
Amicus (YC S12) Uses Facebook To Mobilize Volunteers for Nonprofits - sethbannon
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/amicus-campaigns-volunteers-facebook/
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fredsters_s
Awesome work guys. The gap between aspirational support and actually pushing
forwards a cause is still far too great, and I'm looking forward to see how
you narrow it.

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_delirium
I'm a little confused as to what is being targeted here. The title says
"volunteers for nonprofits", which suggests a platform aimed at recruiting
people to donate their labor to charitable causes (e.g. recruiting volunteer
workers for the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity or soup kitchens). But the
article is entirely about increasing voter turnout in political campaigns, by
having people canvass their like-minded acquaintances, thereby increasing
their interest in elections. That seems quite a bit different as a use-case,
though I could imagine similar technology aiming at both problems.

edit: Thanks for the reply; looks like TechCrunch just chose to take an
election-year angle on the story.

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guga31bb
It looks like maybe the submission is just poorly titled? If you click through
to the article, it has the following title:

> _No More Calls From Strangers: Amicus Uses Facebook To Recruit Political
> Volunteers_

And then, as you note, the article is about political campaigns. I'm not sure
why the submitter felt the need to submit an article and then change the
headline.

EDIT -- OP/founder clarified below.

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dmor
Amicus is about more than just the political campaigns use case - since the
submitter is the startup founder I'd imagine they wanted to make sure people
knew there was something here for people beyond those interested in that one
use case.

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sethbannon
OP here. FYI Amicus helps all nonprofits turn supporters into fundraisers and
advocates. The reporter chose to focus on only one use case -- political
activism. This is only a small part of what Amicus does.

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covercash
Are you guys a nonprofit? Some of the wording in the article made it seem like
that was the case.

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sethbannon
We're a social good for-profit.

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jenntoda
A shame that the reporter chose to focus on just the political activism use
case. Turning nonprofit supporters to fundraisers and advocates is so much
more than that. Maybe I am a bit late to the party here, but did you change
your landing page after the article? I was a lot surprised to land on just
your hiring page from TC. Looked around and still didn't see anything that I
showed me what you're about... but here's a cheer to you for working towards
mobilizing volunteers for nonprofits!

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alabut
To put the political use case aside for a second, Seth and I first talked over
email just before YC started about how I could use Amicus to rescue dogs at
shelters from euthanization and getting them into no-kill foster organizations
instead.

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vgurgov
Congrats to Seth and team!

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dverchere
Congratulations Seth

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drbear
Nice work fellas!

