The Common Good Chain

My life changed when I was 24 after volunteering in India.I was so shocked to learn that the social sector,the one tackling the most relevant challenges, had introduced so little innovation compared to other fields,that I decided to quit my job at investment banking in Ireland and tackle poverty through social innovation. Among others,I led in 2017 the creation of People's Protection App, a biometrical solution to increase efficiency in humanitarian programs working to protect stateless people (endorsed by Unicef and awarded by UN Global Compact and World Summit Awards in 2019, running in 3 countries to protect street children).To end corruption in aid and to increase trust I co-founded ComGo in 2018,the first social network built on blockchain,where all interactions for the good (donations, investments, volunteering, etc) can be registered, validated, traced, measured and reported, project endorsed by UN technology innovation labs that has impacted already in 9 countries

30% of aid is lost because of corruption. The lack of technological innovation in the aid sector doesn’t allow to optimise resources. Although 2030 Agenda has increased the CSR, sustainable reports are still difficult to trust as they lack of accuracy and comparability.We radically need to change philanthropic and consumption habitudes, promote accountable institutions and ensure trust in the entire social system.  

To disrupt the social ecosystem ComGo, endorsed by UN technology innovation labs, has developed a digital one-stop-solution, blockchain backed, that enables to trace funds and other non financial contributions from the funding to the impact reporting. It helps match social needs with resources, attracts citizen’s contributions, guarantees real time auditing and automates supply chain management in a trustful environment to minimize the risk of fraud.

ComGo can serve as a bold solution to end corruption and stimulate citizens and organizations to further contribute to the social good

When the world is on demand for more democratised countries and new generations are more and more committed on values; environmental respect, solidarity, proximity consumption, cross cultural add value, balanced wealth, equal opportunities, etc, the social ecosystem is still looking at the new world with the old glasses. As a consequence, social contributions to the good, social investment and philanthropy are also not recognised and rewarded in and orderly way. There is a lack of trusted network. The frequent incidents related to fraud (“30% of aid is lost because of corruption” Ban -Ki-moon UN General Secretary,2012) damage confidence in giving. The number of B corps is increasing, CSR is becoming more popular. But objectives are still not sufficiently aligned. Entities overlap activities and contributing funds, meaning inefficiencies and over expenses. Donors find it difficult to identify the right social projects. Social organisations lack proper internal frameworks to monitor (real time) use of funds and verify impact. There is no consensus on how social impact should be measured and reported. 2030 Agenda has achieved an international plan for world’s sustainability, so we are at the right moment to innovate on how to tackle all of the above through technological innovation.

ComGo is a decentralised blockchain platform for management, traceability and measurement of social impact, generating a digital ecosystem for philanthropy, volunteering, social investment and fair trade. It works as a pioneering social network certifying and giving visibility to the social reputation of contributing individuals and organisations, both public and private.

Users enter ComGo and are able to visualise the milestones, activities, budget and timetable of a project, as well as the beneficiaries targeted and the SDGs impacted. With this information they choose which project to contribute to, whether it is through a donation, a social investment, a fair purchase, a micro-finance opportunity or volunteering. ComGo helps organisations and individuals to monitor and audit the funds allocated to social projects and to track and measure the social impact their specific contribution generated. Beneficiaries will actively and immutably verify the transparent supply chain workflow AtoZ generating confidence and increasing confidence in solidarity and participation.

ComGo’s Social Index Rating will enable citizens and institutions to show their commitment and the social impact created with their contributions, motivating them to keep contributing to a positive impact on society, environment and economics. 

Our aim is to indirectly impact millions of lives through our user’s projects. We make the most advanced technologies accessible to the social ecosystem to increase efficiency and trust, and therefore attract investment and donations.

ComGo has been developed by a diverse and experienced team of experts in the social sector, in collaboration with some of the most relevant social key agents, including United Nations, in order to better understand their needs and engage since the product design. ComGo helps entities save management costs in due diligence processes, audits, CRM and impact reporting. By improving efficiency and transparency, philanthropy increases.

Donors and social investors demand transparency and want to know the social impact their contributions generate. ComGo allows them to be regularly informed thanks to the smart contracts and can download their impact reports from their ComGo profile.

We put ComGo at the service of Covid19 crisis (www.stopcovid.io) and we have indirectly impacted in the past weeks through more than 50 projects thousands of vulnerable groups of beneficiaries (eldery, children, women, disabled, homeless), helping NGOs manage their projects in a disruptive completely transparent way, increasing their income and reputation and providing their stakeholders with a new donation experience.

My mission is to end poverty. Elevating opportunities for all people, ensuring no one is left behind. I strongly believe this is possible, but only if we disrupt how aid and impact activities are delivered, managed and measured. ComGo contributes to achieve that goal. ComGo has been designed to disrupt the charity and impact sectors through frugal technology to end corruption and ensure funds are managed efficiently. I am sure if we achieve these two goals, there is enough resources in the world to end poverty and avoid leaving people behind. 

The project has its roots in two solid pillars. On one hand, my obsession with efficiency. Since I first landed in India in 2008 to volunteer, I understood this obsession was very much needed to improve the charity sector, which lacked of the right tools to efficiently manage and optimise the resources.The second pillar is a program that Manuel Hurtado, my partner in this adventure, studied with MIT in 2016 -Fintech and the future of work- where he learnt from professors: Alex (Sandy) Pentland, David Shrier, Don Tapscott and others that blockchain technology could have very important and beneficial use cases for society other than cryptocurrencies. It is in this course that his proposed capstone project called The Common Good Chain - ComGo- was chosen as finalist in the program by teachers and his fellow students. He got an A rating as final and he decided to bring the project as a social entrepreneurship reality to help transform the social sector (corporate social responsibility, volunteering, philanthropy and impact measurement) thanks to blockchain and human-centered technologies. Manuel Hurtado, Julius Akinyemi (MIT MediaLab), chair of our advisory board, and myself co-founded ComGo to bring the capstone project to life.

The first project funded by my non-for-profit was the rehabilitation of 10 street girls in Delhi. By the end of the program I discovered that the local entity I was collaborating with had received double funds from another NGO from de EEUU for the same project and was reporting with the same bills. It was my first experience with corruption. Having worked in investment banking I was used to the most advanced technologies to efficiently deliver services. I immediately asked myself how could it be that the social sector, that tackles the biggest challenges, was still working on paper? How could we track philanthropy and ensure we ended corruption?

Efficient solidarity is the tagline of the non-for profit I founded and it remains my mantra in the rest of my social activity such as in ComGo. If we want to solve the social world challenges, we urgently need to disrupt charity and the way the social impact is managed and reported. Technology will definitely play an important role to end corruption and ensure efficient solidarity, but it is key to transform the culture of donors and investors, to ensure decision is based on real impact rather than on brands.

In 2017 I led the development of People’s Protection App, a technological solution to accurately identify street children to ensure an efficient and secure data management by NGOs. The project has been awarded by Red Cross, Global Compact, Unicef, Vodafone, the World Summit Awards and Accenture (Digit Lead Award). All these awards placed me in a unique position as a reference in social innovation in Spain. In 2019 ComGo was endorsed by UN Technology Innovation Labs and was selected as one of the finalists of EIC Blockchain for Good Awards, which attracted many CSRs, NGOs and public administrations, with whom we started several pilots. I was called by the Spanish Association of Foundations at the beginning of Covid19 crisis, who requested us to put our impact traceability platform at the service of the social ecosystem to help match urgent social needs and resources during the crisis, in a trustful digital environment. Our platform was launched under www.stopcovid.io, a project that is currently a reference of social innovation in Spain and Europe and has led me to be one of the current finalists of European Commission Women Innovators Awards 2020. Apart from my unique position regarding technological innovation, I have also built trust as a role model (I was awarded by the King of Spain Foundation – Princess of Gerona Social Award 2018 as a role model for youth and I am an Acumen Fellow, recognising my social leadership and capability to inspire, mobilise people and catalyse positive, transformational change.

Mine is a story of passion and determination to end poverty through social leadership and technological innovation. If I think of the latest challenge that would be how I managed to transform Covid crisis into an opportunity to accelerate the adoption of blockchain by the Spanish social ecosystem. When the crisis started back in 2019 we were under conversations with different prospects and in the middle of a funding round. Suddenly everything stopped and all these entities focused on how to deal with the emergency themselves. In a couple of weeks the police put down a few hundreds of fraudulent crowdfunding websites related to covid. I then though if rather than waiting for the storm to pass I could turn around the crisis into an opportunity to accelerate the disruption I founded ComGo for. I called UN Technology Innovation Labs and some other key players of the social sector in Spain such as the National Association of Foundations, B corp, some impact investment funds, etc and they all joined my mission to quickly adapt and launch a trustful platform to better align needs and resources during the emergency and to offer donors a disruptive donation experience. 

It was 2010. I had been working in Rajiv Nagar for 2 years already, collaborating on projects to improve the lives of children and women. I had learnt some hindi to better get to know people. I had spent lots of time visiting families and sharing time at their homes to gain their trust. That summer 3 volunteers from Madrid came to work with us. It didn’t work at all and I felt guilty and disappointed. After a week of volunteering at the school one of them told me they didn’t like the experience and they were leaving. I went out of the school and started crying. One of the women of the program saw me. She asked me if it had to do with the “new white girls”. I said yes. She hugged me. In the next minutes there were over 100 people from Rajiv Nagar waiting for the girls to come out. I managed to stop them and nothing happened. But I felt accepted and part of the community. I understood I had managed to earn their respect and trust which for me is what a leader needs in order to become a reference and therefore impact others. 

Inputs:

·      Technological development

·      Talent

·      Communication and marketing

Outputs:

• # Stopcovid.io, “One-stop-solution” for social entities that offers various services (crowdfunding, project management, real-time auditing, CRM, automated impact measurement, social CV, etc.)

• Training services to accelerate the digital transformation of all impact agents (public, private, civil society)

Outcomes:

·      Users (public and private organisations) reduce bureaucracy and their management expenses in due diligence processes and/or justifications thanks to standardization and automation.

·      Private users unify their social activity in a digital profile that they can make visible (social CV)

·      Organisational impact measurement and sutainability reporting are rigourous and standardized.

Impact:

• Increased social impact in projects of organizations and citizens who use our platform (impacting in all 17 SDGs and therefore accelerating 2030 Agenda)

Measurable impacts

NGOs, Social Enterprise, UN Agencies

+ Reduction of communication and marketing costs 
for the acquisition of donors / investors

+ Efficiency in management processes 
(due diligence, justifications, customs)

+ Increase donations / investment

BENEFICIARIES

+ Increased participation and feedback to NGOs / companies

+ Participation in validation processes

+ Improved quality of services received

DONORS/INVESTORS

+ Reduction of due diligence costs, justifications 
and impact audits

+ Risk reduction (release of funds according to milestones)

+ Increase in social reputation 
(Rigorous and visible social rating)

+ Access to a greater number of social projects

I want to disrupt the social sector through technological innovation to end corruption and ensure 2030 Agenda is achieved. I have the experience, the social leadership skills, passion, determination and resilience to achieve my mission. We already count with some of the most relevant partners such as United Nations through their technology innovation labs, B corp movement, Ashoka or IBM. But we can't think of a better partner to disrupt a sector than the MIT. ComGo has its origins in a capstone project done in an MIT course. We strongly believe MIT would love to join an ambitious journey that started at home.

Sloan Foundation, Ford Foundation, Li Ka Shing Foundation, Bill y Melinda Gates Foundation, other agencies of United Nations and with America’s Top 50 Givers (https://www.forbes.com/top-givers/#544057fa66ff)

They could definitely help us accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology for traceability of funds. They could be the early adopters in their foundations so that others would need to follow.