The Giveth mission is to reward & empower those who give — to projects, to society, and to the world. With GIVbacks, we’re rewarding givers by giving GIV to donors to verified projects on Giveth.
Web3 and, specifically, Ethereum have the potential to revolutionize the philanthropic space. We have the tools to open new funding streams and create economic abundance for everyone who is providing value to society.
Clean air, clear water, bridges, roads, free childcare, public education, taking care of the less fortunate — these are all examples of public goods that, when governments fail to provide them, we look to non-profits to create and care for. For funding, we have been relying on donors to give to these non-profits and receive nothing in return. Society has been depending on and ultimately exploiting the altruists who are working hard to protect and provide for our collective needs.
GIVbacks is a paradigm shift for the donation space. For the first time ever, there is an economic upside to donating.
GIVbacks is the first step towards a world in which everyone benefits from creating value: when you give to verified projects, 100% of your donation goes directly to the project, and you get GIV from Giveth!
With over 900 verified projects on Giveth, donors can find projects that speak to their values and get rewarded for giving. Verified projects benefit from the extra traffic on Giveth & can use this program to attract new donors who are willing to support their initiatives.
The Big Picture
Before we get into the fine details of exactly how the GIVbacks program works, let me walk you through the big picture that is the “why”.
Projects should feel good about raising funds for their project
Charity has traditionally created a dynamic where projects who do good work to benefit society have to beg for funds to make the world a better place. On the flip side, donors are being asked to sacrifice — to give without expecting anything in return.
GIVbacks is changing that. Donors have the opportunity to support projects they believe in, get GIV in return, and start or increase their GIVstream. They can use that GIV to grow their rewards by, for example, staking in the GIVfarm. It’s a win/win: Projects benefit from receiving 100% of the donation, and donors benefit by earning GIV and becoming part of the Giveth ecosystem.
GIVbacks gives governance power to the donors using Giveth
Giveth is of the donors, by the donors, and for the donors. Our GIVdrop was sent to the Blockchain4good community — and particularly crypto donors & Giveth users — because we wanted to kickstart the GIVeconomy with value-aligned GIVers. Now, as the economy expands, we want the donors who are using the platform and giving to causes they care about to get proportionally increasing governance power. With GIVbacks, the more you give, the more GIV you get, and that GIV can be used in the GIVgarden to decide which proposals get funded to expand the GIVeconomy.
GIVbacks are like tax-deductible donations but without governments and borders
Let’s face it, tax-deductible donations can be a bit of a headache. Nonprofit projects have to cut through miles of red tape and donors have to do accounting each year, saving associated paperwork for some arbitrary number of years.
GIVbacks provides a similar end, but cuts the bureaucracy. If a project can prove they are legitimately adding value to society, they can become a verified project in the GIVbacks program, no matter what their legal or DAO structure is. If a donor is moved by a verified project’s work, they can give and receive GIV in return, no matter where (or if) they pay taxes. No need to save receipts or paperwork for fear of getting audited. Web3 makes it so that we don’t need governments and taxes to make this kind of system. We can transcend borders to connect people with projects anywhere in the world!
GIVbacks educates community members about web3
The long-term vision of Giveth is to enable for-good projects to use token engineering and DAO coordination on the ground. GIVbacks is the first step towards achieving this goal. With GIVbacks, ordinary donors start learning about and getting curious about DAO tools like token streams, DeFi and token-weighted voting. Furthermore, when donors get GIV, they are naturally inclined to donate it! In GIVbacks round 1, 75% of the total value of donations to verified projects on our platform were in GIV.
With the GIVbacks program, both donors and projects receive GIV and start looking into how to grow their earnings, swiftly falling down the web3 rabbit hole via giveth.io.
GIVbacks will evolve into a system that transforms successful projects into DAOs and donors into impact investors
GIVbacks as it is today is the first step on a path to expand Giveth into a place where nonprofits can become microeconomies. Next, we plan to introduce GIVcuration — a system where users can stake their GIV on projects they care about, signaling support while earning a yield. A successful project in the GIVcuration system will eventually be able to get its own GIV-collateralized bonding curve, called a ‘Gurve’.
When donors support a project with a Gurve, their GIVbacks get split: they get some GIV, and some GIV goes into the Gurve, minting the donor ‘project tokens’, thereby increasing the price of the project tokens.
Before getting a Gurve, a project will need to set up a rewards system to distribute their ‘reputation tokens’ to volunteers and on-the-ground supporters. When their Gurve is initialized, those reputation tokens turn into ‘project tokens’, and the project can use token-weighted voting systems to govern their donations.
With Gurves, a successful project on Giveth will be able to become a sustainable DAO, governing its own economy, with its supporters as stakeholders and donors as impact investors!
The Fine Details
So how exactly does this program work? Well, it makes use of a system for verifying projects on Giveth, and tracks donations to those projects in 2 week “rounds”. Let’s dig into the details.
Verified Projects
“Verified” is a seal of approval for legitimate projects on Giveth. Many Verified projects came pre-vetted from The Giving Block API. The Giving Block is an organization that supports and onboards registered 501c3s from the United States into crypto, and with our integration you can donate to their projects from the Giveth UI.
For non-Giving Block projects, project owners need to fill out a typeform and answer some questions. Verified Projects need to show that they are doing work to create non-excludable value for society and that they have some reputation at stake that would prevent them from gaming or manipulating the GIVbacks program for personal gain.
Our amazing Project Verification Team then reviews these applications, investigates the information provided & informs the project owners about the verdict. Approved projects will have their Verified badges at the start of the very next GIVbacks round. You can learn more about the project verification process and qualifying/disqualifying factors in our GIVbacks documentation.
Getting your project verified builds a relationship of trust with your donors by demonstrating your project’s legitimacy and showing that the funds are being used to create positive change.
GIVbacks Rounds
GIVbacks rounds are 2 week periods wherein all donations to verified projects are tracked and recorded in our database. At the end of a round, our team reviews the donations and calculates the amount of GIV to send to each donor. Note that recipient addresses of verified projects on Giveth do not get GIVbacks for their donations. This is to prevent recirculating funds and other fraudulent activity.
Once the distribution has been determined, and any suspicious activity has been resolved, reputation DAO token holders vote to approve the allocation. You can see the votes to distribute GIVbacks for each round in our forum here. When the vote passes, donors are notified via email that their GIVbacks are ready to claim from the GIVbacks page.
Every 2 weeks, there is 1 million GIV available to give back to donors!
Until December 23, 2026 donors who get GIV from GIVbacks are able to claim some part immediately upon distribution, and some part added to their GIVstream flowrate. With the GIVstream, donors who give to verified projects on Giveth get more GIV continuously as the GIViverse expands.
GIVbacks is the next generation of philanthropy where, using the power of web3, we can transform legacy systems that require those who give to sacrifice, into ones where giving actually gives back.