Describe your organization in 50 characters or less.
Equity for charitable projects
What will your organization do?
We have a website for selling “impact certificates”, aka equity in charitable projects. Charity founders post public project proposals; investors fund the ones they find promising; later, philanthropic donors award prizes to successful projects, paying back the investors & founders.
As a three-sided marketplace (charity founders, investors, donors), we also spend a lot of time getting buy-in from different sides and coordinating between them. We’ve organized three funding rounds so far and are planning a fourth one for the end of this year.
Our goal is to make fundraising for charities as efficient as it is for tech startups. Charities save millions of lives each year and may end up saving the world; we want to give them the best shot at doing so.
Who writes code, or does other technical work on your product? Was any of it done by a non-founder? Please explain.
We're both technical and shipped the MVP together in Feb; currently, Rachel codes more while Austin does marketing, fundraising and comms.
How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?
We met at the Future Forum conference in Aug 2022; Rachel was on staff while Austin volunteered. We married this June.
How far along are you?
Since launching our site, Manifund has run 3 rounds:
We’re now coordinating with ACX, the Long-Term Future Fund & others on a larger impact certs round, to kick off around Dec 2023.
How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain.