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Show HN/PG: Our Startup, Philantro.

3 points by bbissoon ↗ HN
Hi everyone, for quite some time we've been building a platform to enhance nonprofit visibility and making giving personal again. We've kept it in stealth mode from fear our equipment wouldn't stand traffic if this gets much attention during development but after this last pitch rejection letter - we're bitter and it's time to just do it.

The nonprofit industry needs major disruption. We're growing with nonprofits, now at 201 and our goal is 500 by Spring and 1000 by next Fall. We've added a few ourselves as demos. We're growing with users despite us still being in beta.

We would love the community to check it out and give us some feedback. We could also use leads for great nonprofit organizations or investors looking into that space that we can reach out to.

We'll lets do this.

Bootstrappers Unite :)

12 comments

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cjbenedikt
ok,posted Philantro on impact4change.com
bwh2
"The nonprofit industry needs major disruption" - What specifically about the industry needs disruption?
bbissoon
With Philantro, we've addressed close to 27 issues. We'll be glad to write a post on our Medium account to go into more detail but here's a few. We've also addressed one with detail. We didn't want to turn readers off with a huge post detailing everything.

User Data Portability, Cost Effective Means of Donation Processing, Privacy, Social Collaboration, Data validation and Retention, Content Cross Pollination and more.

Issue/Cause Discovery: Issues around the world are being reported in near real-time yet we don't know about it until it makes the front page. On Philantro there's trending topics. By aggregating all the content from these nonprofits across all their social networks, we see what issues are trending through repetition and commonality to help guide users.

Imagine a stock ticker but with issues from all the nonprofits in America who are on social networks. You're able to keep a pulse on issues instead of waiting for a tragedy.

bwh2
To provide some context, many of my clients are nonprofits and foundations. My suggestion is to take those 27 issues and do one of them really, really well. You could build a business around any of the areas you mentioned, but not all of them.

If you choose issue/cause discovery, focus on disaster relief organizations. Create partnerships with companies that already provide these organizations with software and services. Become the vendor of the NPO's vendor.

Right now, it's not clear what problem you're solving and who you're solving it for.

bbissoon
"Browse and Follow the Social Media of Countless Nonprofits - All in One Place." - that's what Philantro provides. The issues we've accounted for are connected to this core.

Livestrong has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Flickr. They publicize all these networks because they want to raise awareness and grow followers. The core of Philantro stems from bringing these networks together so users can follow, contribute and interact with their favorite nonprofits in one place.

Now Livestrong on Philantro: https://www.philantro.com/livestrong

While viewing Livestrong - you see other nonprofits related to Cancer so you can browse. You can also view public followers to see what nonprofits they follow.

Here's Cancer Nonprofits on Philantro: http://bit.ly/1c31de0 In this view you see what all Cancer Related organizations are talking about on all their social networks in near real-time.

Here's Cancer Orgs in Texas Only: http://bit.ly/1ausPpP

Hey bwh2, interested in connecting via email? Are you're in the nonprofit industry?

bwh2
Good call; emailing you now.
AznHisoka
Are you working on this while doing a day job?
bbissoon
Yes. Work during the day. Code and building marketing agendas all night.