

Harnessing Big Data for Social Good, YC-Backed Nonprofit Bayes Impact Launches - ajiang
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/15/harnessing-big-data-for-social-good-yc-backed-nonprofit-bayes-impact-launches/

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g_h
The article mentions "Keyspring" as the YC alumnus donor. I'm guessing they
mean the great guys at Teespring instead.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7629630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7629630)

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ajiang
We've contacted the writer multiple times on this. Big thanks to Walker and
Teespring on their awesome generosity!

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lexcorvus
I think it's unfortunate that "good" and "nonprofit" are so closely linked in
the popular imagination. Profitable enterprises deserve the benefit of the
doubt: they do good unless proven otherwise. (It is often otherwise; it's
likely, for example, that firms such as Coke and McDonald's—not to mention
banks and many other financial firms—do net harm.) On the other hand,
nonprofits—by definition lacking profit—have no such _a priori_ evidence of
doing good. They thus deserve extra scrutiny.

In order to be able to evaluate nonprofits more accurately, it would be
helpful if they answered the following questions:

(1) What are your goals?

(2) What would constitute meeting your goals?

(3) What is an acceptable cost (in time, money, and attention) to achieve your
goals?

(4) What are your plans if you fail to meet your goals at an acceptable cost?

(5) If you end up doing more harm than good, how will you know, and what do
you plan to do about it?

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nostrademons
I'd thought that pmarca's comment here was hyperbole, but apparently it's
fairly true these days:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8024239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8024239)

Anyway, to respond to your comment, non-profits have to file articles of
incorporation and bylaws with the state when they incorporate:

[http://www.idealist.org/info/Nonprofits/Gov3](http://www.idealist.org/info/Nonprofits/Gov3)

Among the information necessary is the purpose of the organization, which
answers #1-2 of your questions. In practice, #3-5 are decided by fundraising
activities of the organization; it is part of a donor's due diligence to
ensure that the non-profits she donates to are the most effective places she
can find to employ her capital. Non-profits that can't convince donors of this
end up going out of business.

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lexcorvus
Your aim is off the mark. The comment by pmarca says

 _How did Hacker News evolve from the discussion board for YC, to the
discussion board where the first comment on any post involving a YC company is
reliably someone crapping on it? What an amazing shift._

My comment was even-toned and didn't criticize any organization in particular.
If writing that "[nonprofits] thus deserve extra scrutiny" constitutes
"crapping on" anything, we are operating under very different definitions of
what it means to crap on something.

(Bayes Impact has explicitly aligned themselves with the social justice
movement; if I'd crapped on them, you'd have known it. Instead, I tried to
write as even-handed a comment as I could while still making my point. Indeed,
it took several edits to remove all traces of snark. I've been rewarded for my
efforts with downvotes and a reprimand. This is not the way to foster reasoned
discussion.)

