Bond Charter
Bond is a charity, forming as a 501(c)(3), that pays for the costs of travel, lodging and activities which, due to limited cash, would typically keep parents and their children apart.
Vision and mission
Vision: A world where every parent can sustain a healthy bond with their child, despite distance.
Mission: To reduce the barriers that keep parents and children apart, through grants, zero-interest loans, and resources that dignify each parent and sustain bonds.
Values: B.O.N.D.
- Belonging. A child and parent belong to each other, and we help them close the distance between homes.
- Open Heart. We give freely and lend with trust, so help arrives without shame or strings.
- Need. We meet real need wherever it lives, in a lost job, a stretched budget, or a long road to a child.
- Dignity. We treat every parent as worthy, and we design each grant, loan, and card so asking for help keeps their pride whole.
Who Bond serves
Bond serves parents of a child under 18 who live in a different household from that child. We are open to requests from anyone raising a child across homes.
Signs of need. We can help a parent when any one of these is true:
- Recent loss: job loss, cut hours, or a major income drop in the last 6 months.
- Strained budget: after rent, utilities, food, child support, and debt payments, the cost can’t be covered without giving up a basic need.
- Low income: at or below 80% of area median income, as a fast track.
Also required:
- A specific cost standing between the parent and time with the child, such as transit, lodging, or an activity.
- One document formally linking the person to the child, such as a custody order, school form, or birth certificate.
- Oye membership is neither required nor favored.
- We do not make grants to those with protective order or court restriction on contact with that child.
Programs
| Program | What it is | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| Grants | Funds for transit, lodging, and activities, loaded on a designated card, capped per parent per year | Now |
| Zero-interest loans | For parents with real cash-flow constraints who prefer to repay; a Circle member serves as guarantor, and repayments refill the fund | Future |
| Forgiveness | Unpaid loans are forgiven under terms written into the loan agreement and become grants on Bond’s books | Future, with loans |
Bond launches with grants only. When loans launch, forgiveness will be structured so parents don’t owe tax on it, through the charitable gift treatment or the insolvency exclusion (IRS Form 982). Each parent gets a one-page explainer when a loan is forgiven.
Lineage of interest-free lending
Bond’s future loans draw on traditions that treat lending to someone in need as an act of care.
- Jewish tradition: the Torah forbids charging interest to a person in need, and Maimonides ranked helping someone become self-sufficient, including through a loan, as the highest form of tzedakah. The Hebrew Free Loan Society, founded in New York in 1892, still lends this way, backed by guarantors instead of credit checks.
- Islamic tradition: qard hasan, the “beautiful loan,” is repaid without interest, since riba (interest) is prohibited. Akhuwat in Pakistan has scaled it into one of the world’s largest interest-free lending programs.
- Yoruba tradition: esusu (also ajo) is a rotating savings circle where members pool money and each takes a turn receiving it. It traveled across the diaspora as the susu and partner hand, and it inspires Bond’s Circle guarantor.
How it runs
Restricted cards (Stripe Issuing, on Bond’s own Stripe account). Each card works only at transit, airline, lodging, and recreation merchants, blocks cash and peer-to-peer apps, holds only the grant amount, and expires. The transaction log is the grant record.
Need verification. Parents choose one of two paths:
- Linked bank account: Plaid Consumer Report, income and cash flow insights only, no LendScore. Bond follows FCRA rules, including written notice when a denial relies on the report.
- Paper path: a one-page monthly budget plus one document, such as a termination letter, pay stub, or bank statement.
Bond keeps only what it needs to decide and deletes raw financial data after the decision.
Fraud safeguards. Name on the bank account matches the applicant’s ID; each application is checked against past ones by name, phone, and account; the parent-child document is required.
Independence. An AI reviewer applies the written criteria to every application and drafts a decision naming the criterion it relies on. Approvals within the cap go to a trained human reviewer for one-tap sign-off. A human decides every denial, loan, and forgiveness. A three-person committee, independent of Oye, audits a monthly sample of AI drafts for fairness and drift. Rolando, Oye staff, and board members’ relatives never decide on people they know. Bond’s money, accounts, and records stay separate from With Oye, Inc.
Funding: the 100% model
Every public and donor-advised fund dollar goes to grants, including card and processing fees Bond absorbs. Keepers of the Sacred Bonds, a small circle of private donors, fund all operating costs: about $6,000 to $9,000 in year one, then roughly 3% of grant volume.
Bond keeps two separate funds, a grant fund and an operating fund, and publishes both each year.
Formation and open items
Bond forms as a Pennsylvania nonprofit through Foundation Group’s SureSTART Core, filing the full Form 1023 with grants, loans, and forgiveness described up front. A fiscal sponsor can receive tax-deductible donations until the IRS approves.
Bond stays separate from Oye’s governance: a Delaware purpose trust (name to come) will hold Oye’s control shares, and With Oye, Inc. is converting to a public benefit corporation.
- Seat three unrelated board members
- Name the three-person grant committee
- Set the per-parent annual cap
- Confirm with an accountant how forgiveness stays tax-free for parents
- Confirm state lending rules for zero-interest loans in Pennsylvania and each lending state
- Have counsel set up the FCRA denial notice for Plaid-based decisions
- Open Bond’s own Stripe account and apply for Stripe Issuing
- Build the Bond application (Bond Tech Stack)