EnlightAID

In 2018, it was estimated that 2 billion people lived in poverty, while 753 million in extreme poverty. They, along with victims of natural disasters, wars and the many environmental protection projects initiated across the globe, are some of the intended recipients of aid and philanthropy. However, according to the UN, at least 30% of what we donate at a global scale is diverted as a result of acts of corruption, never reaching their intended causes. Corruption hides behind volume, anonymity and is aided by static reporting systems, cultural components and the belief that it is a necessary evil.

EnlightAID uses proprietary technology to track and report, in real-time, the path funds travel from the fundraising moment and up to when, where and on what they are spent. By providing fundraising, reporting, communication, social engagement and geolocation tools, EnlightAID redefines what we expect from the aid process.

More than six billion people live in countries affected by corruption. Not a single country, or industry, is corruption free. Since aid inserts resources into vulnerable economies lacking the structure for proper control, the industry is especially vulnerable to malfeasance. The scale of the problem is massive, 30% of the money allocated towards aid is lost to corruption. Every year. 

Even though a global consolidated statistics does not exist, the US, Australia, the UK, Switzerland, Russia and China contribute a combined amount of approximately $560 billion a year. Which translates into more than $160 billion that disappear. These resources are taken away from their intended purposes reducing the impact of aid and philanthropy. 

It is our belief that by democratizing the access to information and bridging the gaps in efficiency allowed by the end-of-the-year communication structure through real-time transparent reporting will spark two fundamental changes: it will dramatically increase the accountability of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and empower both regular citizens and the private sector to actively participate of social and environmental impact. This will encourage donation growth, by facilitating a fluid and open communication, based on trust, between all the parties in the aid value chain.

EnlightAID is a multi-sided platform facilitating the interactions between key stakeholders of aid and philanthropy: CSOs, people and the private sector. Empowering CSOs to fundraise smarter, with transparency, and donors to give with peace of mind.  

During the process of implementation and testing of our alpha, we worked directly with both world renowned organizations and local CSOs. We partnered with 15 organizations across the globe, in Chile, Perú, Mexico, Norway, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Madagascar. Working directly with their teams, empowering them to fundraise online effectively and learning from their needs, difficulties and feedback. 

NI EN MORE, was the first project to run on EnlightAID. They brought together women from Mexico, Norway and the US, whose goal was to create a safe working space for women who had been victims of gender violence in Ciudad Juárez, México.

Using EnlightAID, NI EN MORE raised the funds they needed, managed and spent their donations with 0% loss. Proving there can be corruption free impact oriented projects. 

We have engaged hundreds of individual donors and impacted communities in several countries helping avoid malfeasance for projects in gender violence, environmental protection, freedom of speech and natural disaster relief. 

We believe, universal access to quality information has a direct impact in resource efficiency. EnlightAID is transparency technology designed to report on transactions occurring during fundraising and development of aid initiatives in real-time. By displaying the path funds cover from fundraising to expenditure, and showing their impact, the economic incentive for malfeasance will be reduced, encouraging larger investments, and ultimately helping aid efforts reach their maximum potential.

We have designed the first real-time auditing platform for social and environmental initiatives. With fundraising, reporting, communication, social engagement and geolocation tools, EnlightAID gives a broad range of services to engage all of aid’s stakeholders: SOs, companies (CSR) and individuals. Transforming aid and philanthropy into a transparent experience and fostering partnerships between the private sector, civil society and aid organizations. 

In a way we are building the Instagram of impact. A one-stop platform centered on the human interaction between the different stakeholders of aid. Ours is a system for connection, accessible to all and anchored in the financial control tools that support our core value: transparency. 

We understand transparency as a holistic experience, fundamentally rooted in collaboration between all of us: individuals creating the next powerful movement, organizations delivering programs and companies driving financial progress. We are all connected and empowered in EnlightAID to drive the change we need to build an inclusive, sustainable world. 

Over time we are looking to harness the decentralised recording capabilities of blockchain to create the broadest immutable global project archive which will be used to benchmark project cost profiles, creating predictive models for expenditures. This will allow irregularities to be flagged instantly by our system through AI. The models would consume the following information: funds raised (number), funding objective (text), location (geographical data), milestones (categorical), goals (categorical), cost per achieved milestone (number) and past activities of the organization (text or number). The model would produce the prediction for the real cost of such project associated with its location allowing us to predict the amount of money that is required given the milestones and attributes of the projects. When a new project is created on our platform the real cost estimate will help the project creators to set more realistic funding goals or to justify the irregular expenditure before they start the fundraising campaign. The donors will also see the model’s prediction, which will allow them to better decide how much irregularity they are willing to accept.

Over the last few years fundraising has been revolutionized by systems like crowdfunding and online giving, and although multiple platforms exist across the planet up to this point online fundraising has yet to offer transparency and accountability. 

EnlightAID alpha technology has been built to capture and report transactions occurring in the fundraising and development of social and environmental projects in real-time, reporting back to the community on the activities performed during project execution. At a first glance, it works like a regular fundraising platform in which CSOs can register to raise funds for specific projects. However, unlike traditional fundraising, once they start spending money, each transaction done by the team is registered and published on the platform in real time. Donors are notified the minute their donation has been spent, showing when it was spent, on what, paid to whom, where and the responsible team member, along with a receipt. Meaning, projects can easily achieve financial transparency.

At the moment our team is working on our beta, a real-time transparent auditing platform which will record transaction data using blockchain. V2 will incorporate an Application Programming Interface (API) integrated with the financial systems most used by the stakeholders providing real-time auditing of fundraising and expenses and allowing a seamless integration with current processes. Our aim is to ensure using EnlightAID is not an extra task for organizations implementing it, but that it can simplify their reporting process, seamlessly integrating with their current workflow.

EnlightAID is a web based solution accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Our alpha was developed on Drupal 8 with a back-end relational database to handle contacts, SOs, donors and donations. Projects are registered in the database with budgets, timelines, fundraising goals and participants, while transactions handled (donations and expenses) are reported back, on real-time, on the site. Our beta will store all of the relevant information on the blockchain. 

Access to meaningful information is key for EnlightAID, but talking about financial transparency can interpreted as only numbers, graphics and reports. This can be intimidating and a cold and not necessarily generate vested interest from potential donors. This is why we have designed a set of tools in which CSOs can report back on impact also in real-time through pictures, videos and text. Furthermore, we are currently testing VR to create a series of immersive experiences to virtually transport user to the sites where projects are being developed. Allowing them to live the experiences of change, even if they cannot be physically there themselves. On the other hand, we have recently signed a collaboration agreement with a Grammy award winning artist. Within this collaboration, we are looking to define the intersection between the music industry and aid, with the intent of providing fast, lean and transparent aid to specific projects through a joint technological implementation. 

Every day, services, goods and resources of all kinds are meant to be delivered to those in need through multiple aid and assistance programs. However, almost a third of them will never meet their intended recipients. Our research has shown that corruption in aid’s value chain is in part made possible by the current static reporting system CSOs use which is mostly based on end-of-the-year reports. 

EnlightAID’s process is centered on the effectiveness of each dollar invested in a project rather than in the money lost, thus creating a virtuous cycle that encourages efficiency and discourages corruption. By creating a real-time reporting technology on development aid financials and impact we will create real-time auditing, rendering end-of-the-year reports irrelevant. Imagine a world where the second an organization makes a transaction to achieve a social or environmental goal, it gets published so the whole world can see it. Imagine the information is published in a way that is easy to access, simple to understand and can be compared to similar projects. In this scenario, the static way CSOs currently report back to the public wouldn’t be needed. Moreover, without the opportunity to mask fund misuse created by the end-of-the-year report method, organizations would be even more encouraged to ensure their funds have been spent correctly.

During the testing and implementation of our alpha version we got to work with 15 CSOs, ranging from world renowned organizations to local partners. Impacting their work and learning from their needs and daily struggles. We worked together with their team members and engaged donors in multiple regions. Moreover, through this work we impacted the communities in which the projects were developed reaching hundreds of individuals. 

Furthermore, We have spent the last 5 months developing EnlightAID beta which has been tested at various stages with over 100 individuals, and a number of companies and SOs. Once this product has been launched we expect to reach thousands in the first 6 months of implementation through a marketing strategy based mostly on influencers in multiple social media platforms. We aim to reach millions of users within the next 5 years.

EnlightAID’s most important next milestone is the launch of our beta, which has been scheduled for the last quarter of 2019. Within the next year our goal is to increase the number of CSOs, individuals and companies registered on EnlightAID creating a true ecosystem to drive change through collaboration. Fast forwarding to the coming years, we aim to gather and analyse data to create the broadest decentralized and immutable global project archive, which will be used to establish project cost profiles per location and type, creating a benchmarking tool that allows irregularities to be flagged instantly by our system’s AI, virtually stopping corruption before it can happen. For example, imagine, 50 schools are built in Chile using EnlightAID’s technology, with this information we will be able to establish an average building cost per square meter in that location for that project type. This information can now become the point of comparison for every future school built in Chile in the future, and EnlightAID’s AI will be able to learn from the data to flag transactions that deviate from the usual cost structure for that kind of project. This way, suspicious transactions can be stopped before they even have a chance to happen.

Overall, in 5 years, we see a world where corruption in development aid and social business is never a topic again. 

Since day one, EnlightAID has had a global reach ambition and for our reporting mechanisms to work we need to partner directly with financial technologies that can perform online payments to contractors in various countries.

Initially we implemented financial services that “cover” most of the planet, however through the use of these systems, during alpha testing, we learned that even though they might be extremely popular in developed countries they tend to have low adoption rates in developing regions making them a detractor for our technology’s adoption.

Because of the previously described challenges with “global” payment providers we have decided to partner with targeted financial solutions which serve one or a small number of countries but adapt better to their context. This means that our team has had to also learn to identify which are these ideal partners and that for our beta launch we will have to rollout countries progressively. Taking longer than anticipated to have an effective global reach.

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Full-time: 

• Staff: 2
• Contractors: 4

Part-time: 

• Staff: 4

Our team is inherently diverse, half Chilean half Norwegian, combining international life and work experience which gives us a unique and inclusive point of view. By having worked extensively in developing regions and remote locations we understand better than most challenges and specific needs posed by these locations. Everyone in our team speaks at least 2 languages which has been an asset towards building an international network for EnlightAID. Within our 4 founders there are 3 are engineers, two of them with a strong background in technology and an architect with strong design skills. 

Klaus Hatle and Joakim Eide, our Norwegians bring over 30 years of experience combined in development, implementation and sales of software and web applications to the table. Veronica Celis and Patricio infanta have a background in architecture and engineering, and a combined experience of 14 years in design, construction, management and sustainable consulting of projects working in Latin America, Canada and Europe. 

Originally, we wanted to create an NGO in Chile. However, with apparently nothing in common since we come from different backgrounds and 2 opposite sides of the world; none of us donated. We set out to understand why and our research showed the corruption statistics we have mentioned, realizing as well that distrust indexes are rising at an accelerated rate deciding to focus on building the tech for transparency.

Sea Shepherd (Chile) has agreed to perform the first pilot on our beta version, they will be the first CSO to fundraise and manage their donations through EnlightAID beta. 

We have partnered with Tronadores (Argentina) who are experts in transforming stories into experiences, using AR, VR, BTL and digital content. They will be co-creating with us the immersive project we are looking to create to truly build holistic transparency. 

As we mentioned before we have recently signed a collaboration agreement with a Grammy award winning artist, who cannot be named at this time. This collaboration is looking to build a Music4Good structure as the first of multiple lifestyle choices aimed to empower people to drive change through everyday actions, such as listening to music. This process can later help transform many of our daily activities into ways of supporting the causes we believe in, a Gaming4Good future, Streaming4Good or Reading4Good. The possibilities are endless.

EnlightAID has 2 main revenue streams: a 5% fee on funds raised by organizations. On the other hand, same as all other users, companies can choose to create a free EnlightAID profile, however they are offered more tools to engage the community and their team members transforming their CSR programs into a collaborative and transparent experience. 

In the long term, we are looking to offer EnlightAID as a whitelabeled solution for larger organizations, which will be charged on a case-by-case basis.

As an introduction offer, we have created an All-Access program for corporations in which we offer consulting hours pairing each company with organizations that fit their values along with assisting in content creation and communication.

For the coming months we are looking to sustain our work through grants, investments and selling our technology as it has been described within the business model. 

EnlightAID has SaaS business model with a B2B2C structure priced as it has been previously explained. As it has been mentioned before, ours is a multi-sided platform serving multiple clients, this process will work in a fee-for-service model commercializing our technology directly to the different client types: CSOs, Companies and individuals. 

Aid is a complex ecosystem of actors that have the tendency to operate seemingly disconnected from one another, and from other industries. It is a series of activities and fund streams that occurs in an opaque reality normal people are simply not privy to. 

Similarly to how impossible to communicate in real-time with a loved one abroad only a couple of decades ago looked like. The potential for connection within humanitarian and environmental impact to normal people, the company your friend works for. Or the connection between aid and actions like listening to music or gaming seems not only nonexistent, but absolutely improvable. For our team these relationships and their potential are not only attainable but also necessary. In our eyes, joining these concepts is as simple as the progression of the technologies we have become so used to. The world is more connected than it has ever been before, making what used to be complex and lengthy interactions into something so simple we can even take it for granted, as we now do with email or social media.

Nevertheless, in order for this to materialize we need help. With our current partnerships we have access to a vast network of international communities, with the potential of reaching millions. But we simply don't have the expertise to properly leverage it. We urgently need the mentorship to shape the communication message strategy to reach them, support for scaling the tech to different regions and help to establish further collaboration networks.

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Our collaboration with the music industry has sparked a powerful idea within our team. We believe that if we can help musicians direct a portion of the proceeds to advance a social or environmental goal, we can potentially do it with at least anything that lives on the internet. We see a future in which we could shape our quotidian decisions into daily choices for good. A Gaming4Good future, Streaming4Good or Reading4Good. The possibilities are endless.

To begin with CSOs, traditional companies and individuals are key to make this happen, but we also think working directly with companies providing web based services would be key, such as Netflix, Sony or HBO.

As we have mentioned before, one of our long term goals is using EnlightAID to create a project benchmarking tool. In time we will analyze the data of project execution creating project cost profiles per location and type. Then we will, with the use of AI, create automated predictive models that will allow EnlightAID to stop irregular transactions before they can be completed. 

So far, EnlightAID has collected mostly transaction data from donations and project expenditures, along with organizational data from CSOs and individual data from private donors. Centered on exposing financial data, comparing predicted with actual expenses throughout project execution. We are looking to use Artificial neural networks, linear regression, logistic regression and support vector machine to create the mentioned predictive models. The models will be trained on past data and the labels will be collected along the other data. No further labeling will be required. The models will be refreshed on a regular basis because we will collect additional data on the platform. The models refreshment time interval will be determined based on their performance. Winning this prize would allow us to develop a structure for the predictive models while we use EnlightAID’s beta to gather the data.

As a tech firm led by a female Latin American CEO we believe we definitely fit this criteria. We would use this price to cover salary costs of our CEO. 

The Innovation for Women Prize description mentions the importance to “promote a world where women’s voices can be celebrated”. Founded and spearheaded by a Latin American woman, our CEO Verónica Celis, EnlightAID is a company based on female leadership and resilience. Curious, creative and driven and having gone through discrimination and inequality herself, she has the potential to become one of the voices of change. We would use these prize to acquire female talent to complete our team, focusing on helping other women build a career in tech with us.

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