Mark Smith
EthiPoint is an all-in-one platform that leverages proprietary universal measurement and incentive system to facilitate effective and sustainable philanthropy.
Tell us about yourself?
I’m Jiali Ding, founder and CEO of EthiPoint. I have 20 years of experience developing models, algorithms and systems to solve problems from business process reengineering, resource optimization to personalization.
With background in humanities, management and computer science, I want to contribute to a sustainable humanity with more goodness and efficiency. Previously I taught Finance in university and worked across engineering, production, sales and human resource management in industry.
I hold U.S. patents on an advanced Bayesian statistical learning method and system and method for evaluating, rewarding and facilitating philanthropic works.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
I would advise myself to exercise more and read more books during the pandemic. Knowledge is power, and it can help us overcome fear and anxiety.
What problem does your business solve?
Philanthropic work such as volunteering, pro bono service and donation has a huge impact on human wellbeing, health and life satisfaction.
There are more than 1.8 million active non-profit organizations in the United States and many of them rely on volunteers in their daily operations to fulfill mission and achieve goals.
However, reports indicate that, fewer people on average are volunteering and contributing money than two decades ago, and engaging more people back is a challenging work.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Research finds that although most volunteers and donors may not be driven by material compensation, they do expect certain return, such as acknowledgment, recognition, appreciation and impact.
If volunteers and donors do not feel their expertise, time or money have been made best use of, or if their philanthropic work does not make a difference, they may not stay.
Our platform records all their good works systematically, enables fair acknowledgement and interchangeable rewards for various works, measures their long-term impacts and encourages virtuous circles in which people once being helped further help others.
What is your magic sauce?
We help organizations incentivize volunteers and donors by systematically calculating universal and interchangeable rewards based on contribution.
For example, a salary or payment of $1,000 earned from medical care work in 1947 cannot exchange for an equivalent work today which costs about $40,000 without a long-term 5.3% after-fee annual rate of return.
On EthiPoint, volunteering work will be evaluated and rewarded with ethical points based on work-adjusted time, so that the points one earns from one hour of good work will always be exchangeable for an hour of any good work with equivalent time value over time.
And we facilitate effective philanthropy by introducing value-based beneficiary evaluation and feedback loop.
We also help organizations reduce errors and stress with coordination and be more transparent and impactful by simplifying, automating processes and quantifying long-term value-based impacts, so that they can save time and costs as well as earn more public trust and supports.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Let’s have a vision for longer than 5 years.
We envision in the future, people who do good will also do well since value of their good work is discovered and fairly acknowledged, and more talents and resources will be engaged to solve challenging social problems more effectively through using EthiPoint.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Philanthropy is not only about good intent, tax benefit, or giving money, but also about effectively solving problems which otherwise would have negative ripple effects throughout the whole society and affect everyone.
However, lack of easy-to-understand, simple-to-use, universal measurement for impact had made the comparison and discovery of effective philanthropy/altruism impossible.
Only when people can easily compare and evaluate outcome and long-term impacts of various philanthropic endeavors, can they better allocate their limited philanthropic supporting resources, so that complex problems can be solved more effectively along the way.
Our universal measurement system and method is to address this challenge.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
If you ever volunteered, donated, organized philanthropic work or plan to do so, either as an individual person or as an organization, you should use EthiPoint to earn ethical points, track impacts and help build a more effective and sustainable philanthropic ecosystem.
Just signup on https://ethipoint.com/users/register/ and start by posting and sharing a good work you’ve done to earn points, or posting and sharing a volunteer need to recruit volunteers for any good cause.
