Guests mingling at a recent gala for the Spare Key charity didn't know it, but they had entered a new frontier in nonprofit fundraising. Folks who bought auction items ranging from French wine to a Mexican vacation were allowed to pay with check, credit card — or cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency?
It's a term used to describe virtual currencies with names such as bitcoin and dogecoin. They don't exist in paper or coin form but are downloaded from a virtual wallet, often on the owner's cellphone, to the charity's website, which is equipped to convert it to cash.
Spare Key is one of the first Minnesota nonprofits to make an appeal to crpytocurrency holders, and among a tiny but growing group nationally.
Last week Spare Key even hired a consulting "director of cryptocurrency development" to build online infrastructure and facilitate donations by tech-savvy currency users — who it believes are a largely untapped market of donors.
"We are venturing into the unknown bravely," joked Erich Mische, executive director of Spare Key, a Minneapolis nonprofit that provides emergency mortgage and rent payments to families with critically ill children in the hospital.
"The demographic of people participating in the crytpocurrency economy are not people who normally contribute to Spare Key," he said.
That demographic is embodied by Erik Goebel, a 29-year-old U of M graduate student studying chemistry, a self-described geek who "likes to experiment with new technologies and try new gizmos and gadgets."