
Ask HN: Who'se running a nonprofit here? - jiblyyyy
Are there any nonprofit projects you&#x27;re working on? What are you struggling with the most?
======
jseliger
I'm not running a nonprofit, but I do grant writing for nonprofit and public
agencies (along with a few research / technical businesses) and contribute to
a blog about grant writing:
[http://www.seliger.com/blog](http://www.seliger.com/blog)

Most nonprofits are actually struggling with the same thing businesses are:
How do they use resources effectively? How can they take in more cash than
they spend? How can they decide what services to offer? Nonprofits are more
like businesses than most people think: [http://seliger.com/2012/09/02/why-
nonprofits-are-more-like-b...](http://seliger.com/2012/09/02/why-nonprofits-
are-more-like-businesses-than-you-realize/)

One key difference in many respects is that businesses have customers or
clients while nonprofits' principle customers or clients are actually funders,
rather than service recipients, and that can create some odd incentives and
behavior.

------
JPLeRouzic
Since I retired I lead a non profit [0] that aims at inventing medical tools
like continuous glucose monitoring. We did not made any breakthrough, it is
just engineering on paper with little PoC as there is little money. The
inventions were published without IP claim, there are one or two downloads
each week, but nobody contacted us.

This year we registered on HackaDay[1] for a early heart failure (HF)
detector. Most aging adult suffers from HF, sometimes as early as when they
are in their forties.

Our design is good, the gold standard here is the Physionet 2016 competition,
Physionet 2016 competitors mostly used machine learning on file wide features
such as the heart rate and its variability. We choose to find features in
heart sounds, there are up to four sounds per beat. The code is on Github. The
project on HaD will be declared finished in September or October.

We will have huge problems when we will reach the point of trying to obtain a
regulator agreement (EC/FDA). It needs to make travels, provide samples, make
clinical studies, rise awareness. Lot of problems that we are not equipped to
manage.

If we succeed at this there are other R&D projects in the pipeline, to keep us
busy.

[0] [https://padiracinnovation.org/](https://padiracinnovation.org/)

[1] [https://hackaday.io/project/19685-early-and-low-cost-
detecti...](https://hackaday.io/project/19685-early-and-low-cost-detection-of-
heart-failure)

[2] [https://github.com/Hjertesvikt](https://github.com/Hjertesvikt)

~~~
unityByFreedom
Cool. Looks like there will be a lot coming through the pipeline in this
space, given the open nature of the machine learning community.

There was another Kaggle competition on lung cancer that recently finished up,
and the winner shared their code.

Is your plan to take things like this and put them through the required red
tape?

What are you doing to raise funds?

~~~
JPLeRouzic
Thanks for the kind message. There are excellent teams doing Kaggle
competitions. I tried last fall to make some students aware of Kaggle but they
were not interested.

We did not try to raise funds, it was difficult when there was nothing
concrete to show. But now we can show a simple app that can classify a heart
sound as normal or not. For example in [0] there is a ultra simple app (one
button!) that classified my heart sounds as not normal, in less than one
second.

I am thinking about making a kickstarter in December or next January to rise
awareness about the detector and to raise some money.

[0]
[https://padiracinnovationdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/...](https://padiracinnovationdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/jp_heart_sounds.png)

------
secfirstmd
Hey,

I run Security First ([https://www.secfirst.org](https://www.secfirst.org)).
We are talking the issue of how to help make security learning and management
easier for people at risk - NGOs, journalists, aid workers etc.

We've built a mobile app called Umbrella that puts best practice digital and
physical security advice in the one place.

We also train and consult on various security issues for other organisations.

We are always looking for more help - technical, UI/UX, copywriting, dev (and
funding of course).

------
itslitt
Throw-away for various reasons, and probably not a non-profit in the
traditional sense, but the nonprofit I run is a medical marijuana shop.

Struggling with the most is the industry in general. From banking, to
landlords, to police, vendors, paying employees, and everything in between.
It's a really interesting business full of awesome problems to tackle and
there's never a dull moment, but it's definitely a challenge.

------
kevinconroy
[https://www.globalgiving.org/](https://www.globalgiving.org/)

I'm CPO/CTO/CMO at GlobalGiving. I know there are other members of CTOs for
Good lurking here
([https://www.ctosforgood.org/](https://www.ctosforgood.org/)), but I'll let
them call themselves out.

------
joelrunyon
It's tied into our business, but we've been using
[http://Impossible.org](http://Impossible.org) as a way to partner with
charities + non-profits to give our businesses a "for purpose" angle and give
back (while trying to find quality organizations that are already really,
really good at what they do).

------
bosep
We're not running nonprofit but we provide our users an opportunity to support
nonprofits of their choice and we in turn make a donation from a portion of
the the purchase price to the selected charity organization at
[https://www.memobed.com](https://www.memobed.com)

------
fdik
[https://pEp.foundation](https://pEp.foundation) Supporting Freedom of Speech,
Privacy, Freedom of Information.

Tough fight. Politically complex.

------
asdkhasdkjhi
leif.org

EDIT: capital formation much murkier than in startup world, regulations, etc

