CHIP exists because fundraising is broken — and the fix is structural, not cosmetic.

We're a for-profit Public Benefit Corporation building the game layer and trust layer for small-dollar giving. The mission: make honest, joyful, recurring generosity the default — and make every dollar followable.

Make honest, joyful, recurring generosity the default.

Most fundraising platforms optimize for extraction: more emails, more urgency, more manipulation. The result is donor burnout, declining trust, and a sector that trains people to distrust every ask.

CHIP optimizes for the opposite: retention through joy, trust through transparency, growth through honesty.

We built a platform where:

  • Every dollar is earmarked toward a specific objective
  • Every dollar is traceable in a public Glass Ledger
  • Every player sets their own caps — and the platform enforces them
  • Every boss has a real name, a real budget, and a real deadline
  • Every badge is earned, never bought
  • Every cause keeps its own identity — CHIP is the trust mark, not the landlord

The mission isn't "increase donations." It's "make giving a thing people want to do again."

I come to gather flowers.
I come to seek songs.
Only flowers and songs
make life true upon the earth.

By xochicuicatl

We wrote the mission into the charter.

CHIP is incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This is a legal structure, not a marketing claim. It means our fiduciary duty is to both shareholders AND the stated public benefit — balancing profit with purpose, with the purpose baked into the governing documents.

CHIP's public benefit purpose (charter language):

To strengthen civic participation and public trust by providing a transparent, gamified micro-donation platform that gives small donors agency, visibility, and protection from manipulative fundraising practices; and to operate the company in a manner that prioritizes donor welfare, platform transparency, and the accessibility of civic engagement technology.

What PBC status means in practice:

  • We can't optimize for profit at the expense of the mission. The charter requires both.
  • We publish a biennial public benefit report measuring our impact against the stated purpose.
  • The anti-manipulation Constitution is not a marketing document — it's enforceable against the company's own interests if those interests conflict with the mission.
  • If we ever sell the company, the acquirer must honor the PBC purpose or the board must consider the impact of the sale on the public benefit.

We're also pursuing B-Corp certification as a separate, third-party-verified trust asset.

A chip is a small thing that, stacked, becomes a big thing.

A poker chip. An arcade token. A micro-gift. "Chip in." "Stack up." The name works at every level:

  • The action: Chip in on a cause. Small amounts, recurring.
  • The game: Tokens in the arcade. Boss fights. Badges.
  • The trust: Every chip is followable in the Glass Ledger.
  • The plural: Enough chips, stacked up, fund real things — FOIA requests, ad campaigns, legal reviews, movements.

It's a common word. We like that. It doesn't sound like a startup invented it. It sounds like something people already say when they give a little to something they believe in.

The people building CHIP.

Team section pending. CHIP will publish real names, roles, and approved bios only after the company identity packet is complete. No fabricated founder story. No placeholder team.

The extended team: CHIP is built with Discnxt — a Pittsburgh-based web infrastructure company that builds plain-HTML, no-tracking, customer-owned sites and platforms. Discnxt provides engineering, brand design, and platform operations for CHIP.

The rules we build by.

These aren't posters on a wall. They're design constraints.

  1. 1

    Structural honesty over rhetorical honesty.

    Don't say you're transparent — build a Glass Ledger that makes transparency unavoidable.

  2. 2

    Joy retains. Manipulation burns.

    The game layer exists because giving should feel good, not because we can trick people into giving more.

  3. 3

    The player owns the relationship.

    Their data, their caps, their inbox, their choice. We are infrastructure, not owners.

  4. 4

    If we can't publish it, we shouldn't do it.

    The Glass Ledger applies to us first.

  5. 5

    Plain, accessible, owned.

    The technology that enables giving should not itself be a gatekeeper.

  6. 6

    The mission is the moat.

    Any competitor can copy the game mechanics. They can't copy the institutional commitment to never lie to a player.

Contact

General inquiries: hello@chipinarcade.com

Creator onboarding: creators@chipinarcade.com

Press: press@chipinarcade.com

Trust & Safety reports: report@chipinarcade.com

CHIP, PBC
Business mailing address to be published before launch
Pittsburgh, PA