YC nonprofit One Degree (YC W14) is breaking the cycle of poverty | Hacker News Reader

YC nonprofit One Degree (YC W14) is breaking the cycle of poverty

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75 pointsreyf27 comments

Hey Rey,

Fantastic idea! Absolutely love it, as I see it as something very necessary for the vast array of social services available. That said, I'd like to make a small critique, mostly inconsequential and probably more of an indication of my absurd cynicism, but nevertheless, here it is: when I first read the title of the post, my thoughts were "oh brother, another user-privileged guy purporting to know how to solve the worlds problems." The title implied to me that you guys were claiming to do a lot more than you actually are doing (like I thought you guys were claiming to magically solve income disparity across the world). I obviously did, however, read the article, so take this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, love the idea and will be forwarding it on to all my friends!

Very interesting, but I think the website doesn't explain it enough(I got the idea after reading TC). Do I really need to sign in? If I were homeless I would be ashamed of using it with my real identity.

Hi there, Rey from One Degree here. Thanks for your feedback. We're always working on improving our homepage, so I appreciate that. If you have any suggestions for what to add, please let me know.

You don't need to sign up to search and browse for services on 1deg.org. However, we're not just about giving people information about services. We actually help people manage the services they use (saving lists of services and also creating goals), we enable them to have a voice in the nonprofit system (through ratings/reviews), and we give people curated recommendations of services that fit their profile (so they don't have to waste time searching for what they're eligible for). All this is for free, and you can sign up anonymously.

Love IT!

This was something I had wanted to build after I tried finding services for 2 kids who live with their Grandma. It so hard to find social services. I made like 20 calls and got nowhere. Didn't find 1 useful service. In the end we gave their grandmom a subscription to foodOnTheTable.com so she could save money on meals.

This site really needs some UI love though. It has to be super easy to use which its not right now.

Maybe some designers on here can help out?

Are you planning to open source some or all of the code of your site etc.? Was thinking about a similar service in my country (Germany) and that would obviously help a lot.

Hey BvS, Rey from One Degree here. We definitely are thinking about open-sourcing the code so that it can be available anywhere/everywhere. We don't have the capacity to do that right now, but stay tuned in the future! Or maybe we should just expand to somewhere in Germany for our next site?? That'd be sweet.

? It's a CRUD website. The work is in the data collection, not the software.

I agree. It's the content and community that makes what we do worthwhile, not the code. We've got an API that anyone can build on: data.1deg.org (that documentation is not fully up to date, but when I catch my breath after YC I'll update it).

Cool idea. All .gov websites should look like this ;)

What's the future product roadmap look like?

Thanks, Rey from One Degree here. Right now we're focused on improving our site and adding some great features so that our users (low-income families in San Francisco), can easily find what they need. Who knows exactly what the future holds? We're intently listening to our One Degree members, so they will likely help us shape what our product looks like in the future.

I can tell you that there's a growing trend that low-income families are using smartphones, so we'll be aggressively expanding in that direction. We'd love to create the best-in-class nationwide platform to access and use nonprofit and social services.

I would guess that social services step #1 is don't piss away money on a cell phone and data plan...

Having access to the internet is quickly becoming an important part of what it means to be a productive and contributing member of our society. If being part of a community means building relationships and communicating with people in your community, why should we expect the working class members of our society to not be entitled to having the same technologies to communicate and build community that you and I enjoy in the middle class? Additionally, let's face the facts: you need the internet to apply for jobs, look for housing, apply for schools, and many other very fundamental tasks. Luckily phones and data plans are getting cheaper, so access to the internet is becoming more feasible, but there is still a ways to go. I urge you to have a bit more empathy. We are all just humans living in a very imperfectly structured world learning how to see each other as humans.

That's simply not true. A lot of people need cell phones, especially if they're transient and job-hunting. Increasingly, you need the Internet too - at least email access. Going to the local library doesn't cut it if you need to get a quick response to an interview request.

Thank you! You took the words right out of my mouth.

This look great.

One thing, as someone who represents organizations, I can't really tell what the benefits are for an organization from the homepage. Do you have more information for partners other than the 3 points on the homepage?

Thanks for asking about that. We are in the nascent stages of rolling out deeper features for nonprofits on 1deg.org. We're piloting that with 5 San Francisco nonprofits now, and hope to roll it out more widely in the near future.

In the meantime, if you're part of an SF nonprofit organization, contact me (rey at 1deg dot org), and I can see about getting you in on this pilot as well. Essentially we want to build features based on what our pilot partners say they want, so we're starting with the 3 bullet points, but don't want to get carried away just yet!

The title will probably be reverted to the original, but the current one [1] is much clearer.

[1] "YC nonprofit One Degree (YC W14) is breaking the cycle of poverty"

Hey there, it's Rey from One Degree. Can you clarify what you mean? Thanks!

Hi Rey! Thanks a lot for responding. I didn't realise it was you who submitted it, I simply noticed that the title under which you submitted it is different - and much better - than that of the article. Usually in cases like this, an HN admin will change the title to that of the original. I don't know if they will do that even if it was you who submitted it, however.

Keep up the great work, I really hope you will succeed!

Thanks for the encouragement, Bart! We hope so too...

There is a policy of not editorialising link titles, e.g. ordinarily an admin would amend the title to match that of the linked item, i.e. "YC-Backed One Degree Is A “Yelp For Social Services” That Helps Low-Income Families"

Ah I see. Thanks for letting me know... 1deg.org is so much more than a "Yelp for Social Services," and we're aspire to make sure that all families can break the cycle of poverty. But you're right. Someone at HN will probably change the title.

Love the idea. How will you make money? Or at least pay for operations?

Bravo to your work and to YC for supporting nonprofit forces!

Super cool concept! Wishing you folks luck with it.

Awesome to see another great nonprofit in YC!

Thanks! We're excited to be part of the amazing YC community.

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