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Ripple fully funded every live DonorsChoose classroom project yesterday

327 points by gmichnikov 9y ago

joelrunyon 9y ago
Wonder if they would have gotten more press if they did a rolling donation schedule (1/week, etc). Either way - good to see good projects get funding.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  That would take 6 centuries to fund the same amount of projects.
swozey 9y ago
That's killer, thanks Ripple! $29MM! Page isn't loading but this is from the subject of the blog; #BestSchoolDay 2018: Every Project Funded! MARCH 27, 2018 STEPHEN BURKENEWS #BestSchoolDay is here! Last night, Ripple fully funded every single live DonorsChoose.org classroom project. That’s over 35,000 projects in one enormous $29 million dollar act of generosity. We literally don’t have words to express our gratitude, so we had to invent some. We’re flabbermazed. Astonified. It blew us away, knocked our socks off... WOW! Here’s a message from Ripple and our founder, Charles, talking about why Ripple chose to support our creative community of teachers with this [Read more...] edit: Someone's going hard on downvoting every comment in here. Do you not like teachers receiving money to help their students?
- nisa 9y ago
  > Do you not like teachers receiving money to help their students? It's a shame that you need charities for such things.
jzamora 9y ago
That's amazing!
nodesocket 9y ago
Am I just being cynical but blindly funding every classroom project without oversight and due diligence may actually be a net-negative in the long term. Universally giving money does not solve problems. It takes the right causes and right people behind the causes to really improve things. For perspective, Warren Buffett has donated $46 billion and Bill Gates has donated $18 billion to charities since 2000.
anf 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(company)#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(company)#Funding Are they profitable? How can this kind of thing be justified to shareholders?
- giarc 9y ago
  Further down in the wiki. I don't know what Ripple Labs is, but perhaps the donation is part of this 80 billion XRP?? >Of the XRP80 billion that Ripple Labs was gifted, Ripple follows a distribution strategy that encompasses payments to business partners such as gateways, market makers and charitable organizations.[24]
- trophycase 9y ago
  Their currency is worth billions
  - anf 9y ago
    Billions of USD in digital coins they themselves created, right? So this $29M came from the shareholders, or from the coin-holders?
    - Zarath 9y ago
      It comes from whoever will buy the coins, presumably.
      - anf 9y ago
        So the same people who could potentially be victims of fraud will now be recovering their investment from school children. Keeping it classy, crypto.
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    There is a big difference between being worth billions and having a market cap of billions.
- gnicholas 9y ago
throwmeItsok 9y ago
I am really happy for these schools, but what if someone is just trying to 'converting a lot of ripple into cash' look like effect from 'charity donation' event? So that prices don't fall overall while this happens and some people cash out of it.
the_cat_kittles 9y ago
hell yea, give that shit away. btc insta millionaires, lets see it! edit: oh sorry, i forgot these people all "earned it"
yellow_postit 9y ago
This is great for many of the projects but there's a down side to donors choose I wouldn't have realized before taking to some teachers. Anecdote warning: family member works in a public school district where the principal and committees won't even investigate funding requests till the teacher has put something up on donorschoose.
- Waterluvian 9y ago
  It really sucks that American public schools are so poorly funded. But maybe the principal and committees are just "playing the game" appropriately from their perspective. I doubt they have beanbag chairs full of cash that they're hoarding. I could see a scenario where, sure, the teacher's proposal is great. But what makes their proposal any better than the thousand others that cannot be funded?
  - Complexicate 9y ago
    They aren't poorly funded. I live in a suburban / rural area. The public schools here get ~$15,700 per student. Good private schools here charge ~$10,000 per student, and yet offer much better education with 2/3 the funding.
    - et2o 9y ago
      Where do you live? The private schools may also get funding, and public schools have much higher expenses for special needs students etc. who are often not allowed to enroll at private schools.
      - karlkeefer 9y ago
        Several private schools I know in west coast burbs get by on <$10k and actually have higher staff ratios and more autistic kids than standard schools (many parents need the refuge because the public schools are especially ill-suited to the needs of many families with kids on the spectrum). The point, though, is that there is an incredible amount of bloat in the public system. Funding amounts themselves are not a primary problem, though perhaps allocation of funding is!
Waterluvian 9y ago
When I think about large-scale donations I think about Melinda and Bill Gates. They don't just donate large sums of money, they donate their time and talent and take their efforts very seriously. They work hard to see every penny well-spent in an effective manner. That being said, I would love to witness a super-rich person throw a one-time insanely large lump sum of money at some problem. Like, "Here's 50 billion dollars. Free mammograms to anyone on the planet until the money runs out." It would be nice to see a global respite from some sort of issue.
- nataz 9y ago
  FYI - My wife had her project funded this year by ripple, but last year her projects were funded by Melinda and Bill Gates. In both cases her projects were less than 10k, but make a huge difference to the kids in her classroom.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    On the one hand, I’m very proud of how much it can help with such a small donation. On the other hand, I’m depressed it has to come from donations. Seriously, what is wrong with adults these days kicking the door closed behind us?
    - komali2 9y ago
      Propaganda mostly from the Republican party has convinced a great deal of people that Education is a waste of money. This is obviously stupid and false. Apologies for getting political, but I come from a family of teachers in two red states (actually three now, thanks Wisconsin, you do love to hate yourself), and we're out of fucks to give. EDIT: I know we don't like to get political here, but the question was "Why is America bad at education compared to other countries." First of all, it is bad, and it spends more than other countries, somehow. Makes sense when half the country has put their feet down stubbornly into the stand and said "pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" Or some nonsense. Here's a great analysis of the Republican platform vis a vis education: https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2016/07/what-the-republican-platform-says-about-education-215401 https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2016/07... Inevitable disclaimer: obviously not all republicans are opposed to effective, common sense education, and obviously not all democrats support it. But uh... compare the platforms.
ChristianGeek 9y ago
DonorsChoose.org is a fantastic site and project. As someone who has four teachers in the family, I know firsthand how challenging teaching is on multiple levels, and financial is definitely one of them. I’m happy to support the site as best I can and even happier to hear about this!
1024core 9y ago
When you're printing your own money, it's easy ;-) Not to take anything away from Ripple: good for them!
chris_wot 9y ago
That's amazing! Kudos to Ripple!
throw9991999 9y ago
$29M worth of XRP going to a good cause. Great, cash out and make good use of it. The cynic in me sees this as a cheap PR move (an SVP of marketing promoting it doesn't help). Associating your token with a good cause gives it credibility in the eyes of the public which in turn leads to an increase in the XRP price in USD. Here's what I understand about ripple: - 100 billion XRP was created at inception with 20 billion going to the creators and 80 billion going to Ripple labs. - It's supposed to be a payment layer between financial institutions and XRP is the underlying token. - Distribution of XRP is arbitrary. Ripple labs can allocate it to whoever they see fit. Donating $29M worth of XRP costs them nothing since Ripple labs holds 80 billion XRP. Only 40 billion XRP is currently in circulation though and XRP's price is currently $0.5. I don't know, I find Ripple quite ridiculous. But the silver lining is donations such as these.
- smt88 9y ago
  Does it matter if it's a PR move or not?
  - breerly 9y ago
    Yes.
    - whoisjuan 9y ago
      No it doesn't, because at the end those kids will get 29 million dollars worth of materials and educational resources. I wish more PR moves were about donating and helping those in need.
      - simias 9y ago
        It does to me because I value selfless donations more than those with an ulterior motive. Of course a donation to a noble cause is always a good thing regardless of that but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't discuss its motives. I don't think anybody here is arguing that this donation is a bad thing.
    - 9y ago
neelkadia 9y ago
Dirty and Cheap PR move!
amingilani 9y ago
Objectively, here's what this does: 1. FUND MILLIONS OF STUDENTS (I don't think anyone can overstate how awesome this is) 2. Give Ripple Labs good press and put them on the front 3. Increases the supply of XRP which: - Means more XRP in the market in the market for more users - Drops the value per XRP making transaction costs cheaper All that aside, let's all give Ripple a virtual high five for funding education. This is amazing!
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  > Increases the supply of XRP which Wait, it does? I thought one of the unique aspects of ripple was that all of the coins were pre-mined so the supply is finite. Right?
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Circulating supply.
  - celticninja 9y ago
    They were pre-mined but the supply is infinite, as I understand there is nothing preventing them from creating more at any point.
    - shepardrtc 9y ago
      The supply isn't infinite, and they won't create more.
      - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
        Is the reason they won't create more technical or philosophical? I don't know enough about Ripple.
        SippinLean 9y ago
        It would require a change to the protocol
downandout 9y ago
This is great, but since this move added no new traders to the market and instead added a bunch of people that will dump their XRP instantly, doesn’t this hurt current holders? I wonder how much this had to do with the 5% price drop today [1]. It seems like what they really did was take traders’ $29 million and donate it, except they had no choice in the matter. Not that this is a bad way to spend one’s money, but I’m sure at least some holders would have liked a choice in the matter. Also, for the teachers, what happens if the price falls before they can dump and their projects have a shortfall? [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/
- jbg_ 9y ago
  Wait... people who bought into a currency that is majority-owned by one entity would like some say in how that entity spends it?
  - dorgo 9y ago
    How that compares to fiat money where the central bank can print more money as it wishes?
    - stephen_g 9y ago
      Real currencies generally exist with a Government that requires taxes are paid in that currency. So there's always a baseline demand. Almost nobody in politically stable countries could completely stop using their currencies tomorrow if they didn't like how the Government sector (Government + central bank) spent money (without moving to another country). Also, it's different because since currencies have goods and services that you can buy with them, monetary expansion isn't actually inflationary to the price level unless it pushes aggregate demand (spending) above the supply of goods and services available in that currency. Whereas all this Ripple likely is going to straight to be sold off so the recipients can actually buy things...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mrleiter 9y ago
Many people in this thread criticize this as a bad PR move and Ripple in general. Still, the utilitarian view on this is only good - it helps a good cause and is better than nothing. donorschoose only gains from this and every pledge that stands behind donorschoose. People are always quick to scrutinize everything, but what do you do to help the underprivileged?
letters90 9y ago
Beside how great of an effort this is, the main recipients seem to come from the US. Is the US really that poor of a country to need donations for basic school supplies?
robert_foss 9y ago
Should schools really have to be donation funded?
mathattack 9y ago
Fascinating. This seems like a great way to get more currency in circulation without pissing off the miners or current owners. If they just gave it away, they would have inflation. But the PR from this will generate enough demand that it shouldn’t hurt the value. In addition every dollar they give will likely circulate rather than be hoarded. And the teachers benefit. Brilliant!

327 points by gmichnikov 9y ago

Wonder if they would have gotten more press if they did a rolling donation schedule (1/week, etc). Either way - good to see good projects get funding.

oh_sigh 9y ago
That would take 6 centuries to fund the same amount of projects.

swozey 9y ago

That's killer, thanks Ripple! $29MM! Page isn't loading but this is from the subject of the blog; #BestSchoolDay 2018: Every Project Funded! MARCH 27, 2018 STEPHEN BURKENEWS #BestSchoolDay is here! Last night, Ripple fully funded every single live DonorsChoose.org classroom project. That’s over 35,000 projects in one enormous $29 million dollar act of generosity. We literally don’t have words to express our gratitude, so we had to invent some. We’re flabbermazed. Astonified. It blew us away, knocked our socks off... WOW! Here’s a message from Ripple and our founder, Charles, talking about why Ripple chose to support our creative community of teachers with this [Read more...] edit: Someone's going hard on downvoting every comment in here. Do you not like teachers receiving money to help their students?

nisa 9y ago
> Do you not like teachers receiving money to help their students? It's a shame that you need charities for such things.

jzamora 9y ago

That's amazing!

nodesocket 9y ago

Am I just being cynical but blindly funding every classroom project without oversight and due diligence may actually be a net-negative in the long term. Universally giving money does not solve problems. It takes the right causes and right people behind the causes to really improve things. For perspective, Warren Buffett has donated $46 billion and Bill Gates has donated $18 billion to charities since 2000.

anf 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(company)#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(company)#Funding Are they profitable? How can this kind of thing be justified to shareholders?

giarc 9y ago
Further down in the wiki. I don't know what Ripple Labs is, but perhaps the donation is part of this 80 billion XRP?? >Of the XRP80 billion that Ripple Labs was gifted, Ripple follows a distribution strategy that encompasses payments to business partners such as gateways, market makers and charitable organizations.[24]
trophycase 9y ago
Their currency is worth billions
- anf 9y ago
  Billions of USD in digital coins they themselves created, right? So this $29M came from the shareholders, or from the coin-holders?
  - Zarath 9y ago
    It comes from whoever will buy the coins, presumably.
    - anf 9y ago
      So the same people who could potentially be victims of fraud will now be recovering their investment from school children. Keeping it classy, crypto.
- jcoffland 9y ago
  There is a big difference between being worth billions and having a market cap of billions.
gnicholas 9y ago

throwmeItsok 9y ago

I am really happy for these schools, but what if someone is just trying to 'converting a lot of ripple into cash' look like effect from 'charity donation' event? So that prices don't fall overall while this happens and some people cash out of it.

the_cat_kittles 9y ago

hell yea, give that shit away. btc insta millionaires, lets see it! edit: oh sorry, i forgot these people all "earned it"

yellow_postit 9y ago

This is great for many of the projects but there's a down side to donors choose I wouldn't have realized before taking to some teachers. Anecdote warning: family member works in a public school district where the principal and committees won't even investigate funding requests till the teacher has put something up on donorschoose.

Waterluvian 9y ago
It really sucks that American public schools are so poorly funded. But maybe the principal and committees are just "playing the game" appropriately from their perspective. I doubt they have beanbag chairs full of cash that they're hoarding. I could see a scenario where, sure, the teacher's proposal is great. But what makes their proposal any better than the thousand others that cannot be funded?
- Complexicate 9y ago
  They aren't poorly funded. I live in a suburban / rural area. The public schools here get ~$15,700 per student. Good private schools here charge ~$10,000 per student, and yet offer much better education with 2/3 the funding.
  - et2o 9y ago
    Where do you live? The private schools may also get funding, and public schools have much higher expenses for special needs students etc. who are often not allowed to enroll at private schools.
    - karlkeefer 9y ago
      Several private schools I know in west coast burbs get by on <$10k and actually have higher staff ratios and more autistic kids than standard schools (many parents need the refuge because the public schools are especially ill-suited to the needs of many families with kids on the spectrum). The point, though, is that there is an incredible amount of bloat in the public system. Funding amounts themselves are not a primary problem, though perhaps allocation of funding is!

Waterluvian 9y ago

When I think about large-scale donations I think about Melinda and Bill Gates. They don't just donate large sums of money, they donate their time and talent and take their efforts very seriously. They work hard to see every penny well-spent in an effective manner. That being said, I would love to witness a super-rich person throw a one-time insanely large lump sum of money at some problem. Like, "Here's 50 billion dollars. Free mammograms to anyone on the planet until the money runs out." It would be nice to see a global respite from some sort of issue.

nataz 9y ago
FYI - My wife had her project funded this year by ripple, but last year her projects were funded by Melinda and Bill Gates. In both cases her projects were less than 10k, but make a huge difference to the kids in her classroom.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  On the one hand, I’m very proud of how much it can help with such a small donation. On the other hand, I’m depressed it has to come from donations. Seriously, what is wrong with adults these days kicking the door closed behind us?
  - komali2 9y ago
    Propaganda mostly from the Republican party has convinced a great deal of people that Education is a waste of money. This is obviously stupid and false. Apologies for getting political, but I come from a family of teachers in two red states (actually three now, thanks Wisconsin, you do love to hate yourself), and we're out of fucks to give. EDIT: I know we don't like to get political here, but the question was "Why is America bad at education compared to other countries." First of all, it is bad, and it spends more than other countries, somehow. Makes sense when half the country has put their feet down stubbornly into the stand and said "pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" Or some nonsense. Here's a great analysis of the Republican platform vis a vis education: https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2016/07/what-the-republican-platform-says-about-education-215401 https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2016/07... Inevitable disclaimer: obviously not all republicans are opposed to effective, common sense education, and obviously not all democrats support it. But uh... compare the platforms.

ChristianGeek 9y ago

DonorsChoose.org is a fantastic site and project. As someone who has four teachers in the family, I know firsthand how challenging teaching is on multiple levels, and financial is definitely one of them. I’m happy to support the site as best I can and even happier to hear about this!

1024core 9y ago

When you're printing your own money, it's easy ;-) Not to take anything away from Ripple: good for them!

chris_wot 9y ago

That's amazing! Kudos to Ripple!

throw9991999 9y ago

$29M worth of XRP going to a good cause. Great, cash out and make good use of it. The cynic in me sees this as a cheap PR move (an SVP of marketing promoting it doesn't help). Associating your token with a good cause gives it credibility in the eyes of the public which in turn leads to an increase in the XRP price in USD. Here's what I understand about ripple: - 100 billion XRP was created at inception with 20 billion going to the creators and 80 billion going to Ripple labs. - It's supposed to be a payment layer between financial institutions and XRP is the underlying token. - Distribution of XRP is arbitrary. Ripple labs can allocate it to whoever they see fit. Donating $29M worth of XRP costs them nothing since Ripple labs holds 80 billion XRP. Only 40 billion XRP is currently in circulation though and XRP's price is currently $0.5. I don't know, I find Ripple quite ridiculous. But the silver lining is donations such as these.

smt88 9y ago
Does it matter if it's a PR move or not?
- breerly 9y ago
  Yes.
  - whoisjuan 9y ago
    No it doesn't, because at the end those kids will get 29 million dollars worth of materials and educational resources. I wish more PR moves were about donating and helping those in need.
    - simias 9y ago
      It does to me because I value selfless donations more than those with an ulterior motive. Of course a donation to a noble cause is always a good thing regardless of that but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't discuss its motives. I don't think anybody here is arguing that this donation is a bad thing.
  - 9y ago

neelkadia 9y ago

Dirty and Cheap PR move!

amingilani 9y ago

Objectively, here's what this does: 1. FUND MILLIONS OF STUDENTS (I don't think anyone can overstate how awesome this is) 2. Give Ripple Labs good press and put them on the front 3. Increases the supply of XRP which: - Means more XRP in the market in the market for more users - Drops the value per XRP making transaction costs cheaper All that aside, let's all give Ripple a virtual high five for funding education. This is amazing!

BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> Increases the supply of XRP which Wait, it does? I thought one of the unique aspects of ripple was that all of the coins were pre-mined so the supply is finite. Right?
- Kiro 9y ago
  Circulating supply.
- celticninja 9y ago
  They were pre-mined but the supply is infinite, as I understand there is nothing preventing them from creating more at any point.
  - shepardrtc 9y ago
    The supply isn't infinite, and they won't create more.
    - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
      Is the reason they won't create more technical or philosophical? I don't know enough about Ripple.
      - SippinLean 9y ago
        It would require a change to the protocol

downandout 9y ago

This is great, but since this move added no new traders to the market and instead added a bunch of people that will dump their XRP instantly, doesn’t this hurt current holders? I wonder how much this had to do with the 5% price drop today [1]. It seems like what they really did was take traders’ $29 million and donate it, except they had no choice in the matter. Not that this is a bad way to spend one’s money, but I’m sure at least some holders would have liked a choice in the matter. Also, for the teachers, what happens if the price falls before they can dump and their projects have a shortfall? [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/

jbg_ 9y ago
Wait... people who bought into a currency that is majority-owned by one entity would like some say in how that entity spends it?
- dorgo 9y ago
  How that compares to fiat money where the central bank can print more money as it wishes?
  - stephen_g 9y ago
    Real currencies generally exist with a Government that requires taxes are paid in that currency. So there's always a baseline demand. Almost nobody in politically stable countries could completely stop using their currencies tomorrow if they didn't like how the Government sector (Government + central bank) spent money (without moving to another country). Also, it's different because since currencies have goods and services that you can buy with them, monetary expansion isn't actually inflationary to the price level unless it pushes aggregate demand (spending) above the supply of goods and services available in that currency. Whereas all this Ripple likely is going to straight to be sold off so the recipients can actually buy things...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mrleiter 9y ago

Many people in this thread criticize this as a bad PR move and Ripple in general. Still, the utilitarian view on this is only good - it helps a good cause and is better than nothing. donorschoose only gains from this and every pledge that stands behind donorschoose. People are always quick to scrutinize everything, but what do you do to help the underprivileged?

letters90 9y ago

Beside how great of an effort this is, the main recipients seem to come from the US. Is the US really that poor of a country to need donations for basic school supplies?

robert_foss 9y ago

Should schools really have to be donation funded?

mathattack 9y ago

Fascinating. This seems like a great way to get more currency in circulation without pissing off the miners or current owners. If they just gave it away, they would have inflation. But the PR from this will generate enough demand that it shouldn’t hurt the value. In addition every dollar they give will likely circulate rather than be hoarded. And the teachers benefit. Brilliant!