> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this.
If you view this as an MVP of an open source repository for EOL information then it makes total sense that it got upvoted here. If we can keep our code dry, why can't we keep our lives dry?
The compliance toolkit is going well though as I'm sure you know from working on payroll, it isn't easy to get users to embrace something related to an area that they usually associate with pain (even if it reduces that pain). For now it's just focused on New York but we plan to open source it for other states later in the year. We are also looking at some of the trouble spots in accounting and payroll such as automating the allocation of expenses/payroll across programs and projects, which is essential for nonprofits but time consuming and error prone. I'd be interested to see you expand your idea of allocation-based payroll to the employer side as well. No one does this but every nonprofit needs it.
The company is called ArtsPool (http://artspool.co). I use the term startup rather loosely, though. We have modeled ourselves on startups because we admire how startups operate and want to inspire nonprofits to learn from some of the efficiencies in other sectors, but our goal is not to make a profit. We are organized as a member-owned LLC where any surpluses from cost savings return to the members, so essentially we are a more like a co-op designed to separate certain administrative concerns from mission-related activities.
At some point the IRS may have to change their tune. The tax code is malleable even though it does require Herculean effort to change. Cryptocurrency and more generalized blockchain platforms such as ethereum could provide leverage to change minds if they could begin to demonstrate their value on the fraud prevention front to regulatory agencies. I work at a nonprofit startup focused on creating systems for pooling and streamlining the administrative overhead for nonprofits, and we consistently find that the regulatory obstacle course nonprofits are faced with is related to a fundamental problem of trust created by a few bad actors. A "triple entry" linked accounting platform built on the blockchain as described at https://medium.com/the-block-chain/creating-the-everything-l... could radically alter the nonprofit sector by making fraud much harder to do, though getting a critical mass to adopt it would be challenging. Not to mention the underlying engineering challenge.
At ArtsPool we are in the process of building a cooperative of NYC arts nonprofits centered around a collectively-owned administrative agency. Part of this will involve building out a co-employment legal structure to create a fluid labor network that will effectively allow agency member-owners to "insource" employee time from their peers on an ad hoc basis. Eventually we want to white label our solutions and make them open source so that any nonprofit sector in any city can use them, but for now we are focusing on a the arts sector in NYC. It's all very preliminary and we are really wrestling with a fear of new ideas that is endemic in nonprofit culture, but we are taking a lot of inspiration from what is going on in the tech sector (where problems are things to be solved and not monsters under the bed). There's more on our co-employment approach on our nascent blog and in the Collective Insourcing concept paper that the project is based on (linked to in the post below).
http://artspool.co/stronger-together/
I'm Max and I'm new to HN. My contact info is in the team section of our website if you want to chat further or get a copy of our fleshed-out business plan. I also need to hire a developer soon so... :-)
If you view this as an MVP of an open source repository for EOL information then it makes total sense that it got upvoted here. If we can keep our code dry, why can't we keep our lives dry?