A New Bitcoin Fund Aims to Boost Crypto Gifts to Save the Children

While cryptocurrency advocates have long predicted donations would be a big part of the charitable game, so far they’ve remained a small slice. The most recent 2025 Annual Report on Crypto Philanthropy estimated crypto donations at just $1 billion in 2024 out of the $592.5 billion Americans donated, according to “Giving USA.”

However, Save the Children, a global humanitarian organization, hopes a new Bitcoin fund it launched will boost crypto fundraising by better appealing to Bitcoin philanthropists, while also making it easier to deliver on its mission around the world.

“Crypto fundraising remains relatively niche,” says Antonia Roupell, the organization’s innovation, marketing and partnerships lead. “But we are looking at how do we unlock more of this crypto. Especially with the backdrop that we’re seeing of the aid cuts. This is a time when you can’t turn down any kind of new innovation in fundraising, and crypto is part of that.”

The group’s Bitcoin fund, they hope, will serve as an innovation in both fundraising and  in how nonprofits move their money to where it is needed.

Fund Holds or Deploys Bitcoin

The fund will hold Bitcoin contributed to it for at least four years or deploy the coins to areas in need as cryptocurrency. Holding on to a donated asset is atypical. Most charities, including Save the Children, convert such assets (including cryptocurrency, stock, and real estate) to cash upon acceptance. However, donors with large crypto holdings, says Roupell, view crypto as special.

Bitcoin has historically been more volatile than stocks. But Roupell says crypto donors see Bitcoin as “an asset that they don’t want to see converted into U.S. dollars automatically.” The fund picked the four-year time frame to hold the crypto because Bitcoin, throughout its history, has never decreased in value over any four-year period, Roupell says.

These donors also want to see crypto deployed as currency, not just a speculative investment, Roupell adds. That’s why the second feature of the fund matters. The organization will be deploying the money as cryptocurrency as part of their cash-assistance programs.

“People who are Bitcoiners are excited because they say not only are you holding the Bitcoin, which is to them a no-brainer approach, but you’re actually going to utilize the underlying technology,” Roupell says. 

Anne Connelly, co-author of Bitcoin and the Future of Fundraising, thinks both holding the Bitcoin and deploying it as cryptocurrency are important innovations that appeal to donors with crypto.  

“A lot of charities are just stopping at crypto donations — accepting and selling them — but that’s no different than accepting an art piece or stock,” she says. What’s great about this fund, however, is that it uses all the benefits of crypto, as financial investment and rolling out crypto operationally.

Deploying Crypto in Emergencies

In using crypto as a currency during natural disasters, wars, and other emergencies where they provide aid, Save the Children joins the ranks of many other charities, says Connelly. She notes that one of the reasons she began studying cryptocurrency was her own nonprofit experience.

“I worked for Doctors Without Borders, and one of my jobs was carrying knapsacks full of cash through war zones so we could pay staff,” Connelly says. “When you’re in the middle of the Central African Republic, there’s no banks. Everybody operates on a cash economy. So if you’re paying 200 health-care workers in a remote village, they have to be paid in cash and someone has to bring the cash from the capital city to that location.”

Deploying cryptocurrency instead of cash on the ground changes all that, say both Connelly and Roupell. Charities can deploy money quickly through digital wallets, getting it directly to those in need. The use of mobile money, in which financial accounts are held on phones and money is transmitted over cell networks, not the internet, has leapfrogged over traditional banking in many developing countries. And while cryptocurrency is often viewed in the United States as an investment, it’s a valid, usable currency in many countries.

“When you look at the adoption in places like Nigeria, it’s a bit like mobile money,” Roupell says. “We don’t really use it. But you go to Kenya, and it’s completely interoperable.”

The other advantage of cryptocurrency in unstable regions is that hyper-inflation often sets in and the local currency is greatly devalued. Cryptocurrency can provide stable funds without endangering people by forcing them to carry large amounts of cash. It also doesn’t rely on infrastructure such as banks or ATMs that may be damaged or inaccessible in regions experiencing war or natural disasters, Roupell says.

Connelly notes that other charities have had success deploying funds in crypto. “There was an incredible organization in Afghanistan called Code to Inspire that enabled women to take remote coding jobs and get paid in Bitcoin because they weren’t allowed to have bank accounts,” she says.

Since announcing the fund at the end of last year, Save the Children has heard from other charities that want to know more about it, possibly to set up similar funds, Roupell says. Donors are also listening and acting.

“This is not a question of that Bitcoin donation they would have just as happily given to us in the traditional manner,” Roupell says, since intermediary organizations, such as the Giving Block, turn that crypto into cash. “They absolutely would not have parted with it. So they’re coming on board with the innovations because we’re speaking the same language.”