Yesterday, I went to see our accountant about setting up the Non Profit entity for Leaderless. Initially, I wanted to set Leaderless up as a profit making business that uses it’s profits to do more social good but after consulting with other Non Profits and to win trust among more people at the end of the day, it makes sense to register Leaderless as non profit organisation.
The other reason for wanting to register Leaderless as a PTY initially, was because an initial coin offering (ICO) is considered equity funding and in South Africa, accepting equity funding means that you need a PTY limited. Catch 22.
Personally, I would rather have wished there was a legal company name like Social Enterprise which we could register as this makes a lot more sense and perhaps it is here where our community can have a lot more influence to start changing certain laws to accommodate social entrepreneurs. I work with quite a couple of Non Profits and I recall watching a TED talk a few years back where the idea of being Non Profit is seen as a charity which is not the case of Leaderless. If anything, we are not about handouts but about teaching ownership.
So what we have decided to do is to register Leaderless as the Non Profit Company and Ogel (the schools we want to build) as the PTY element that can accept equity funding. This way, we can accept grants of funding (not government) from one source and equity funding from another source.
We’ve already been down the Venture Capital route. We have our pitch decks ready but we need to get traction going which is what we’re working on next – to build out the Leaderless platform. To date, all the funding for Leaderless has come from Vane Digital, the ecommerce agency I run to help boost the adoption of Ecommerce in Africa in collaboration with the Ecommerce Forum of Africa.
Finding the ideal investor is tricky. Leaderless is not about making as much profit as possible, only to exit and make a lot of money at the end of the day. Leaderless belongs to the people — it is a legacy project where all people will have a say in the decision making processes of any country; starting in South Africa. We do want to make profit but those profits we want to plough back into incredible content to further teach people.
Within the next few weeks Leaderless will officially be registered as a non profit company and later, once our ICO is complete, we will register Ogel as the PTY.
We have learned a lot in the process and want to say a big thank you to everyone who has helped in this process. Most notably,
- Juanita Clarke from the Fibre Council of South Africa.
- Satish and Anne-Marie – from Fellows of Fire
- Marcus Coetzee – he is an incredible spring of information.
