1. The problem.
2. Did you know?
3. What is Exalti?
4. How does Exalti solve the problem?
5. What is the impact of this platform?
6. Scenario.
7. How do we think Exalti can finance itself?
8. How did we build it?
9. To develop our current EUvsVirus proposal we have used:
10. Challenges we ran into
11. Accomplishments that we are proud of
12. What we learned
13. What's next for Exalti

The problem.

On one hand, nowadays, a big part of the efforts to start a social project is to find the necessary resources (mainly money; but time too) for its execution by the social agents involved (companies, NGOs, administration and citizens).

Agents looking for resources to execute a project find themselves forced to invest amounts of time and money in the search process, blocking the dynamism and lengthen the reaction time needed for resilient projects.

⇒ Good ideas and goodwills remain lost in the process. .

On the other hand, companies, public administrations or philanthropists with available resources bear high costs to find the "good project" to invest in (need of trust, project assessment process, intermediate/final reports).

⇒ This becomes a factor of demotivation, delays and inefficiency for them. .

            Exalti is a platform connecting funds to social projects

                            through an internal token system,

                      ensuring their viability in a traceable loop.

The Covid19 crisis, in addition to the pre-existing economic context, will multiply the needs for synergies and citizen collaboration, at the same time that it will compromise the available resources.

With Exalti, we are confident that we speed up and multiply the number of funders and projects providing solutions to the problems that we will face due to this crisis.

But not only that, Exalti allows to measure and track resources invested and project success.

Did you know?

The United Nations recognizes that one of the biggest current problems is the lack of access to funds and adequate skills to develop projects and accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals.

Exalti is born out of the need to find other ways to get things done.

The financing needs of the 2030 Agenda, said Mr. Guterres, are immense, in the order of between $5 and $7 trillion per year.

(source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1020372)

The financing gap is $2.5 trillion per year.

(source: https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/dsgsm1340.doc.htm)

Why are we behind on SDG finance and what can we do about it?" (.../...) "To address unmet expectations about public-private collaboration for development finance, we need _increased knowledge-sharing and evidence to improve blended finance practices and to speed up documentation of the type of financing/ funding, whether private/ public or blended, that is best suited by sector and type of country, so as to ensure that the countries that need it the most are not completely left behind.

(source: https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2204 )

What is Exalti?

     Exalti is a space where Social Agents find or offer the knowledge, 
     human and/or economic resources necessary to rapidly execute social projects 
     by using a token (The Exalto) as a unit of value, monitoring and exchange.

     This token makes easier the transaction process 
     and turns an initial investment in a traceable loop of exchanges 
     for SDG causes

Exalti uses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as a programmatic reference.

Initial investment in tokens remains inside the platform. Current token holders can just use them to reinvest them in SDG driven projects.

Exalti does not follow a hierarchical philosophy, nor a one-way pattern, but a transversal way.

E.g., an NGO could collaborate along with other NGOs, with other companies or with the Administration, as common executors of a project, in the same way that an ONG could be a financier or provide specialized competences to the Administration, other companies or citizens who have launched an initiative.

And all that without the geographical limits imposed by the traditional models of funding search. So, from Global to Local initiatives, both are possible.

How does Exalti solve the problem?

The use of a token (Exalto) and a platform offers a number of advantages compared to the current traditional project start up, project management and project assessment model:

• initial investment in tokens remains inside of the platform and drives token-holder to reinvest in SDG-driven projects.
• reduces start-up time by concentrating different resources on a single platform.
• the traceability of the tokens allows the philanthropist to visualize the impact of their pecuniary or time effort, which is an additional motivating factor, and also constitutes, in the end, a project evaluation system.
• the use of tokens facilitates the appraisal of voluntary worktime, work necessary for any project.
• agents offering resources do face no management and trust costs.
• agents needing resources do face no search costs.

What is the impact of this platform?

• In a context of crisis, projects and citizen initiatives have not been impeded or delayed by administrative setbacks.
• The social response to crisis situations is effective and immediate.
• Initiating agents of projects / initiatives have found the necessary know-how, human resources and financial resources , and they have done so in an only place and in a simple manner.
• Philanthropic agents can accurately track the impact of their contribution over time.
• New synergies of private-public collaboration emerged, profit-nonprofit, citizen-structure.
• enhanced the opportunity for communities to gather around an action or common values and objectives in a public, transparent and efficient way;
• improved the rate of utilization of scarce resources;
• brought a new alternative source of capital for organizations, especially when traditional assets values have an erratic evolution.

Scenario.

[The issue]: Mr. Theneighbour is concerned about the lack of attention and the loneliness in which the elderly were in his neighborhood in Bratislava during the confinement of Covid19.

[The initiative]: In discussing this issue with Ms. Flour, the quarter baker, they concluded that action was needed without delay , but they did not know how to reach the rest of the neighbors and how to cover the resource needs they had.

[The solution]: Mr. Theneighbour was aware of the existence of Exalti, a platform for uniting citizen initiatives with philanthropes and experts, and published his idea on this subject.

[Linking wills]: By word of mouth, thanks to sharing the Exalti-link by SMS and social media, within 24 hours, different residents of the neighborhood made themselves available and launched different ideas: They organized to make daily visits to the elderly, they shop at the market and at the pharmacy and they set up a video conference software for that they can talk to their grandchildren and among themselves.

They commented on how good it would be to have funding that would allow them to better structure and expand their idea.

[Initiative becoming project]: Impressed by the spontaneous organization of the initiative, the association "Human Care" from Bratislava decided to institutionalize the initiative through an intensive project of local volunteering, which it provided with other means of geriatric care.

[Linking to the SDGs]: This initiative is part of the SDG #3 good health and well-being and #11 sustainable cities and communities, which won the prize of a Foundation.

[Linking resources]: After learning about the initiative in Exalti , the supermarket franchise "TheMarket", deeply rooted in the neighborhood, decides, together with its employees, to contribute by making free home deliveries by 50% of the time of employees and 50 % of the cost covered by the company.

[Tokens]: The value of their work is rated in Exalti platform with 53 Exaltos (tokens) for the volunteer work and 53 Exaltos for the money paid by "TheMarket"

[Reinvesting tokens]: With 106 Exaltos already in its wallet, "TheMarket" decides to reinvest 48 of them in another social project linked with its work. This time is a project of the "Farmers Federation" looking for a solution for a specific problem with seasonal workers.

[Another project arises]: Seasonal workers don't find where to sleep over due to the Covid crisis restrictions. If they cannot overnight, they will not stay.

[And another resource spring up]: King Hotel company is facing hundreds of cancellations due to the Covid. Many of its rooms are empty and seek to fill vacancies. In Exalti they find the call of "Farmers Federation" and they decide to join them to give a joint solution to the problem by combining their Exaltos. This represents a transfer of 48 Exaltos tokens from "Farmers Federation" to "King Hotel".

[Linking to the SDGs]: This initiative is part of the SDG #12 responsible consumption and production #10 reduced inequalities and #8 Decent work and economic growth.

[Still possible to go further]: King Hotel has 48 Exaltos to offer since he proposed its empty rooms to the Farmers federation. By reading online press, it fortunately discovers a brand new Exalti program to save forests and keep its region attractive for tourism …

[Linking to the SDGs]: This initiative is part of the SDG #12 responsible consumption and production #13 climate action and #15 Life on land.

[Linking to the SDGs]: After the initial give to the local initiative, Exalto have made some steps. With one donation, the impact of the Foundation is global…

[The impact]:

• Improved bio-psycho-social status of the elderly
• Neighbors have launched a common initiative
• The initiative has been endorsed by citizens, by a for-profit agent and by a group of employees
• The cost of the initiative could be traced by all parties, especially by the for-profit agent
• An initial initiative becomes a sustainable project
• The project continues to receive support through the platform
• With the tokens generated by the for-profit other initiatives are financed (the tokens can only be used within the platform)
• Hotel and Farmers have solved its problem cooperatively.
• Forest ONG has managed to find funding for its project, which reverts in the village.

How do we think Exalti can finance itself?

The platform can be easily and transparently financed through fees on the volume of funds converted into tokens, as a main income way.

Likewise, the sale of anonymised data can be an interesting source of income.

For the participation of organizations and administrations, we have thought of a quota to signal the engagement to the Exalti ecosystem.

How did we build it?

The main differentiating factor at Exalti is the token technology.

The token, called Exalto, is based on blockchain technology, which is a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data.

By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires consensus of the network majority.

That makes the token a type of payment and value holder rail, which can be additionally used to trace and assess projects.

Initial money invested in token acquisition remains inside Exalti and can just be used for new services acquisitions in the platform framework.

This characteristic generates an increasing volume of money devoted for Sustainable Development Goals projects.

Our team has the technical capacity and needed skills to carry out the project.

We are currently developing the Exalti concept as a proposal to be developed, which, given the elements and the actors involved, cannot be developed in a short space of time.

To develop our current EUvsVirus proposal we have used:

• Adobe XD,
• Miro
• Slack, Discord, Gmail, Google Meet, WhatsApp.
• iMovie, YouTube
• Adjusted Logical Framework Approach for designing, monitoring, and evaluating social projects.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into the ' Developing people-driven economies' challenge (#21): alternative and quick response finance: pooling resources (money) from different contributors (citizens, SME's, foundations, governments, impact investors) to fund local solutions (match funding vehicles).

Accomplishments that we are proud of

To start, this hackathon was a great opportunity to bring together our young multidisciplinary team. It was the perfect time to refine our initial concept, which was only a couple of weeks old.

Our mentor, who fitted perfectly our needs by its background in the UN Sustainable Development Goals domain, has challenged us by bringing a fresh view on our work.

This team has had the opportunity to develop a prototype (using Adobe XD) of the platform during the #EUvsVirus hackathon.

This prototype covers most of the above listed functionalities, by focusing on the ones that are the most relevant in order to explain the concept: he will help a lot kicking off the development phase.

What we learned

This weekend has allowed us to focus over the concept and the limits of the project, to know what the main needs are in order to be ready to start the project development.

What's next for Exalti

As seen above, the platform could embed a lot of advanced features, intended for many actors. We ambition to be production ready in 6 months, so we have adopted a design-to-cost approach aiming to cover these four domains:

(1) onboarding of all types of social agents: public organizations, for et non profits;

(2) actions management :

• - - - (2.a) creation/edition of an action:
• - - - - - - - (2.a.i) label, description, tags, etc.
• - - - - - - - (2.a.ii) estimation of the the time needed to complete the action -- platform will then convert automatically this duration on a number of Exalto tokens;
• - - - - - - - (2.a.iii) guided definition of success key criteria and correlated KPIs (used later for impact estimation);
• - - - - - - - (2.a.iv) estimation in weeks/months of the delay before the action will have an impact
• - - - (2.b) search engine (multi criteria, full text, etc.) of active and past actions.

(3) dealing with the action execution flow: how an action is chosen, how stakeholders are notified through the process of action execution, ... ;

(4) designing the token buying and exchange mechanisms.

In parallel, we'll be occupied with:

• going forward in establishing partnerships ;
• setuping a cloud infrastructure ;
• working on the creation of the spin-off dedicated to operate the platform;
• developing a marketing and dissemination approach aiming to disseminate the platform abroad.

Built With

• adobe-xd
• discord
• gmail
• google-meet
• google-slides
• imovie
• logical-framework-approach
• miro
• slack
• whatsapp