Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits?

Posted by samemail88 on Monday June 27, 2022 @06:22PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I'm curious if there are any technology based non-profits that are cater to direct consumers where their primary business is a website/web business. The biggest one I can think of is Wikipedia; they are successful and have a very popular set of websites. Mozilla is another successful non-profit, but its primary business is not a website but a web application (Firefox). I'm not sure if Patreon is a non-profit or community benefit corporation. Do you know any others?

( 17 comments | 20 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by softwaredoug on Monday June 27, 2022 @06:36PM (#31901812)

The Internet Archive http://archive.org

Signal - http://signal.org

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by samemail88 on Monday June 27, 2022 @07:58PM (#31902482)

I would agree internet archive is one as they have a consumer facing website/business.

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by sarthakjshetty on Monday June 27, 2022 @09:38PM (#31903146)

Arguably one of the most profitable non-profits of all time: Stanford Research Institute, with a revune of $540 million (2014 figure)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by dmlittle on Monday June 27, 2022 @09:11PM (#31902956)

Lichess - https://lichess.org/

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by mtmail on Monday June 27, 2022 @06:57PM (#31902014)

If wikipedia counts, then openstreetmap is similar.

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by samemail88 on Monday June 27, 2022 @07:59PM (#31902484)

Does openstreetmap actually actually have a website I can use as a consumer? I thought they provide map data for others to use?

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by trinovantes on Monday June 27, 2022 @08:13PM (#31902581)

https://www.openstreetmap.org

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by acchow on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @01:36PM (#31910634)

The top result when you google "openstreetmap"

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by tiffanyh on Monday June 27, 2022 @08:16PM (#31902606)

Ghost (~$5M annual revenue).

https://ghost.org/about/

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by sonofacorner on Monday June 27, 2022 @08:32PM (#31902710)

Not sure if Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/) qualifies to the type of non-profit you're asking about.

But they've built an amazing resource to learn more about the world.

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by scripta on Monday June 27, 2022 @06:46PM (#31901906)

https://free.law/

Among its other achievements, the Freelaw Project was instrumental in the push for recent bi-partisan legislation, signed by Pres. Biden, in the realm of ethics reform for the judicial branch.

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by samemail88 on Monday June 27, 2022 @08:01PM (#31902502)

I’ve never heard of them but they seem like a good non-profit. I was more interested if there were more non-profits that had websites/web service consumers used. Their website more company landing site (but they are non profit).

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by lupire on Monday June 27, 2022 @09:54PM (#31903260)

> Free Law Project is the leading nonprofit using software and data to make the legal ecosystem more equitable and competitive.

> RECAP is our tool to put federal court documents in your hands

> CourtListener is our archive of legal opinions, filings, judges, and judicial financial records

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by MacsHeadroom on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @03:26AM (#31905105)

Here's a list of 600+ of the largest tech non-profits https://www.ffwd.org/tech-nonprofits/

Some of my favorites which haven't been mentioned yet:

f-droid.org

calyxinstitute.org

torproject.org

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by 20after4 on Monday June 27, 2022 @08:22PM (#31902647)

I'm not sure Mozilla counts as they are a for-profit corp owned by a non-profit. But AFAIK the majority of their activity falls under the for-profit corporation.

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by pirate787 on Monday June 27, 2022 @08:46PM (#31902807)

This isn't totally consumer but its successful tech

https://skytruth.org/

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Re:Ask HN: Are there any successful tech non-profits? by guywithahat on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @11:06AM (#31908683)

Patreon is for-profit as far as I can tell, givesendgo.com is a nonprofit though

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