The Purpose Fund

My name is Jessica Vitiritti and I am passionate about the SDGs but specifically quality education. Having graduated with a degree in finance, I wanted to find a way to facilitate proper funding of the projects I loved as well as facilitate others to also invest in sustainability and the SDGs. I started a project called "EdTech" that uses 3D-printed homes ran by solar powered panels and VR technology, to create small technology hubs in rural parts of the world to facilitate equitable learning for those teenagers and young adults who do not have equal access to opportunities.

There is an inefficient industry for donations, that fail to create a lasting and meaningful connection between donors and recipients, and a value for impact. 

We offer users the ability to create an SDG portfolio by buying into a mixture of 17 different SDG funds or impact projects within those funds. Buying into an SDG fund allocates shares for projects within the fund(s) chosen. Users have impact portfolios to manage and track their shares; to buy and sell impact shares with a goal to generate the most impact. The portfolios align all projects toward SDGs, tracking the growing impact over time.

Our project elevates humanity by making impact a fun and easy financial product. Our project elevates humanity by incentivizing non-financial public offerings toward sustainable development. By doing so, more capital will flow towards those who need it most and finance the Decade Of Action to achieve the UN SDGs.

In 2018 Global Sustainable Investment was a 30.683 trillion dollar market, however currently we do not know what the aggregate impact of this money is, and therefore it is clear that impact is not conveyed properly and is also difficult to track total donations and impact. 

Currently, there is no all encompassing global infrastructure in place to properly facilitate the SDG investing and project donation market. There is also currently no ownership, with an ethical stake of projects for SDG investors financing these organizations and therefore less emotional attachment between beneficiaries and organizations. 

In January of 2020, the Globe and Mail had reported that the CFA Institute is working on ESG standards similar to its Global Investment Performance Standards regarding corporate ESG disclosures. Further they went on to say that current corporations face pressure from stakeholders to play catch-up on sustainable investing, and therefore sustainable investments by corporations is set to double by 2020. This shows that we are entering a market that is readily acceptable by consumers, and solving a problem that is gravely needed in the industry.

The project is set to provide a platform to connect ESG investors with organizations, facilitating people/corporations to donate to SDG projects for non-economic impact ownership shares.

Users have an impact portfolio which they can use to invest in 17 different SDG funds, composed of a variety of charities and/or organizations corresponding to specific SDG indicators within each fund. 

Users are also able to customize their impact portfolio by choosing specific projects within these funds; able to combine projects from different funds based on the estimation of impact created and the long-term objective and durability of the projects. 

Investors can then trade the impact shares between themselves with the goal of generating the most impact for themselves and/or company toward a specific SDG and or indicator within a specific SDG. We believe that giving both corporations and individuals a sense of ownership over projects (no decision making rights) will incentivize these users to invest more in SDG projects helping to generate their own substaintial impact.

Users will have a dashboard giving them the ability to see their donations' aggregate impact over time in real time, organized by the SDG indicators to follow and facilitate the UN SDG framework.

We are building the infrastructure to finance the SDGs and the decade of action. By using financial systems to create a value for impact, all stakeholders will be incentivized to act or invest in the SDGs. By creating 17 SDG funds, we are able to help users see the aggregate impact for dollars spent between each global goal, increasing transparency for financing the UN SDGs set to be achieved by 2030.

We serve the organizations and/or charities that need funding for important projects they aim to do, expanding both their reach and potential.

We serve investors that want to contribute to global sustainability by making it easy to choose their favorite causes and easily keep track of their impact creation.

We serve the Sustainability Officers and Corporate Citizenship Directors of companies that want to spend their CSR budget dollars on projects that are impactful to their communities and appealing to their customers/stakeholders.

By making an all-in-one platform where people can invest in projects with causes that matter most to them, we are making it easier for users to get involved and spend their dollars where it counts. With our blockchain technology tokenizing shares, we make trading impact shares seamless.

We elevate charities and NGOs that create the most impact by creating an incentive structure for people and companies to buy into their projects. We seek to become the financing arm of the SDGs to solve the world's most difficult problems.

As capital allocation pursues higher returns, our impact shares satisfy the need for ROI by creating both a non-financial impact return and a financial return based on tax credits in each country.

The financial engineering of sustainability can channel financial resources to those that need it the most and can create the largest impact. 

From a previous project we worked on in a class at Stanford University, we began to see the lack of transparency between money donated and impact created, which initiated our pivot into this project

After a year's work of primary research, we found that there was no infrastructure dedicated to helping individuals donate and see the impact of their donations.The World Economic Forum recently stated that the most important issue was to finance the decade of action to achieve the SDGs by 2030. This spurred us to rethink current donation and investment structures to find new creative and innovative frameworks to finance sustainable and social impact.

I am passionate about this project because I was born into a world of privilege and with this privilege I feel as though change begins within us - it is our duty to do better. 

Did you know that 617 million people from ages 15 to 24 lack basic mathematic and literacy skills? It is undeniably troublesome that we live in a world lacking basic rights and opportunities, when we are at the midst of breakthrough. We’re on the verge of cracking the code of Quantum computing, where machines take 200 seconds to solve a problem that takes the world's fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to unravel. Tomorrow we will have air traffic for flying cars that run on Hydrogen. Our fingertips have discovered ways to bring innovation to all forms of life, and yet 617 million people lack basic skills despite that. 

There are so many charities devoted to the same educational causes and yet no visible impact is generated. This limited impact makes the most marginalized populations suffer; there are still too many people who cannot emancipate themselves because they don't fulfill the physiological needs at the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. Change needs to happen.

• I am an entrepreneur working on another educational project, and have experience with another SDG start-up. I also graduated with a degree in finance at Western University and have work experience in the financial sector, giving me a deep understanding of financial markets. 
  
•  My later studies at Stanford University where I learned about Entrepreneurship, technology, electrical engineering. Further, through the Silicon Valley Innovation Academy (SVIA) programme, I eventually channeled my creative and analytical energy toward business. 

I was previously in another start-up related to the SDGs. This was routed around a social media network specifically for the SDGs and taking small actions in every day life to score individuals on their progress towards an SDG. The vision of the company was great, however the team dynamic was toxic as one of our cofounders used her capital to overpower the rest of the team, making decisions without a team consensus. Among other things,such as not being able to complete a business plan or any market research behest this team member, this lead us to begin spending 115,000 dollars on a full-working application with no testing iterations or primary research to incorporate features we had direct feedback that consumers would like. To overcome this, I had to seek third party advice to make this cofounder understand the need for a clear roadmap for the team and the company. After this, this cofounder came with open eyes to try things a different way. I realized from this that sometimes an outsiders perspective is needed when you are too close to a project, to see things with clear vision. However, I decided to continue Edtech and this project instead.

At stanford University, I began working on a project called "Ed Tech." This project was to create technological school hubs for kids and young adults, by using a 3D-printed house encompassed with solar panels and VR technology for learning. The team that joined me on this project were not at all technical, and as these hubs were quite technical, I enrolled myself in an electrical engineering course that taught me how to successfully code and build hardware amounting to solar battery powered devices such as lighbulbs, music boxes, mechanical boxes, as well as how to make a solar battery charger. This course gave me insight in how to design a technology hub that wasn't just imaginative, but practical. When people ask me why I took the course, I tell them that we have the world at our finger tips and although I had no engineering background, all I needed was my dedication to succeed. My team members were so fascinated this analogy that they actually decided to take the course with me to educate themselves to give them an understanding of giving yourself entirely to a project you devote your life to. I am still working on this project.