- Inpactor is a blockchain based social network specifically designed to create social impact.
- The social network platform is built by Incitement, a social business active in 46 countries designing and implementing sustainable development and Corporate Social Responsibility programmes.
From the people who went from a small sharing session to a social business present in 46 countries, Incitement is now launching a blockchain-based social network called Inpactor.
“Inpactor is a social network for corporate social responsibility and helps brands connect to causes and volunteers on a platform specifically designed to create social impact,” explained Incitement co-founder and CEO, Daniel de Gruijter.
This is in support of the United Nations 2030 SDGs, a blueprint to encourage emerging technologies such as blockchain and AI to create more accountability, transparency, and efficiency in the Corporate Social Responsibility sector.
Inpactor can be used by charitable causes to attract funding, recruit volunteers, manage projects, measure and report impact, and generate awareness about their cause and to build communities.
The social network can also be used by brands to create their own projects and release grants so they can bring more causes under their wing. They can also find causes that are suitable for their CSR programmes and act as a sponsor and help supply volunteers.
Daniel mentioned that Inpactor will be using blockchain technology which will provide a transparent, reliable, and measurable approach to CSR, solving a long-standing issue that has been pestering the humanitarian industry.
As of now, Inpactor is in its closed pilot trial and is scheduled to roll out the public beta version by June 2019.
“There’ll be a lot of features and it will be a holistic one-stop shop platform for social impact specifically for corporate social responsibility,” explained Daniel.
Another Social Network?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=MWHjaMG1F34
The reason why Inpactor was built was due to the fact that Incitement worked together with causes and brands to reach out to the underprivileged and saw a lot of issues within the industry.
“One of the key issues that we saw, which is an industry wide issue, is that for nonprofit organisations, there is a lot of clutter,” said Daniel. “For funding go to website A, for volunteer recruitment go to website B, for project management go to website C, there is no one player who ties everything together.”
“We felt the need to design an all-in-one platform where causes can go do their own funding, attract funding, recruit and manage volunteers, create more awareness and exposure for their organization, and everything else in a trusted environment.”
Currently in its pilot phase, several large consumer brands, educational institutions, and corporations have already agreed to collaborate with several Malaysian NGOs and causes via the Inpactor platform.
“The main purpose for us is to learn about how our platform is used, what the experiences are of our users, and how we can improve the platform to keep serving the social impact community better than the currently available tools do.” said Daniel.
As for now, there are four key elements to the platform:
- Fundraising tools.
- Volunteer recruitment tools.
- Collaborative project management tools.
- Community engagement tools.
The public launch of Inpactor is scheduled for Q3 this year, and will include a lot more useful technology to help brands, causes, and volunteers create more social impact.
Making The Data Do The Work
Once the platform is launched publicly, Daniel mentioned that they will adopt a strategic approach of “Land Grab”—the act of taking control of part of a market very quickly.
“It’s a brand new way of doing CSR and humanitarian work, so we’ll need to make sure that we go into rapid development and fast customer acquisition,” he explained.
As for how Inpactor would be monetised, Daniel said that although it’s a social network platform with the possibility for advertising, they don’t want to go about advertising like Facebook has been doing in recent years, but rather making ads more pertinent for both the advertiser and consumer.
“When we build advertising modules into Inpactor, we want to make sure that we create a relevant ad experience for the user while at the same time a profitable ad experience for the advertiser,” he added.
He also emphasises that the top priority is the privacy of the user. Users will be able to decide for themselves what data they want to share simply by toggling an on-off button. The Incitement team is also exploring the possibility of enabling users who share data to get a piece of the revenue those ads generate.
The second business model that they’re looking into is introducing premium features that can help causes, brands and volunteers to make better use of the platform in a more efficient way. Eventually the goal is to help them to attract more funds and volunteers, execute projects better, and have better data and analytics.
The third one is less focused on profits, but rather more on how to sustain the platform. To achieve this, Daniel explained that they will charge sponsors a small percentage of the funds sent through the platform instead of taking a portion from the contributions, ensuring that beneficiaries still receive the full intended amount.
“We charge the sponsor, which is a brand in most cases, an additional fee of three to five percent. This fee is not to make profits as this fee is to sustain the platform,” said Daniel.
The Incitement team believes that Inpactor will be what LinkedIn is to professionals; a social network uniting the social impact community for one common goal: purpose beyond profit.
- If you would like to find out more about the Inpactor platform, you can check it out here.
Feature Image Credit: Incitement