The recent spate of competitions in the non profit sector has got me thinking of Paul Graham and partners’ Y Combinator—that inspired mix of venture capital and summer camp. Could the same approach work for nonprofits?
Y Combinator invests in early-stage startups, providing seed funding and expertise just like an angel investor or early-stage VC firm might. Then there’s summer camp. Once a startup accepts funding, founders must move to the Bay Area for the summer. Y Combinator then hosts a series of dinners and a demo day at summer’s end. YC helps tech teams go from idea to startup by providing advice and money for ramen noodles.
The original motivation for Y Combinator was benevolent, but this is not a charity. If our investments pay off, we can invest in more startups, and if they don’t, we can’t keep doing this indefinitely. So we’re looking for startups we think will succeed.*
Which got me thinking. What if there was a charity version—a NP Combinator?
Profitability couldn’t be the yardstick of success. Perhaps sustainability? Reach? Magnitude of work? People helped?
Would founders benefit from proximity?
There are parallels in the nonprofit space. Ashoka’s Changemakers program does online competitions themed to target particular social problems. NetSquared’s challenges, provide both competition and an annual conference for nonprofit tech projects.
But I’m not sure an NP Combinator ought to look exactly like these two.
Gary Tan, co-founder of Posterous, called Y Combinator “A really amazing experience. Definitely prepared us well for raising money and iterating on the product and growing the user base.”*
From what I’ve seen, nonprofit competitions are good at picking winners, but not so good at preparing those winners for survival.
We could do worse than give non-profits a Y Combinator start. What do you think?
Tags: nonprofits nptech startups
Amy - And clearly the winners (of NetSquared in particular) do get a high profile in the NPO communities, which can help open doors. That's often far more valuable than the money involved.
Ginny - Great comment about evaluation, as it jibes with one of the approaches of Y Combinator -- do everything you can to get a product out there quickly, and experiment from there. Are there examples of go-slow NPOs that have put measurement first that we should be looking at?
- ericj 4 Mar 09, 11:59Two often overlooked aspects of competitions for non-profits are: 1.) demonstrable ability to attract a diverse revenue stream including philanthropy and 2.) demonstration to its commitment to doing what it takes to create a sustainable and high impact program (dedication of resources to evaluation of model and outcomes, and commitment to holding back growth until the model and measurement systems are ready.)
- Ginny Deerin 4 Mar 09, 11:01Thanks for sharing your thinking, Eric. I think one of the best aspects of blogs for organizations is to provide a real-time, collaborative/sharing process - more than a conversation because it's closer to transparency.
Thinking about the current Challenge platforms and processes out there, I would list even more than the three above but I think limiting the scope makes it less mind-boggling. Part of the question about ensuring sustainability for a "winning" nonprofit could be addressed by looking at what is won, and not necessarily the challenge format. Maybe the winning outcome isn't a cash prize - but maybe a year of incubation, an advisor, or an influential sponsor.
Thanks again for sharing.
- Amy Sample Ward 4 Mar 09, 5:16I like www.casefoundation.org and category this very interesting.
Best Regards bachelor
Comments