Crypto-enabled giving portal for ultra-high-net-worth clients
Routing millions to vetted causes within weeks.
Problem
How might we let a private client route millions to a vetted trust, foundation, or NGO in weeks while keeping compliance, tax reporting, and advisor oversight intact?
Central design decision
Replace the serial, paper-era signature chain with a parallel authorization track. Advisor, trustee, and compliance co-sign in flight, so a seven-figure gift moves in weeks while the full compliance chain stays auditable.
Verified outcome · shipped
- ✓~$49M moved via Bitcoin across the first cohort.
- ✓15 private clients onboarded in the initial rollout.
- ✓Time to disperse funds to the client's chosen humanitarian causes fell from ~4 months to ~6 weeks.
- ✓100% signature-chain preservation; advisor, trustee and compliance co-signed every transaction.
01 · Context & stakes
A retail flow asked to move seven-figure gifts
Vanguard's ultra-high-net-worth clients wanted to move meaningful wealth into causes they cared about: hunger relief, education access and climate. The existing giving flow was built for retail donors. Slow ACH rails, opaque recipient vetting, and no support for the asset types (crypto, appreciated securities) these clients actually held. A seven-figure gift took roughly four months to reach the cause.
Moved via Bitcoin, first cohort
Private clients onboarded
Time to disperse funds to chosen causes
Signature-chain preservation, co-signed with financial advisors
02 · User & operational problem
Weeks of goodwill, months of waiting
Private clients who wanted to give appreciated crypto and securities to humanitarian causes were routed through serial signature chains built for paper, so a seven-figure gift took roughly four months and no one could see where it had stalled.
No direct reports. Mentored 2 junior designers on the pod; worked with a Director, a Lead PM, engineering, compliance, tax and a crypto custody partner.
03 · Constraints
What could not move
- 01
The advisor–trustee–compliance signature chain is legally required. Authorization rules were set by legal and risk and could not be removed, only re-sequenced.
- 02
Tax reporting and cost-basis handling had to be intact and visible at commit for any asset type, including crypto.
- 03
Only Vanguard-vetted recipients could be offered — discovery is a curated shortlist by design.
- 04
Advisor oversight had to stay in the loop; nothing could bypass the people clients already trust.
04 · Key design decisions
Three design decisions I made
I decided the interaction model and recommended the parallel authorization pattern. Authorization and compliance rules were set by legal and risk.
- 01
Cause-first entry
- Observed problem
- UHNW clients don't shop for charities. They name a problem ("hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa") and expect vetted options. The inherited flow opened with a retail-style search box.
- Constraint
- Only Vanguard-vetted recipients could be offered, so the discovery surface had to be a curated shortlist.
- Decision
- I replaced search-first discovery with cause-first entry: the client starts from the problem they care about and lands on a shortlist of vetted trusts, foundations, and NGOs.
- Tradeoff
- Clients see only the vetted set. This narrower surface was chosen deliberately because vetting is the trust guarantee.
ResultRegulator status and disbursement history are visible before the client opens a profile, so clients can make the trust decision on-screen.
I decided the interaction model; engineering and compliance delivered the vetting data behind it.
- 02
Bitcoin as a first-class rail
- Observed problem
- These clients held appreciated crypto and securities, but the giving flow only supported cash on slow ACH rails. The asset types they actually wanted to give had no path.
- Constraint
- Tax reporting and cost-basis handling were non-negotiable for legal and risk; nothing could ship without them visible at commit.
- Decision
- I pushed for Bitcoin alongside cash and securities in the primary flow, with live conversion and network-fee transparency shown before authorization.
- Tradeoff
- Adding a crypto rail put conversion, fees, and cost-basis math into the primary flow, which made the commit step denser to design and explain.
Result~$49M moved via Bitcoin across the first cohort, with the full cost-basis and tax packet auto-delivered to the client's CPA on settlement.
I decided the flow and commit-screen hierarchy; the crypto custody partner and tax teams owned the underlying rails.
- 03
Parallel authorization
- Observed problem
- Every gift routed through a serial signature chain: advisor, then trustee, then compliance. As a result, a seven-figure gift took roughly four months and nobody could see where it had stalled.
- Constraint
- The signature chain itself was legally required; authorization rules were set by legal and risk and could not be removed, only re-sequenced.
- Decision
- I recommended a parallel authorization track: advisor, trustee, and compliance co-sign in flight while the client watches each authorization arrive in real time.
- Tradeoff
- Parallel signing created more concurrent states to design and keep auditable. The interface had to show who had signed, who was pending, and preserve the full chain.
ResultTime to disperse funds to a client's chosen causes fell from ~4 months to ~6 weeks, with 100% signature-chain preservation on every transaction.
I recommended the pattern and designed the status surface; legal and risk defined the authorization rules it had to satisfy.
05 · Shipped flow
What clients actually used
06 · Outcome
Shipped, first cohort
Shipped with a first cohort: ~$49M moved via Bitcoin, 15 private clients onboarded, time to disperse funds to chosen humanitarian causes cut from ~4 months to ~6 weeks, and 100% signature-chain preservation co-signed with financial advisors.
- 01
~$49M moved via Bitcoin across the first cohort.
- 02
15 private clients onboarded in the initial rollout.
- 03
Time to disperse funds to the client's chosen humanitarian causes fell from ~4 months to ~6 weeks.
- 04
100% signature-chain preservation; advisor, trustee and compliance co-signed every transaction.
07 · Reflection
What I learned
Serial authorization created the four-month wait. Restructuring how financial advisors authorized transactions and legal documents produced the biggest improvement without making any individual step faster.
I learned that when a rule can't be removed, sometimes the better solution is to re-sequence it. I later applied the same principle at Fannie Mae when redesigning complex approval workflows.
At this level of wealth, trust had to be earned on-screen. Financial advisors needed to see regulator status, disbursement history, fees, and the tax picture before they could confidently move forward. Hiding any of that behind a follow-up call would have preserved the very delays we were trying to remove.
Project status is shipped. All screens are reconstructions; reconstruction is a visual disclosure only and does not verify the figures above.