Max Dana

Max Dana is a Brooklyn-based artist-turned-programmer-turned-entrepreneur and founder of the External Revenue Service. He currently serves as manager of technology development and operations for ArtsPool, a member-owned cooperative he co-founded in 2014 to provide shared administrative services to New York arts nonprofits. His path from art to finance began in 2013 when he led the Economics and Finance research team of the Brooklyn Commune Project, a grassroots initiative to create an artist-driven vision of a healthy arts ecosystem in America and to bring artists, institutions, administrators and funders together to discuss difficult topics such as resource allocation, capital, value, labor, aesthetics, and quality of life.

External Revenue Service
The External Revenue Service is a peer-to-peer tax system designed to make it easier for people to share their disposable income with the people, organizations, and causes they care about most. ERS members pledge a percentage of their annual income to a portfolio of recipients, and recipient members receive monthly contributions from the members who have elected to be taxed by them. One of the core values of the External Revenue Service is radical generosity, so for these receivers there is just one catch: the in order to receive, you must first be a giver. At the External Revenue Service, everyone’s a philanthropist.