i’m trying to build the most impactful tech nonprofit ever.
I’m drunk, and I will attempt in my drunkness to explain to you what has animated me since I was 17.
It’s simple, and once you see it, you will understand why I am driven insane by visions. It relies on two, fundamental points.
a) A lot of human serving software (like mental health, education, domestic violence help, natural disaster planning) can be broken down into major components that can be re-used.
b) When we build networks of interconnected and similar things, they help people more than disjointed pieces of software meant to do one off things.
There you go, visions. Ok, hahaha. But, what do I actually mean by that?
My name is Amanda Southworth, and using those two assumptions, I am going to try to build the most impactful software non-profit. No, OpenAI doesn’t count because it’s a for-profit AI company in a non-profit trench coat that doesn’t actually make itself accountable to the public.
When I was 13, I released my first app. It was terrible, and it was called AnxietyHelper. It didn’t really do much but provide basic internet information to anyone who wanted help with mental health issues.
When I was 15, I released another app called Verena, which was a security system for people in dangerous situations to be able to SMS message people without leaving a trace on their phone in the event of an emergency. See below for proof.
I spend a lot of time thinking about software and our world: how software is primed in a way unlike anything we’ve ever had to help people confront the biggest issues they face.
The biggest, and most important part about software that companies at scale use to their advantage is the fact that it’s easily templatized. That means you can use one thing, and re-use it in multiple different ways and scenarios.
But with non-profits, they typically only focus on solving one primary issue, like animal care, domestic violence, homeless shelters, etc.
But what they don’t take into account is the majority of issues in our modern world are intersectional. Someone who is disabled is more likely to be left in the event of a natural disaster, someone who has early childhood trauma is more likely to engage in addictive behaviors, and so on.
It makes since that the best way to treat those things would be a multi-layered and faceted approach. But, this is incredibly hard for non-profits, even large ones. What happens is that we end up building fragmented systems that only solve one piece of the puzzle, instead of working with someone to address all of the needs they have.
When I was 16, I left high school to focus on building the organization that culminates those two things: Astra Labs.
I’m building a non-profit that aims to help solve all of the issues someone faces, within a single interconnected network of software.
I’ve already started, and I have a long way to go. We’ve built the first layer of this with Aureus: our front-end design system that standardizes accessibly, safety, and privacy.
I’m continuing this with Wrenstar: our back-end that allows us to reuse core product features (like SMS safety alerts, a database of available social resources, common escalation tools), to build out even more pieces of software with less time.
We already have a resource for severe mental health issues, a security system, a database of social services and non-profit programs. Eventually, we’re going to build a caregiver to enable independence for those with long term health issues (and less burn out for their caregivers), a resource that creates and executes natural disaster plans using gen AI, and a financial manager. And that’s just the start.
This isn’t a request for donations, or for support. It’s me trying to bring you into my vision so you see what I do. I first got a 25k grant from TOMS in 2018 that started this, and it’s still my life’s dream.
Funding is hard because of how many issues we want to tackle, and it’s pretty much incompatiable with the current model of restricted giving and single issue focus that runs the non-profit industry.
Today, I got rejected from the 776 fellowship. That’s why I’m writing this: mostly for my own ability to remember why I’m going through this all.
I’ve gotten 4 rejections from the Thiel Fellowship, and maybe 3 from Y Combinator, some from Echoing Green / FastForward / assorted foundations.
It sucks to not be able to find funding full time to put to paper a dream I see so eloquently in my head. In fact, I’m writing this to convince myself that the dream is something describable because it seems like 6 years of part time work is something that should make me give up.
Fuck it. I don’t care how long it takes to build something that enraptures me across everything I’ve seen. If I think it could help people more than anything I’ve seen, I really don’t care if anyone funds it or thinks I’m crazy for not letting it die, even with the slow progress we’ve had.
I’ve spent the past 3 years working at other places to gain more experience, because I’m young and I want to do this right. I know that something I start at 16 will not be scalable with knowledge that I have at 16.
I’m leaving my CTO job next year. Yes, my successful startup that I’ve cofounded with an incredibly smart woman that’s experienced unprecedented demand.
It’s been great, except for one glaring issue that’s reared its’ head for the past year: I don’t care about being CTO, I care about building something tangible helpful, at the highest impact, right now. Nothing less.
Even if it means taking some part time role as a cashier or something else to start again: the waves of rejections, the crush of defeat, and the promise of building something that outlasts me. Something digital that will care for us beyond any government or singular entity.
Most of the things we face today are deeply complex, in a fragmented digital world. I think so many of the non-profits that exist today do incredible things. But it’s still not enough. Maybe what nonprofits do never will be enough.
But it’s worth using the playbook of tech companies, who achieve incredibly high-scale penetration with low cost.
With interconnected software, we can build a non-profit that’s able to help anyone with any major issue they’re facing, anywhere.
When I grow up using the internet, we had this idea of something more promising than Twitter, or memes, or the mail spam. We had this idea of a world that would digitally care for us, no matter what we faced.
I can’t say that I’ll always word it eloquently, or that I won’t fuck up. But I can promise you that I’ve been trying everything I can think of since 2018 to make it a reality, and I will fight until I die.
I will work on it if I get 2 million dollars next Friday, or if I have to work at a cashier at Safeway to pay the bills until I die. I built a jail trailer so I could take a part-time job to focus on it more, until inflation erased all of those cost savings. I’m partially moving with my boyfriend to Vermont because I know being in a dual income relationship could give me the flexibility I need to try again.
As much as I talk shit about software, I believe more than ever its ability to scale and impact people in a way nothing else can.
It’s time to push it to the limit of what non-profit software can mean, and I hope I can make you proud doing it.
