Problem Pitch for Severino Center Competition

Jacky Song, Max Vilchis | October 21, 2025

This pitch was given by Project Elara for the 2025 RPI Problem Pitch Competition, hosted by the Severino Center at RPI, on October 16th, 2025.

Title: The Nonprofit Gap: Supporting Early-Stage Nonprofits Dedicated to Benefiting Society

Description: In a time when society is becoming increasingly commercialized and political polarization is rampant, nonprofit organizations are critical to serving societal needs on a no-strings-attached basis. However, being able to start a nonprofit is hardly a simple task, with legal obstacles, funding difficulties, and the uncertainties of career prospects turning away many otherwise-motivated individuals to pursue commercial ventures instead. The challenges nonprofits face are often ignored, while business interests are prioritized over giving resources to nonprofits that benefit society as a whole. Closing this "Nonprofit Gap" and creating an environment conductive for nonprofits to grow and thrive is a critical challenge for the 21st century - one that begs us to ask the question of whether we have the resolve to put people over profit.

Presented: 2025/10/16 5:00-6:30pm at the Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies

Pitch transcript

Presented by Jacky Song, with assistance by Max Vilchis

Making a difference, to me, is the highest calling in life - and I'm not alone. According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report, released in 2022, nearly 12.8 million Americans worked in a nonprofit. That's 9.9% of private sector employment in the US.¹ For millions of Americans these nonprofits distribute social services, fund innovative research, and provide lifesaving medical care — and by their very mandate, are required to use their resources for the public good instead of money.

With so many dedicated, passionate people employed by these organizations, you'd think that nonprofits would bloom. That assumption is incomplete. Most nonprofits are small; close to 70% make less than $50,000 in revenue per year². We're talking about the small grassroots nonprofits that hold up local communities. The nonprofits that help disadvantaged kids go to school, that help run local food banks, that help families struggling with mental illness.

To put $50,000 into context, $50,000 is less than the average annual wage of an American worker³. Put simply, a small nonprofit looking to hire one additional full-time employee risks succumbing to debt. For early-stage collectives with an inconsistent financial base, they are even more dependent on volunteers and the generosity of donors. Ironically, this means small nonprofits often have to be more watchful of their finances than corporation themselves! Indeed, the volume and quality of the services they provide depend wholly on their ability to efficiently raise funds.

This financial support is crucial because these organizations operate in areas that generate little profit—precisely to serve people that corporations overlook. By de-prioritizing profit, they often achieve far more than corporations working with similar levels of funding. Yet, there is still a massive gulf between the funding nonprofits have, and the funding they really need. For a society that has chosen to monetize nearly everything, closing this "Nonprofit Gap" and nurturing an environment where their work has the funding to uplift their communities is a critical challenge for the 21st century. It's an objective that will define this generation and influence the next. As a society, will we create people who value money or value lives? Who support inequality or support prosperity?