When Uniswap deployed its third iteration, an Ad about its release was minted as an NFT and auctioned for over $600,000 or 310 ETH. Created by digital artist Emily Yang, the commercial featured unicorns, constellations, and prisms, and inspired the Ethereum community to form a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, the PleasrDAO.
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This entity purchased the NFT as Yang and Uniswap were able to donate the proceeds from the Ad’s sale to create a positive impact on the Asian American community via the on-chain giving platform Endaoment. Yang was responsible for rallying these entities and the crypto community to form the Stand With Asian Community Fund (SWA).
This organization recently released a report disclosing its progress since the NFT sales provide it with financial support. Per the document, SWA with aid from its community and volunteers has raised almost $1 million since March last year.
The SWA Fund has issued $25,000 individual grants to 24 organizations to benefit the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. The recipients of the funds are spread across 12 U.S. cities and help a variety of operations, some of which were formed during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as a response to anti-Asian violence and others active since the 20th century, during the Civil Rights movement.
SWA’s Community Fund is a direct result of our volunteers’ unique capacity to rally Asian Americans from all backgrounds, bridge old and new modes of activism and to experiment with fundraising techniques for AAPI causes.
Per the document, the SWA Community Funds has helped over 93,000 individuals nationwide by providing them with prisoner support, mental health services, deportation pardons, low-income immigrant worker advocacy, domestic violence survivor support, and much more.
Thus, operating as an example of the potential for NFT, DeFi entities, and communities to disrupt traditional fundraising techniques. Below, you can view the 24 nonprofit organizations that received funds from the SWA Community.
Tian He, co-founder of Stand with Asians said the following about their results:
We’re proud to learn of the far-reaching impacts of the $600,000 we distributed to these deserving organizations – with our grants helping keep doors open, feed low-income immigrants and the elderly, support deportees, refugees and domestic violence survivors, build solidarity across racial lines and more.
The Far-Reaching Hand Of NFT Power DAOs, The SWA Community Chapter
According to the report, the SWA Community Fund received over 90 applications from organizations trying to obtain a grant. The NFT artist herself, Pplpleasr led the rounds that selected the grantees of the funds in collaboration with Robbie Heeger from Endaoment, Carl Choi, Amy Hiang from the SWA, and Callil Capuozzo from decentralized exchange Uniswap.
The results of these grants were achieved in under six months, the time the organizations had to deploy their funds. Of the over 90,000 impacted, 1,371 were young people that receive educational opportunities and career development support, with 1,000 K-5 students that received a pilot APPI Studies curriculum, 21,980 meals distributed, and so much more that can be found in the report.
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There are many testimonies about the achievements of the SWA Community, the following is one expressed by Executive Director of Sakhi or South Asian Women, Kavita Mehra, an initiative to fight against the detention and deportation of Southeast Asians, promoting social justice and cultural resilience. Mehra said:
These much-needed funds gave us the runway to move this critical work forward and provided a welcome relief for our typical mode of nonstop fundraising, ultimately allowing us to better dismantle systems of oppression.
As of press time, the crypto total market cap stands at $1.8 trillion with a 7.2% profit in the daily chart.
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