The Glo Foundation is a Public Benefits Corporation incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco.

We’re in the process of working towards becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. In the meantime, we receive fiscal sponsorship from Global Impact, who accept and process donations on our behalf.

Our mission: zero extreme poverty.

We think extreme poverty—the state of living on less than $2.15/day—is the most pressing issue on earth. Over 700 million people live in extreme poverty, and the world is currently not on track to eradicate it by 2030. Our purpose is to end extreme poverty using the power of the blockchain.

That’s the idea behind Glo Dollar, the antipoverty stablecoin. It’s a stablecoin that generates revenue to fund basic incomes for people in extreme poverty.

We think that cash transfers are the best, most scalable way to lift someone out of extreme poverty. There’s already a great organization, GiveDirectly, that knows how to get cash to the people who need it most. Now we just need to scale this to hundreds of millions of people.

More broadly, we dream of embedding philanthropy into every aspect of the economy. A stablecoin is a great launching pad for getting there.

We’re led by an experienced team who’ve worked in tech, academia, and crypto.

Jeff Milewski, Co-founder & CEO, is an economist based in San Francisco. Prior to Glo, he was a research director and instructor of fintech at Creighton University. He also co-founded Funnel House, a consultancy that helps startups identify growth opportunities and necessary milestones to achieve success. Jeff holds an MSc from the London School of Economics.

Garm Lucassen, Co-founder & CTO, formerly worked as lead product manager of Secfi, a San Francisco-based fintech company. He co-founded CardanoSpace, the first NFT-powered dApp on the Cardano Blockchain, and TURF, a cartographic art NFT project that has had over 1300 pieces sold through payments processed by the VISA, Mastercard and Cardano networks. Garm holds a PhD in product management from the University of Utrecht.

Jasper Driessens, Co-founder & Head of Marketing, has roots in computer science and AI, but he slowly drifted away from engineering until one day he woke up and found himself running the marketing department. Jasper previously worked in marketing at Secfi, a San Francisco-based fintech company, as well as founding ASIF Ventures, a pre-seed fund that has invested in 15 student startups, and CardanoSpace, the first NFT-powered dApp on the Cardano Blockchain. Jasper graduated cum laude from the University of Amsterdam with a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence.

Additionally, our leadership team is rounded out by Marcia Blacken, Head of Operations; Deborah Lightfoot, Head of Finance; and Lisa LoGerfo, General Counsel.‍

See our team page for a full list of employees and all open positions, and this article for more on how we work as a company.

We’re donor-backed, and we’re currently looking for more founding donors.

We’re generously backed by Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab. We're currently in conversation with individuals and foundations who share our mission and are looking to ensure that Glo Dollar is sustainable in the long run.

Please reach out to fundraising@glodollar.org if you are interested in becoming a founding donor.

A brief history of the project

Glo Dollar was once called Global Income Coin, and it going to be a free-floating cryptocurrency that harnessed the power of seigniorage—the minting of money—to create a universal basic income. You can read more about this in our press release from April 2022.

In summer 2022, we pivoted to our current model— a fully-backed stablecoin—after Terra/Luna collapsed, which made marketing our previous vision much harder, and interest rates began to rise, which made the stablecoin business model much more viable.

In June 2023, we launched the Glo Dollar in collaboration with Brale.

Our current status: we’re working on getting Glo Dollar widely available on decentralized and centralized exchanges, and also to make Glo Dollar the stablecoin of choice for DAOs.

How you can help:

If you own or work at a business that wants to buy Glo Dollar: 

Check out https://www.glodollar.org/business. 

If you’re an individual who shares our vision of using blockchain to end extreme poverty: 

Glo Dollar is available for purchase, see here. In addition, consider joining us as an early supporter.

If you’d like to donate crypto to Glo Dollar: 

You can find us on Giveth and Endaoment. All crypto we receive will go towards our operating expenses.

If you’d like to become a founding donor:

Please contact us at fundraising@glodollar.org.