[dmethvin]

I agree with your premise but the example problem already has many established companies including Engaging Networks, EveryAction, Salsa, and Luminate. As a startup your job will either be to completely replace their stack in one fell swoop (VERY hard as a startup with no track record) or to somehow integrate in with the existing stack and eventually push it out (also hard but doable).

[ChuckMcM]

Well in the particular case this charity had no stack at all. They had a 'friend of a friend' who could do a web site, the person who knew me asked me how email worked because they wanted email addresses from the charity website but didn't want to change their "real" email addresses. I did my best but felt like something which was more like WPEngine would be a good single point of contact and setup. I also looked that the county 'dba list' (this is the 'doing business as' list that the county publishes to indicate when someone is doing business as a company name) and there were several new charities there. Seemed like a supply of leads for 'free'.

I don't disagree that there are people in this space. The nationbuilder folks (mentioned elsewhere) and apparently there are a couple people who specialize in setting up church web sites etc.

From a go to market strategy I'd probably advise that the team interview the executive committee of several new charities, compile a survey of charity sites and rank them from great to garbage, pull out the common functional features of every site, then decompose charities into every activity they do from filing tax returns to holding black & white balls. Look at how they manage payroll, volunteers, and assets. Listen to the problems the treasurer, directors, executive director, and donors have with charities. Where are their pain points and what does their day to day look like. Then pull all of that together and identify where there is commonality amongst groups and where their is uniqueness, and for each uniqueness attribute do the stake holders think it adds value or do they just not know any other way.

Then I would mock some interfaces to the infrastructure from using a phone, a web site, and maybe a chrome book like device. Look at security, look at complexity, look at time to complete tasks.

And finally after I felt the set of problems that could add significant value were identified, and I had helped a couple of new charities get from zero to online. I'd pull apart where the service business added value and where it didn't and develop a business model that was cost effective for the charity and sustainable for the startup to grow it in a boot strap fashion while the company got its feet under it for running its own organization.