Blockchain in Philanthropic Management: Trusted Philanthropy With End-to-End Transparency

I. Introduction

The blockchain wave is one that has consumed the minds of many and is a platform that has piqued the interests of all. A formidable introduction to blockchain will be that it is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value. Transactions are congregated into “blocks,” and the chain of these is what gives the technology its unique name. Above anything else, the most crucial and substantial area where Blockchain has a major role to play is to develop assurance of validity of a transaction. This is done by recording it not only on a main register but on a connected distributed system of registers, all of which are affixed through a dependable validation technique. The blockchain is a distributed database of records of all transactions or digital events that have taken place and apportioned among participating parties. Each transaction is authenticated by the greater number of partakers of the system. It contains every single record of each settlement.

The blockchain technology promotes the concept of ‘trust’ in the following manner:

• 1.

  Distributed: The distributed ledger is portioned out and is re-equipped with every incoming transaction among the nodes associated to the Blockchain network. All this is done in real-time as there is no eminent server supervising the vital information;

• 2.

  Secure: There is no unaccredited ingress to Blockchain made possible through Permissions and Cryptography;

• 3.

  Transparent: Since every node or participant in Blockchain has a facsimile of the Blockchain data, they can retrieve all the transaction data. They themselves can validate the identities without the need or necessities for third party entries;

• 4.

  Consensus-based: All pertinent network participants must come to the same terms that a transaction is valid. This is materializable through the use of consensus algorithms;

• 5.

  Flexible: Smart Contracts which are engineered based on indubitable circumstances can be penned into the platform. Blockchain Network can make headway by pacing exponentially with business operations and undertakings.

With the help of this unique and indispensable way of transacting resulting in a systematic approach of deducting and reimbursing money to the necessary partakers of the consensual network, we levy this as the fundamental platform to go about establishing our proposed methodology.

Ii. Literature Survey

The paper Blockchain for Social Impact-Moving Beyond the hype briefly touches upon the promise and potential of the very famous Blockchain related technology. It goes on to talk about the impact that would be bestowed upon the sectors, primarily the social and humanitarian related ones. It then goes on to deliberate if the technology is promising or just a mere hype. Based on the reports and surveys conducted, the inference that could be drawn is that the various aspects of Blockchain will touch and leave a long-lasting impression on the way people and societies interact which is the fundamental premise of automating the way donations are being made. It comments on the prospective to transform the way these sectors are perceiving technology and how leapfrog infrastructure can be attained through the same. (Galen et al., 2018)

Vishrambh: Trusted Philanthropy with end-to-end Transparency elucidates on how Philanthropy is a massive sector throughout the world and how it is rapidly growing in India. This seems to be critical as it requires a significant amount of attention and care. They have collected data to show the dire condition of these sectors and how the use of Blockchain can be developed to merge the technical, social aspects to resolve and address the challenges currently existing in this domain. They have worked with several payment options to provide an effortless and seamless experience to the donors. (Mehra, 2018)