Project Elara presents at the Severino Center!

Chibuikem Ukaegbe | October 21, 2025

Project Elara is committed to remaining 100% open-source and not-for-profit. Unfortunately, our model of making most of our work accessible for free presents significant financial sustainability challenges. To raise awareness of this issue, Project Elara gave a presentation highlighting the difficulties facing nonprofits at the Severino Center's 2025 RPI Problem Pitch Competition.

Note: The full script can be found here.

On October 16th, 2025, the annual "RPI Problem Pitch Competition" was hosted at the Severino Center. This competition challenges students at RPI to identify problems that would be a significant boon to society if solved, without proposing solutions themselves. To raise awareness of the non-profit funding gap, and possibly win a prize which would provide more funding to Project Elara, Jacky Song, Head of Project Elara, participated in the competition on behalf of Project Elara.

As Jacky stated, despite the benefits they offer society, non-profit organizations are plagued by a lack of funding. Close to 70% of non-profit organizations make less than $50,000 in revenue every year¹, less than the average salary of the average worker in the United States. Consequently, hiring even 1 paid worker can push most non-profits into a deficit. This issue is especially acute for early stage non-profits like Project Elara.

All these concerns were aired during the pitch. Although it was unable to draw more funding to Project Elara, the pitch successfully served as an opportunity to acquaint a new audience with the project. Notable interest was displayed in our mission, and more opportunities to introduce possible contributors to Project Elara were found.

While staying non-profit and open-source sits at the core of Project Elara's mission, the funding issues innate to non-profits increase our reliance on volunteer support. We are therefore immensely grateful for our dedicated team of volunteers, without whom we would be nowhere close to where we are today. Thank you all making this possible.