We've seen
what happens
when the system fails.
Firsthand was founded by people who spent years inside the world's most ambitious humanitarian organizations — and watched structural failures consistently outpace individual generosity.
Wyoming Nonprofit Corp.
confirmedEIN Obtained
confirmed501(c)(3) Pending
pendingStripe Connect
confirmedSupabase Live
confirmedGates Foundation App
April 2026
pendingOver more than a decade building schools across Kenya and India, training educators in underserved communities, and documenting the human cost of the Syrian refugee crisis with a camera, our founding team developed a deep conviction: the problem with philanthropy isn't the people. It's the architecture.
Traditional charitable structures were built in a pre-digital world — one without satellites, smartphones, AI, or the ability to transfer money to anyone on earth in seconds. Those structures haven't changed. The world has.
Firsthand is built on a simple premise: technology now makes it possible to connect a donor in Vancouver to a community in Nairobi with complete transparency, real-time verification, and no institutional middleman absorbing 60 cents of every dollar. We're building that infrastructure.
The trust crisis in philanthropy is real. Billions of dollars have been misallocated, misreported, and misused — not always through bad intent, but through bad systems. Firsthand is a systems answer to a systems problem.
We are in the founding phase — onboarding our first community partners across Los Angeles, Kenya, and India, and assembling a founding cohort of donors and corporate partners who believe that giving should be direct, verified, and fully accountable. Our pilot cohort launches Q2 2026.
Founded on the ground
Our founding experience spans Kenya, India, and the Syrian refugee crisis — over a decade of working inside humanitarian systems and understanding exactly where they break down.
Structure: Hybrid Social Enterprise
Firsthand operates as a hybrid — a nonprofit arm for grant eligibility and tax receipting, and a for-profit arm to build and operate the technology. The best of both models.
Currently: Founding Phase
Pilot cohort launching Q2 2026 — verified projects across Los Angeles, Kenya, and India. Founding donors, community partners, and aligned investors can apply to participate now.
“The communities I visited in Kenya and India were extraordinary — resourceful, visionary, deeply capable. What they lacked wasn't ability. It was a trust infrastructure that let the world see it.”
Jesse Giddings
Founder & Executive Director
A philanthropy strategist and connector with 15+ years bridging global humanitarian causes, high-profile donors, and mission-driven partnerships. Jesse hosted national WE Charity events for a decade, standing on stage in front of 20,000 people across Canada while cultivating major donor relationships and leading impact trips to Kenya and India. As a television personality on E! News and MuchMusic and with years in talent management and film production, he developed the storytelling and relationship skills that now drive Firsthand's model. His documentary photography from the Syrian refugee crisis gave him firsthand exposure to humanitarian work that no boardroom produces. Firsthand is the synthesis of all of it.
Where we are. Where we're going.
Founded & incorporated
Wyoming nonprofit, EIN obtained, initial stack deployed to Vercel.
Core platform built
Application portal, donor matching, automated screening, agent infrastructure.
Pilot partnerships confirmed
Los Angeles / Kenya / India — founding cohort of community partners onboarded.
Pilot launch
First live projects, first verified milestones, first community voice reports.
Scale & licensing
Verification module licensing, expanded geographies, Gates grant deployment.
Our values aren't a wall poster.
They're the product.
Verification over trust
We don't ask anyone to take our word for it — or anyone else's. The verification layer exists precisely because trust, without proof, isn't good enough anymore.
Community sovereignty
Communities own their stories, their data, and their needs. Firsthand is infrastructure — not a voice, not a gatekeeper, not a publisher.
Radical transparency
Our fees are public. Our methodology is open. Our outcomes are independently verified. If we can't show our work, we won't make the claim.
Systems over symptoms
Good intentions aren't enough. We're building infrastructure that makes accountability the default — not the exception.
Direct over mediated
Every layer of institutional mediation costs money and loses signal. We're removing layers — not adding them.
Sustainable by design
Firsthand is built to be financially self-sustaining — not dependent on grants or goodwill. Impact that can't sustain itself can't scale.