501 Labs builds software and automations that help nonprofits move their missions faster. Everything we make is free to the organizations using it, funded by donations rather than subscriptions, because we are a nonprofit too.
Not long ago a prediction went around: that someone would soon build a one-person, one-billion-dollar company. It was offered as a milestone worth racing toward.
Isn't that the last thing we need? The question worth asking is the inverse of it. What if the same technology were pointed the other way: at saving a billion dollars, or generating a billion dollars of benefit, for the people already doing the hardest work in their communities?
501 Labs was founded to answer that question in the open, with a number anyone can check. The Lab and its board are building toward $1 billion in savings and new revenue for the organizations we serve, and every dollar of it is counted on the public scoreboard.
Blocks is a free suite covering four jobs nearly every nonprofit has to do, no matter its size or cause.
The Lab is the other door. When nothing off the shelf fits, we take on pro bono development of custom applications and automations, built with the organization rather than handed to it. The most-wanted requests become new Blocks that everyone gets for free.
In both cases the return is tracked and published. Hours saved, dollars raised, software replaced. We would rather show the arithmetic than describe the impact.
The work behind all of this is figuring out which levers humanity actually has, and pulling them in the most humane and ethical way available to us.
The conversation should not be about a one-person, billion-dollar company. That is a poor thing to aim at. But we have been handed a tool that, remarkably, has not been taken away from us, and there is now a solution within reach for nearly every information problem in front of us. A playing field can be leveled. An institution can be rebuilt. Currency can be made from a basement.