IMpower

Inspiration

Greater community empowerment and action in solving world issues is crucial going forward. With more disposable income than ever before and greater connectivity through technology, we have a huge desire to make a difference, but do not feel empowered to do so through current donating methods.

What it does

We connect environmental and social impact projects with individuals in real time who can donate to the projects they want to. Think Kickstarter but for social impact projects. This is a truly engaged way to donate to projects that poeple care about and that make a real and tangible difference. You are able to track the progress of projects by voting on whether certain milestones in the project have been met, directly using the tokens which you bought to fund the project and which are released to the participants. In return, once a project has been completed, you will receive certificates showing the impact your project has had, building your reputation in donating and helping you understand the real impact of your donation. You will then also receive further IMPulse tokens which you can use to vote on the curation of projects into the platform, thereby being involved in the decentralised and democratic process of ensuring that the projects on the platform have the highest impact. It is a truly involved and engaging process for donators.

How we built it

We have built a working prototype of an IMPower token which can be used to fund social impact projects around the world. We built it on the Ethereum blockchain which will use smart contracts.

Challenges we ran into

Working with many different ideas in a team is tricky sometimes when constrained by a short amount of time. Coming up with our final solution was an interesting and sometimes stressful (but fun) process.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have built a working prototype that with some tweaking and support from WWF and Consensys that can be rolled out. This is something that can hugely impact people around the world.

What we learned

We have learned that it is important to engage with stakeholders and potential users early and have tailored our product according to their feedback.

What's next for IMpower

IMpower hopes to pilot our platform with 1000 people from WWF’s current donor pool. We want to confirm our expectation of an increase in donation value and donor volume. We would also like to roll out a second test utilising the WWF network in developing countries and communities to test our impact. Gaining support from anyone who would like to work with us on building and deploying the platform, and finding cool projects to support is our next immediate goal.