I'm actively working on data-based civics projects that should hopefully have positive individual financial impact - particularly for lower income households. It's very fulfilling work that perhaps comes close in addressing localized economic problems (eg, neighborhoods).

Problem with this sort of work is that it's generally incremental and has zero immediate effects. In other words, there's no way in hell anyone's going to fund me even on principal. Philanthropists? Nah. YC types? Nope. AVs? heh. Volunteers? Eh. The only way I've found to make it happen is to apply some sort of gamification (ads, app selling), which switches motivation from helping all, to only helping those with a smart phone or easy access to internet.

"No shit, you're asking for free work." is pretty common, but I have a persistently hard time believing it's 100% systemic.

Any thoughts on building capital for a company whose goal is in helping low income areas using YC-loved technology without any expectation of direct income?

(Two examples:

Find/Contest bad parking tickets in Chicago. Work in progress with a newly created team of 3: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/red-bin/chitickets/master/...

Mapping domestic violence shelters in US, as this exists nowhere else : https://red-bin.github.io/ (unfinished) )