Platform news
Introducing Golden Hint: the sector's expertise, shared
A new, free platform where charities trade skills hour for hour, from the Rouben Malian Memorial Foundation. Here's what's live today and what comes next.
Every charity is brilliant at something. The animal shelter down the road may run the best social media in town. The financial literacy nonprofit across the river may have a volunteer accountant who could close anyone's books in an afternoon. But the shelter is struggling with its bookkeeping, and the literacy charity can't get anyone to read its posts.
The knowledge each of them needs already exists. It's just trapped inside the other one.
Golden Hint is built to set it free. It's a place where charities trade skills: the shelter's communications lead gives the literacy charity two hours on its social media plan, and the literacy charity's accountant helps the shelter set up its books. Nobody pays cash. Everybody gets stronger.
What a golden hint is
A golden hint is the single piece of advice that changes everything: the thing an experienced charity leader tells you over coffee that saves you a year. Most people running small charities never get to have that coffee. They're volunteers, often working alone, learning law, tax, fundraising and marketing on the fly.
We want every one of them to have that conversation.
What's live today
We're opening Golden Hint in stages, so that each part works well before the next one starts.
- Start a Charity. A complete, honest guide to starting a nonprofit in the United States, in seven stages, from defining your mission to hiring your first staff member. It starts with a question most guides skip: should you start a new charity at all? Each stage has a checklist, templates, real fees and the mistakes to avoid.
- Five founder tools. A quiz, a structure chooser, a first-year budget builder, a board recruitment planner and a compliance calendar. They're free and private, and they work on any phone.
- The Resources library. Plain-English guides and templates for the hard parts of running a charity, from grant budgets to volunteer safeguarding, each dated and checked against official sources.
- A glossary and a directory. Nonprofit terms explained in a sentence or two, and a directory of outside help, including every state's charity regulator.
- The waitlist. For charities, founders, funders and professionals who want to be there the day the Exchange opens.
What comes next
In the next phase, membership opens to verified charities, along with the Exchange itself: profiles, offers and requests, private messaging, the credit wallet and a community forum. After that come smart matching between charities that can help each other, mentoring and peer circles for leaders, events, and ways for funders and companies to support the whole sector.
Before membership opens, we'll test everything with people who run small charities, including people who are new to technology and people whose first language isn't English. If something is confusing, we'd rather find out early.
Who's behind it
Golden Hint is an initiative of the Rouben Malian Memorial Foundation Inc, a New York 501(c)(3) foundation created in 2018 in memory of Rouben Malian. The Foundation builds a small number of initiatives and funds them in full, so they can put their mission ahead of revenue. Golden Hint is free for charities, and it will stay that way.