COVID-19 has spurred more nonprofit organizations to accept crypto

Over the past three years, an increasing number of nonprofit organizations have begun to accept crypto-based donations.

According to Alex Wilson, co-founder of crypto donation gateway The Giving Block, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed this trend further than ever before.

"Interestingly, the last six months or so, COVID has actually been a pretty major catalyst for nonprofits accepting crypto because a lot of them are looking for different ways to offset lost revenue, but also diversify their revenue into new things like crypto," Wilson told Cointelegraph in an interview.

Although bolstered by COVID-19, a number of nonprofits originally began accepting blockchain assets amid crypto's euphoric bull market in 2017.

"One of those ways was actually to donate crypto to charity, except that I noticed people wanted to donate to nonprofits, but most of them had no clue how to accept crypto."

Crypto donations act as a door into a separate, untapped market of potential supporters, said Wilson.

He explained that "Most nonprofits tend to have older donors and they're looking for ways connect with younger donors, start building those longer relationships with younger donors, and crypto has been one of those ways."

"One cool thing about the crypto donations has been that it's mostly completely new donors for them, so it's not cannibalizing any other of their other existing forms of donations. It's a totally new revenue stream for them."

A number of payment solutions exist in the crypto space, some of which convert digital assets into a recipient's pre-determined national currency at the time of payment.

When a company integrates with The Giving Block, they can choose whether they want to keep their donation in crypto, or convert it to a more traditional fiat currency.