Hacker News Reader

Comment by worldadventurer | Hacker News Reader

We're another example of a non-profit tech startup: https://www.engageSPARK.com . We're a slightly different model in that while we focus on selling our engagement platform (think "Twilio for non-techies") to non-profit customers globally, we have lots of commercial customers who use our platform for marketing purposes. Having a diversified revenue stream helps greatly with sustainability.

Check out Fast Forward, an accelerator focusing exclusively on non-profit tech startups: https://www.ffwd.org . Y Combinator now also has a track for non-profits - https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/ and for example funded https://watsi.org/ .

Feel free to ask questions. I volunteered at Grameen Foundation and have been exploring this space for a while.

View on HN

Awesome looking product. I'm a non-profit tech consultant, and I definitely will be keeping you guys in mind for a certain type of client. Have you considered Salesforce integration? The donated licenses and the growing NPO ecosystem is causing me to see a lot of orgs moving to SFDC for core database needs.

non profit tech consultant

Could you explain what type of tasks you do? How does one get a job like yours?

I work for a firm that builds databases primarily for health and human service organizations. We usually work on the Salesforce platform (because of the aforementioned donated licenses), and develop client and program tracking systems that are closely aligned with the organization's business practices. We also do some work helping them implement donor and/or volunteer management systems. My portfolio is primarily supportive housing organizations, so I help develop outcomes tracking, client enrollment and withdrawal tracking, and case management.

I got here by working in non-profits for many years as an operations person, learning database technology, and then finding a firm that combined those two!

Thank you! We've worked really hard on the UX to make this technology accessible to anyone working at any NGO/org in the world. :)

Yes, Salesforce integration is on the roadmap - we get many requests for this.

Great news. I'm looking for uses already :)

I would love to ask questions, but think I have too many to post as a comment, could I email you (or you email me at username@tabeth.com if you don't want to post your email publicly)?

Does Fast Forward accept applications from non-US organisations?, I couldn't find an answer after skimming their website.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com