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Jamie Thingelstad

Writer of the Weekly Thing. Blogger. Explorer of tech, the open web, AI, and a good escape room. Maybe a podcast? CTO of SPS Commerce, Board Member of MnTech, Former Board Member Minnestar. Minneapolis is home.

Things 4 Good

Updates on our family’s candle‑making fundraiser for charity. I share insights on costs and materials, celebrate the growing impact and donations raised over four years, and invite readers to help us choose new scents.

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    First attempt at making tealight candles along with some regular Things 4 Good candles. Requires precision for 0.5 oz pour. Towel under the tealights is to slow down cooling. First ones I let sit on counter and the wax tunneled as it cooled too fast. 🕯

    Handmade tealight candles in black and gold tins with wooden wicks cooling on a green towel beside larger black candle vessels
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    Things 4 Good on Endaoment

    I had been thinking it would be really cool if Donor Advised Funds (DAF) were open to accepting crypto tokens as deposits. There has been a lot of wealth built up in crypto and it would be very beneficial to create simple means to move some portion of that to non-profit organizations. Shortly after this I stumbled upon Endaoment.

    Endaoment describes itself as “We’re a tax-exempt Community Foundation built for decentralized finance and focused on social impact.” Endaoment is a DeFi version of a DAF like Schwab Charitable. This morning, while Ethereum gas prices were predictably low, I sat down to play with this first hand.

    Setting up your Fund

    I went to Endaoment and connected to my wallet. Easy enough, just like any other Web3 application. I then created my own fund. This was super simple. I needed a name, I chose Things 4 Good. Gave it a tagline. I then associated my name and address. There were no credit checks, no social security numbers, just basic contact information. After this I submitted a transaction that deployed the smart contract for my DAF.

    Now I had my own contract associated with Things 4 Good, and it was time to provide an initial deposit to the fund. Endaoment requires a minimum $500 transfer so I sent in 0.15 ETH. When Endaoment receives the ETH they immediately transfer that to USD Coin (USDC). They sent me a receipt for tax purposes for the full value of the 0.15 ETH. Endaoment takes a 0.5% transaction fee, and there are some fees associated with the transactions to USDC, which are taken out after.

    Confirm Donation modal showing 0.15 ETH donation with estimated proceeds of 579.51 USDC to Things 4 Good, with a 0.5 percent endaoment fee of 2.90 dollars

    With that done, my DAF was fully established on the Ethereum mainnet, funded, and ready to use.

    Endaoment dashboard for Things 4 Good private fund showing 606.42 dollars total impact, 606.41 grantable, and a Nov 28 2021 donation of 0.15 ETH

    Granting Funds

    Now that Things 4 Good was setup I wanted to try issuing a grant. The Internet Archive is an organization I have supported for a long time and I thought it would be a fitting organization to make a first donation to. I picked them off the list of organizations registered on Endaoment. This was fun to me, because this is also on-chain, so to send the grant you interact with the smart contract.

    Confirm grant dialog showing a 100 dollar grant from Things 4 Good to Internet Archive, reducing balance from 606.41 to 506.41 dollars

    I appreciated this as it felt like a much different level of control than a typical DAF. We use Schwab Charitable and you make recommendations, they send checks, and you get emails saying it all happened but you can’t actually see it yourself. With Endaoment I can see my transaction and know exactly what happened when.

    With very little effort I have my DAF setup on the Ethereum mainnet, funded, and already distributed a grant. This is holy crap amazing. 🤯

    This seems like a powerful and needed capability as you manage your crypto assets. Plus it is an incredible example of the power of DeFi applications built on Web3 technology.

    Deploying Organizations

    After chatting with some of the Endaoment team on Discord they showed how you can deploy any existing 501(c)(3) organization. Any user can fund the deployment of the smart contract for that group. So I went ahead and deployed Constellation Fund and Minnestar on Endaoment.

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    Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser

    Our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser was a great success this weekend! We had more than 100 people stop in to buy Things 4 Good Candles, Jiggy Thing Puzzle #001, Four Bees Honey, and fresh baked cookies. We all had a lot of fun hosting people. The kids particularly enjoyed walking guests through the various options and checking people out.

    Family of four in Things 4 Good shirts standing behind a table filled with candles, puzzle boxes, and honey bottles

    All the proceeds are going to non-profits, and we raised…

    $4,757

    We gave everyone the opportunity to choose to direct their sale to any number of the great organizations that we had identified.

    Horizontal bar chart showing fundraiser proceeds by nonprofit: Feed My Starving Children 1497.96, Appetite for Change 1364.88, Free Bikes 4 Kidz 1235.46, Constellation Fund 658.71

    Seems that non-profits closest to kids and food got more engagement than the others.

    We made four distinct Things 4 Good Candles for the sale: 🔥

    • Oh My Darling: Sugar-y and Citrus-y, this candle will brighten and energize your day as soon as you set it burning!
    • Mind Like Water: Made with a calming cashmere vanilla fragrance, this candle will have you deep in meditation in minutes.
    • Apple of my Eye: And this candle is sure to be the apple of yours! Heavenly apple and cinnamon scents combine to create that rich, full aroma we all love!
    • Winter Wonderland: Crisp and pine-y, this fragrance will transport you directly to that snow-covered pine forest of your dreams!

    We also sold our very first Jiggy Thing Puzzle #001, “Celebration City”! 🧩 Sure to be a collectors item. Hand drawn digital art, 500-piece puzzle perfect for anyone.

    Tammy and the kids made a bunch of cookies which was a great touch so people could have a little something fun to eat as they left. Tammy’s sister Angie was also kind enough to allow us to resell some of her amazing Four Bees Honey that she makes with the bees in her yard!

    Overall everything went great. We did capture some learnings to make it better next year. We are considering making this an annual tradition that we do! In the meantime, we still have some puzzles to sell…

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    We had a great first day of the Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser! We had a steady stream of people most of the day and sold a lot of Things 4 Good Candles, Jiggy Thing Puzzles, Four Bees Honey, and fresh baked goods to raise money for good causes! Open tomorrow too!

    Colorful scented candles labeled Oh My Darling by Wicky Buddy displayed on a wood table with a handwritten sign priced at $25 Rows of colorful wax candles and stacked Jiggy puzzle boxes displayed on a wooden table at a fundraiser sale Six small glass jars of Four Bees Honey with round white labels arranged on a table with illustrated paper underneath Glass dome cake stand displaying assorted cookies including M+M cookies and Monster Cookies, with handwritten flavor labels inside Colorful Wicky Thing Candles in various vessel colors displayed on a wooden table, foreground candle labeled Mind Like Water
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    All four of us “Things” are working away getting ready for this weekends Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser! Things 4 Good Candles being labeled, fresh cookies baking, and signage being produced. 😎

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    POAP 2557804 at Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser.

    Circular badge reading 2021 with four Dr. Seuss-style cartoon characters in blue jumpsuits and orange hair above the text things 4 good
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    Custom Puzzle Box

    Our upcoming Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser is going to have a lot of our Things 4 Good Candles, but we are also introducing a new custom product that our family created — the first Jiggy Thing Puzzle! We received the order today and I was very anxious to see how the box art came out. We’ve done puzzles before so I wasn’t worried about that, but we had never done a custom box design. I love how it turned out!

    Three Jiggy Thing Puzzles boxes titled Celebration City stacked on a white table, showing colorful whimsical cartoon artwork of a town and underwater scene.
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    Our family is hosting our first Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser! We’ll be raising money for four good causes by selling Things 4 Good Candles, Jiggy Thing Puzzles, and some additional surprises! Great for presents or home!

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    We made some more Things 4 Good Candles this morning. 🕯

    Dozens of unlit candles with wooden wicks in colorful containers arranged in rows on a wooden table, viewed from above.

    Mazie’s job was cutting down wax for the melting pots. She had some fun with the wax while doing it. 🤩

    White wax sculpture of the name Mazie with a large M and smaller letters on a rectangular wax base, sitting on plastic sheeting
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    Tammy made a themed scavenger hunt / puzzle for Olson Family Vacation 18. One clue for each year. Everyone had to think hard. Each family won a custom Things 4 Good candle when they discovered the answer, and presents for the kids.

    Scavenger hunt clue sheets and a handwritten answer sheet spread across a herringbone wood floor beside a yellow candle.
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