Zidisha, I want you to be better than this
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I was disappointed to see YC nonprofit Zidisha’s post this morning, seeking a volunteer developer to save them from “messy and poorly written” “Cthulhu code”. Bringing in a volunteer technical lead for a new nonprofit is almost definitely a bad idea, and it’s terrible signaling for an organization focused on technology and money lending.
Developers who understand the basics of money transfer in emerging markets, and have even a little implementation experience, are in high demand and have the option to work at international rates. Passion for social impact and working with a YC startup will carry you to a point, especially for people new to the space, but paid work will eventually take precedence over free. You need someone to make your app a priority when lenders’ money is on the line and something isn’t working. As justifiably time-sensitive development needs become more frequent, a volunteer programmer will start to resent the demands on their time. The problem of maintaining a piecemeal codebase remains when they eventually leave for another job.
Technology-enabled lending in frontier markets is a vast and growing opportunity. For a new organization backed by prestigious investors, with a $1.7M portfolio and “impressive repayment rate”, recruiting unpaid developers for a high level position is a yellow flag. Why isn’t that portfolio making enough money to pay key staff who are building a platform to help realize your mission at scale? There may be legitimate reasons, but it might belie operational inefficiency or that the model isn’t producing real value. It’s on Zidisha to figure it out. I would like to see them at least pay a stipend, even if it means changing the model or bringing on additional donors to do it.
I’ve worked in technology for nonprofits and social enterprises for the last 7 years, and personally written web applications that integrate SMS, mobile money, and mobile web. I’ve lived in East Africa for 3.5 years. Zidisha has an exciting, valuable mission and their idea has massive potential. Volunteer technical leadership is the wrong approach to building a robust organization to achieve their goals.
Michael Benedict
Feb 19, 2014
Kigali, Rwanda
Original post
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262131
Save a nonprofit in the current YC batch from Cthulhu code
1 hour ago
This is an unpaid volunteer position for a PHP open-source project. (It could turn into a paid position if we get along well and raise enough money later.)
Zidisha is the first direct P2P lending community to connect lenders and borrowers directly across international borders. We connect tech-savvy young adults in the world’s poorest places with the chance to raise small business growth loans from ordinary people worldwide.
We’ve funded 1.7 million dollars in loans and maintained an impressive repayment rate while pioneering a platform that links individuals in developing countries to the international P2P lending market without any local intermediaries. Now we’re ready to scale up our service into something that will change the world.
We’re a shoestring nonprofit with no office, manned by dozens of volunteers worldwide, collaborating online to overcome the barriers of location and circumstance for ambitious and deserving people in the world’s poorest places.
Our code is messy and poorly written as it was originally outsourced on a shoestring budget. You can have an enormous impact by helping us modernize it, leveraging your talent to help our team of experienced international development professionals build an even better online platform.
You’ll be working with the Zidisha founder and a YC partner to organize our source code, review pull requests from other volunteers, and help oversee a project to transition our website to Smarty templates.
To apply, please take a look at our project: https://github.com/Zidisha/zidisha.
Then send a note indicating why this challenge is a good fit for you to julia@zidisha.org.
