Hi! 

Since our last update, we have hired six new team members, built our community and organization out, and are currently gearing up to launch Glo. 

We were expecting to launch at the end of Q1, but we decided to push it back a few months. Basically we want to be 100% sure that we’re launching Glo in a fully compliant way, and given recent turmoil in banking and crypto, we think that requires more prep work.

We’re also doing a lot of fundraising. We’re in a secure financial position, but more funders = sturdier organization.

Launching Glo: why the delay?

• In our last update, we said that we expected Glo to be live in January 2023. So we’re behind schedule. 
• Basically, given recent events, we wanted to be as sure as possible that we’ve identified and implemented partnerships that will lead to a robust, compliant stablecoin. 
• We’re in the final stages of selecting partner institutions on stablecoin issuance and for custody of Glo reserves. 
• This sucks, we know. But in general we’re trying to think long-term, and that means not taking any shortcuts on compliance.
• At the same time, we want to get to market as quickly as possible. We hope to share more on this front ASAP.

Community building

We had an awesome ETHDenver!

• Our Chief Marketing Officer Jasper Driessens gave a talk on the hyperbull case for Glo; 
• We gave out cool cards that people liked;
• We got a big influx of new Twitter followers – we added 250+ in March – and Discord members (gm 👋).

We've also added a lot of new early adopters!

• We’ve had about 150 people sign up so far. 
• Early adopters help us create a bridge between USDGLO, a stablecoin, and Glo, the antipoverty dollar, and we’re stoked to have you.
• P.S. If you join our Discord and tell us you’re an early adopter in our early-adopters channel, we’ll assign you the “Glo supporter role” and your screen name will be colored in green. Not world-changing, but we must start somewhere!
• Most importantly: sign up here to become an Early Adopter.

Team and organization building

We’ve added six new people to the team since our last update:

• Bram Voets, Senior Growth Marketing Manager
• Dar, Executive Assistant
• Deborah Lightfoot, Head of Finance
• Emily Jablonski, Head of Community
• Lisa LoGerfo, General Counsel
• Marcia Blacken, Head of Operations

Also, we met up in Singapore for our Q1 2023 offsite! We totally neglected to take a team photo, our bad, but we ate a lot of really good meals and had three very productive days getting aligned and stoked about Glo. 

Speaking of the team, here’s how Glo is organized today:

• We’re registered as a Delaware Corporation under the name “Glo Development Foundation, Inc.” 
• We have fiscal sponsorship from an organization called Global Impact. They process donations on our behalf.
• We are gearing up to register as a 501(c)3.

Website and documentation updates

• We’ve revamped our website (it used to look like this).
• We now have an FAQ, linked below 'Our organization' in the menu (this is a v1, feel free to share ideas/questions to add).
• Our Impact calculator is now integrated into https://www.glodollar.org/.
• We've added more Early Adopters to our homepage – thank you to everyone who has signed up so far!

Fundraising

• As a nonprofit, we keep the lights on through donations.
• We’re lucky to have generous support from the Sijbrandij Foundation, but, as is true of many things in life, more is better.
• We’re ramping a founding donors campaign and reaching out to individuals and organizations for support. Our founders are leading these efforts, and have been meeting with VCs, foundations, and individuals who are inspired by Glo’s mission.
  Speaking of: if you know any people or foundations who are passionate about ending poverty, please be in touch!

 An update on the banking situation

• Things are a bit chaotic in banking and by extension crypto!
• We had no direct exposure to Silicon Valley Bank, Signature, or Silvergate. (Our payroll provider was affected but we made payroll manually as a precaution, so no direct impact there.)
• Our operational banks are Chase and Westamerica.

That’s all for now, we’ll keep you posted on when Glo will be available for purchase 😀

Note: our Early Adopter program is now called our Glo Supporter program.