n.V5-2.03 | THE PI EXCHANGE

01| Peoples' Impact is as tangible as a clinic, a playground, or an assistance programme for teenage mothers. Think of a project as a horse on a beach. It has an owner, a value, and a price.

02| On the PI Exchange you do not donate to a cause. You buy shares in a project from a Kikundi team. The flow is short. The team lists its Project Executive Summary. Buyers purchase shares, with a minimum stake of 25%. The project starts only when 100% of the shares are sold. Then it gets built.

03| That last condition does more work than it looks. Partial funding is where the traditional sector loses most of its value: half-financed projects start anyway, run short, and deliver a compromised version of what was promised. Here nothing begins until the money is whole.

04| A listing carries the problem addressed, the solution approach, the location within its MM360 context, the timeline, the milestones, the budget in Wiser$$, the Maveriqs on the team, expected outcomes, success metrics, and the follow-up and maintenance plan.

05| Six conditions govern whether it may list at all. It must fit the barrio's MM360 strategy, or it is a stray good deed. It must meet the quality standard, because every listing carries the platform's reputation. Its team must be qualified against their Track Records. Its budget must be realistic — neither inflated nor wishfully thin. Its outcomes must be measurable, or accountability is theatre. And it must include follow-up, because impact that evaporates six months after the ribbon-cutting is the sector's most common failure and we are not repeating it.

06| The approval path is short and mostly automated. The Maveriq drafts. AI reviews format, completeness and red flags. The CITI reviews MM360 fit and local context — the part no algorithm can judge. The listing is approved or returned for revision. Approved, it appears in the market with the status available.

07| Now the part that defines the whole design: IkoCiti is not a party to the transaction. We are the clearing house. Guarantor and administrator, standing between the two sides and belonging to neither.

08| As clearing house we verify that projects are what they claim to be, enforce the quality standards, issue the agreements, hold funds in escrow, monitor execution, verify completion, resolve disputes, process Wiser$$ payments, and report outcomes to buyers. What we do not do is take a position. We never buy impact and we never sell it.

09| To the buyer that is worth a specific set of promises: the project will be executed as described, funds stay in escrow until milestones are verified, quality standards are enforced, reporting is transparent, and a failed project triggers a refund under stated conditions. To the Maveriq it is worth a different set: payment on milestone completion, requirements that are clear in advance, support during execution, and a dispute process that does not depend on who has the better lawyer.

10| The agreements are uniform. Every project runs on the same standard terms — milestone structure, payment release triggers, verification process, dispute procedure, refund conditions, community ownership of outputs, reporting, confidentiality, liability. Only five things vary: budget, timeline, the specific milestones, the success metrics, and the team.

11| Uniformity is not bureaucratic laziness. It is what makes the market scalable, and it is what makes it fair. No negotiation means no negotiating cost, and no negotiating cost means small projects are as viable as large ones. Same terms for everybody means a sophisticated foundation cannot extract conditions that a first-time individual buyer would never think to ask for. And uniform terms mean a buyer learns the rules once and can then fund fifty projects without reading fifty contracts.

12| So there are no custom deals. Buyers cannot negotiate special terms, Maveriqs cannot offer side agreements, and the rare exception needs platform approval. The moment private terms exist, the published price stops meaning anything, and price is the signal the whole market runs on.

13| Money moves against milestones, not against trust. Roughly a tenth to a fifth may release at project start, half to sixty per cent across mid-project milestones, twenty to thirty per cent at completion, and where the structure allows, a final slice against verified follow-up. The exact percentages are still open. The principle is not: the last money is the hardest to earn.

14| The platform takes a fixed percentage of project value to cover verification, monitoring, escrow, support and maintenance. What that percentage should be is unresolved, and it is not a detail. Too high and we become the overhead we were built to replace. Too low and the guarantees behind every transaction are unfunded. It is the single most consequential open number in this part.

15| One by-product deserves its own line. A Kikundi team that completes small projects successfully builds a verified track record, and that record is the door to bigger ones. For a barrio resident with no formal employment history, no credit record and no professional network, this is often the first productive reputation of their life — evidence of delivery that a stranger can check.