Non-Profit business, Helping Immigrants?
Hi IH!
I've been playing with the idea of creating a webapp, helping legal process for people intending to immigrate to the US. As an immigrant myself, I understand the need, pain, and the process.
I wonder if it's an infeasible idea to provide service to the customers (intending immigrants, in this case) for free while raising money elsewhere. If I could pay myself a full-time salary at some point, I'd be very happy.
What do you think? Am I being naive, thinking that's possible? Not many people seem to discuss the non-profit option here in IH
I appreciate any comment on my thoughts!
Possible? I'm surprised it doesn't already exist since it's a great and feasible idea. So go for it.
Have you done some research on the topic? Maybe contacted a few relevant NGOs and stakeholders working with immigrants? Bet they can offer you ton of useful information in just a few minutes.
As far as I can tell, it seems to me that most of the services out there are pretty expensive. Considering that my immigration process (that I did myself) already costed me ~$2,700, hundreds or a thousand + dollars that businesses already charge may not be affordable.
I felt like limiting the scope of the supported immigration scenario may allow me to operate at a lower margin. Maybe I'm overly simplifying the problem in my mind.
There are a lot of non-profit and for-profit players already in the space (https://www.boundless.com/, a couple of YC backed companies and plenty of non-profits), if you want to complete in this market and have an impact, I suggest volunteering with an existing organization and try and find a pain point they struggle to solve for immigrants . Perhaps you can then create a solution for this problem and provide it as a service to established organizations.
I cannot agree with this more! Due to the increased need for services like this in recent years, there have been a lot of orgs spring up each with varying prices and effectiveness. @deyshin, check out "The Pitch" podcast by Gimlet media, I don't remember the business name but there was a startup on the podcast a few weeks ago that was automating this process for a few hundred dollars.
So getting in to these orgs and finding a specific pain point to address might serve you much better than trying to tackle the problem in its entirety.
Also, check out https://opengood.co it's a community of like-minded folk focused on building products and companies just like this - we'd love to see you there!
Thank you for the feedback and information! I realize that I know so little about what's out there right now.
Also, thank you for the kind invitation!
Thanks for sharing the link and suggestions!
I should look for an option to get some volunteering experiences.