No Lean Season (YC W17) has raised $11.5m in philanthropic funding from Good Ventures, a foundation founded by Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna. This makes it, by income, one of the largest non-profits to go through YC so far.<p>No Lean Season gives poor rural workers $19 for a bus ticket to the city to find work, during the period between harvesting and planting when jobs are scarce.
https://www.evidenceaction.org/beta-no-lean-season/#the-solution-no-lean-season<p>Yale economists conducted a randomised-controlled trial of the program, finding it leads to significant gains in income and food consumption compared to a control.
http://faculty.som.yale.edu/mushfiqmobarak/papers/migration.pdf<p>This funding will enable them to scale up to 450,000 households in Bangladesh over the next three years. The program could eventually be scaled to tens of millions of households.<p>YC helped No Lean Season to use software to dramatically cost the costs of the program, increasing their cost-effectiveness.
https://blog.ycombinator.com/no-lean-season-yc-w17-named-givewell-top-charity/<p>No Lean Season has also been named a "top charity" by GiveWell, along with only 9 other organisations, which are among the most evidence-backed and cost-effective charities in the world that help the global poor.
https://blog.givewell.org/2017/11/27/our-top-charities-for-giving-season-2017/
Love it. Would the next step be to see if they can avoid paying the $19 at all? This would make it more scalable.<p>Who would pay?<p>Local governments which could pay on the basis they pay back once they get a job (or not ask for repayment because they'll get it back in additional tax).<p>Could be the eventual employer. Or employers could sponsor to subsidize this.
Wow this is great. I love how thorough they are being with their analysis and results. I also love how they’re using software as the efficiency multiplier<p>Kudos to the whole team and the investors. It’s inspiring to see a force for good like this.