What's next for Seeds (& how it can help you) 💗
So here's what's been up recently!
First of all, Happy Black History Month. I'm hopeful that we all spend time during it learning and reflecting on our own individual participation in systemic racism against Black people, so that we can work together to shift those behaviors, and watch those systems collapse for good.
Our community has helped out more folks who were experiencing homelessness, or on the verge. As somebody who didn't have a stable home situation for many years, these needs are particularly close to my heart.
When a Request for Help has been fulfilled, we've taken to sharing about it in the #stuff-to-celebrate channel in our Discord, if you'd like to see those announcements in real time. As ever, we're very grateful to our wonderful givers.
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The most recent session of our course, Cryptocurrency & How to Trade It, ended last week (if you're interested in joining a future session we'd love to have you). As many of you know, the course supports our work so that 100% of the value of gifts made through Seeds can reach folks in need.
We just added a new teammate, Damian (yay!) to help with community development and support, and because I'm the person who built like 92% of the existing Seeds ecosystem (with all its flaws) and our course just concluded, I'm now tasked with improving the overall Seeds platform so that we're best-equipped to serve as many people as possible as our community continues to grow.
Couple things re: what this can mean for you!
In the short term, I'm taking care of low-hanging housecleaning stuff, including automating more of what we've been doing manually for too long (like building a portal to allow givers to manage recurring transfers themselves, as we've been working to escape the hell that is Squarespace)
In the intermediate term, the plan is to create a dashboard which will allow givers to view the totality of their impact on folks in need, the market value of the SEEDS they've received in thanks, as well as any gifts from our community. Ultimate features will offer the ability to choose when your SEEDS bonus is transferred to your wallet.
Longer term, shareable GoFundMe-style pages will be generated automatically when a Request for Help is made, so that folks can participate in a manner that can help raise funds more quickly. This will likely contribute to virality in building awareness about Seeds as a project as well.
If you're inspired to share thoughts about how these product improvement should behave/look, we created a #product-suggestions Discord channel, and would love to hear them!
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Last quick thing:
As most of you know, there are generous bonuses available to givers, and especially to recurring givers, who can receive up to 150% of the value of their gift in SEEDS in thanks.
The intention is to reward giving tangibly, so that when SEEDS go up in market value, it's the generous people who benefit, and can then use those additional resources to make an even bigger positive impact on the world.
In thanks to those who believed in our mission and vision when it was hardest to see, the largest bonuses have gone to our earliest givers, and we've “legacied” those reward levels periodically over time.
We'll soon “legacy” the current bonuses, so if it resonates, you're invited to set up a recurring gift before this takes place.
We couldn't be doing any of this work without you, and appreciate you all!
-Rachel