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The run-it-like-a-business mantra has been hammered into nonprofits for years, and many organizations in the region regularly heed that advice.
One of the latest to do so is Safe Children Coalition. With $20 million in assets, Sarasota-based Safe Children is one of the largest education, prevention and diversion services organization for children and families in the Sarasota-Bradenton area. It serves some 8,000 children annually.
The group’s forward-thinking move? Adding cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to its end-of-year fundraising campaign. The Safe Children Coalition, like thousands of other nonprofits in the region and nationwide, will participate in Giving Tuesday Nov. 30 — an annual play off Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Officials with the organization say adding crypto options to the range of donations is a top-shelf business move, in diversifying its revenue streams, lowering barriers to donations and meeting donors where they are.
Not to say that Safe Children jumped into the world of crypto blindly. “We were skeptical at first,” Jacqueline House, the organization’s director of philanthropy, tells Coffee Talk. “We are not experts at crypto. We are experts at helping families and children.”
In another move for-profit businesses do, Safe Children is partnering with a giving-based crypto expert. That organization, Washington, D.C.-based The Giving Block, handles the donations and then transfers the crypto or bitcoin into cash for the coalition. “If we didn’t have The Giving Block, we would feel much less comfortable doing this,” House says.
Accepting crypto as a donation could certainly be lucrative for any nonprofit. One Bitcoin, for example, was worth $56,138.40 as of Nov. 22. At least two other nonprofits in the region, the Humane Society of Tampa Bay and Feeding Empty Little Tummies, based in Palmetto, north Manatee County, have set up portals to accept cryptocurrencies. And several community foundations in the region have also opened up crypto-driven philanthropy options.
Even before Giving Tuesday, House says Safe Children received a crypto donation valued at into four figures. “That was very exciting,” House says.
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