like, actually it's quite useful.

And you know, obviously like. There are, there are also bad guys who can use it for some more things, but like it's a tool and it's actually the tool with some, some good use cases. And you know, I think there's, think on both. Sides of the, of the equation here, which is to say both like crypto holders and non-profits.

There's with crypto holders, a lot of people are just unaware of either the tax benefits or of the option that like unaware that the option exists at all to donate through crypto or how easy it is or whatever. And then on the non-profit side, I think a lot of, a lot of non-profits are, are very.

Now and sort of increasingly so. I think a lot are, a lot tend to feel like for whatever reason they don't like, given the, the, because of the public perception of crypto as this, like, you know, the Elizabeth Warren's line about the, like shadowy super coders or whatever, there's this perception of crypto users as I think from a lot of non-profits perspectives.

Not their people. Right. It's like not the people you have on your list or whatever, but like, sort of based on math and like survey data of, of how many people own crypto assets in the us It's highly likely that most non-profits have like a reasonably sized chunk of crypto holders in their, in their audience in some way.

Right. Who are like either existing donors Yeah. Or engaged in their, with their programs in some way, or aware of them. And so I think part of the, part of the. And I'm definitely working on, and the folks on the team are working on is sort of helping the nonprofits get a little bit more comfortable with reaching out more broadly about crypto to, to people that they haven't already like segmented or identified in some way as being specifically interested in crypto.

Right. So it's like, you know, some non-profits will have like an audience segment cuz they like clicked on something at one point where they're like, those are the people we talked to about crypto. Try, try a bit more, you know, like find ways to do it that are true to your voice and that don't turn off people who hate crypto, but like acknowledge the fact that it's like part of life for a lot of people right now, and you're like probably leaving a bunch of money on the table by not engaging in some way with that audience productively.

Julian: Yeah. If everything goes, but what's the long term vision for crypto, for charity?  

Ben: I mean, we have some fun stuff in the works. So we've, we've got a pilot running right now called DeFi for charity which is, so there's, sorry, one second. Mm-hmm.

there's a there's a, so there's a, a DeFi protocol cause fine protocol called AVE a v. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm where you can deposit tokens you hold and then earn interest on those deposits and or use the deposits as collateral to withdraw other assets that you want to do it. Right. So sometimes you can use it for like, fairly risky strategies, like if you wanna leverage long on a token, you can like, You know, let's say you wanna leverage long on E, you can like deposit E then withdraw a stablecoin, buy e stablecoin, deposit the e borrow more stablecoin, you know, wash, RINs heat or if you're gonna hold the asset anyway, it's a way to just like earn some interest on the asset.

And, and so we've on Polygon, so, which is like a sort of side chain to Ethereum. Yeah. With, with much lower transaction fees. Like, so, so Ave Ave on Polygon now allows you to use, to allocate your yield, the yield earned on your deposits to the charitable, like, like a cause fund of your choice through Crypto for Charity.

So you can allocate it to a basket of environmental conservation groups or a basket of hunger and homelessness groups or like healthcare research groups or whatever. And so I think that's like a fun, like I could see that. In a world where like DeFi gets, sort of, gets its mojo back the yields start coming up again a little bit.

I could see that being a really fun, just like a fun initiative that people are interested in. So things like that are, I think I, I have some hope for. I think there's a lot of interesting directions that people that, like we've been thinking about, that I know others are thinking about with like ways you can tokenize giving in some way or some way or another.

Right? Like, you know, get NFTs that show. You're a supporter of a given group and you know, all that sort of stuff I think is super compelling longer term. I am, one of the areas where there's a lot of giving is, is through art NFTs, actually. It's like a lot of artists are very interested in allocating a certain chunk of of other primary sale royalties to, to charity.

And so making that as easy and accessible to people as possible is a big priority. I think it's, there's a bunch of different, and then just like more people, more people, being aware of the, of the possibility I think has a lot of unlocks. Yeah. Another thing that I'm sort of very hopeful about, so like when I started on this in the spring, you know, so spring 2022, there were very few holders of NFTs who fell into that sort of tax advantage group we were talking about, right?

Of like having. Assets longer than 12 months, which had appreciated value. You know, there's like people who held crypto punks since, since they mentioned them in 2017, and there's like, yeah, you did that, you're great. There's like, but like when, you know, by that time, even the board apes hadn't been out for a full year.

Right. And like, Some of these other collections that have done quite done really quite well. And so over time you've got the sort of the number of holders of NFTs who are in position to reap some significant tax benefits from donating them. Mm-hmm. is increasing like non-linearly, right? It's not exponential, but it's like, it's definitely non-line.

And so as that group continues to grow, I have a lot of hope. We've got a pretty high value donation coming in the next week or two that someone's making to a, to a partner organization, which we're very excited about. And like there's like, you know, I think there's sort of more, there's more along those lines that I, that I think we can do.

Julian: Incredible, incredible. I know we're coming close to, to the end of the episode here, so I do like to get this question out one for selfish reasons, for research, my on, on my free time, but also for my audience as well. What books of people have influenced you the most, whether it was early on in your career, even today, that you know, maybe values that you've instilled and, and continue pushing you forward?

Ben: a good question. So I'm trying to look at my, like behind me. So, you know, the, the book that in a professional context, the book that I've found myself most frequently referring other people to, or, or referencing, is a book called Team of Teams by General Stanley Stanley McChrystal, who was US commander in Afghanistan.

And that ended fairly ignominiously. There was like a whole fiasco with. He's some shit talking shit and Rolling Stone or something about Obama and like this whole thing. But prior to that he was the, it's like a hair, sorry, it's been a while. Been a little while since I read the book. But he like ran the Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq.

Mm-hmm. . And it's basically a, it, it's, it is as a book. It is both a. Concise run through of like different governing managing management theories over time. And then also, and then a sort of a disposition on how he transformed this sort of deeply siloed and quite dysfunctional j o that he inherited into collaborative non siloed team of teams.

Set up that I think, you know, in, in my, you know, I mean in my professional background has, has really been, been very useful to refer to. Yeah. You know, there, there are, there have been contexts I'm working in where it is more and less okay to reference like military. For for your you know, management suggestions.

But it's something that has like, been really useful for my, for my own thinking about sort of how to get people to work together collaboratively and, and trust each other and and, and be.  

Julian: Yeah. No, I, I love that. And, and it's so fascinating asking these questions cuz you always get different answers from founders and, and there's always certain gems of information you get, especially when you think about organizations and that as a principle and, and as a function of a lot of different, whether it's industries or aspects of life.

And, and they can translate so well to whether it's business or anything. That, that you're working on. Last little bit here is where can we be a part of Crypto for Charity? Give us your LinkedIn, your websites. Where can we be part of the, you know, maybe gift our own money or, or assets to Yeah, absolutely.

To charities. Yeah. Where can you find.  

Ben: So cryptoforcharity.io all spelled out. So crypto, f o r c h a r i t y.io. Is is like where you find our, you know, where to, where to donate, where to grab a wallet for your next NFT drop to allocate some royalties. Where to find out how to, how to donate your n.

We have a discord server which is more of a support discord than like a community building thing. Cuz like we don't want to promise community and then not actually resource the building of one. But I think over time it's something we would very much like to. Yeah. We are on Twitter at crypto, the number four and then the word charity with an underscore.

It's linked on the website and we can get in the show notes as well. I am on my, like, crypto Twitter. I started out in crypto, kind of pseudo anonymous, so going by Simon says. And then when I decided to like, start with this job and it, it was this kind of blend of my past life and my, and my current life.

I went, went for the full, fully, fully doxed and, and, and named, but my sort of the, the Twitter where I'm most acted is zero. Simon says zero x is because E Ethereum wallets all begin with zero x. And so it was like NFTs and there you go. Cuz you know someone had already taken Simon says, but that's a mix of like NFT stuff and politics stuff and crypto and crypto fraternity stuff.

love it and. Yeah, I think that's, you know, I think that that probably sets you up pretty well. Red is rain and yeah, and please, you know, anyone listening to this who's interested in collaborating in some way you know, users who might want to use our tools or build donations into what they're doing with smart contracts or just make donations.

Please, please get in touch trying to get the word.  

Julian: Love that. Well, Ben, thank you so much for going through your experience in the nonprofit space and this, this interesting blend of crypto and nonprofit and, and how it's really been an effective, not only for, you know, giving but also for tax purposes and, and really there's so many possibilities this can go.

And it was fascinating to see kind of how your mind thinks about the different ways it can go. So I hope you enjoyed yourself, but thanks again for being on the show.  

Ben: Absolutely. Thank you. My pleasure to be here.

Julian: Yeah.