Hacker News: mtweak

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mtweak — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 01:21:05 +0000

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50203359

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Show HN: A free search console for grant making

mtweak — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:22:25 +0000

Built a tool for searching and filtering grant/funding data. The commercial versions of this run a few thousand bucks a year, so I made a free one instead. No signup, just go use it. As far as I know, this is the largest consolidated searchable dataset on nonprofits, also all cross validated, and source evidence for every data point.

Would like feedback on the data and search, especially anything that's missing or wrong.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49729355

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by mtweak in "Dolly Parton has died"

mtweak — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 21:36:20 +0000

Her father couldn't read so she built a program that mails 3.5 million books to children every month.

That's an amazing contribution to literacy

New comment by mtweak in "Top 1% of U.S. nonprofits account for 75% of revenue"

mtweak — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:42:32 +0000

It's quite a bit more extreme than 20/80. It's also surprising that there is increasing consolidation vs. not.

New comment by mtweak in "Show HN: I built a cross-browser extension that controls fingerprinting surfaces"

mtweak — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:40:51 +0000

Have you thought of active fingerprint pollution? Mathematically, find the search term that has the farthest embedding + noise than your current search term. You search for Harley Davidson, a parallel search is done for "3 mo old diapers".

Like another person said: passive fingerprint protection will be limited.

New comment by mtweak in "Top 1% of U.S. nonprofits account for 75% of revenue"

mtweak — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:41:36 +0000

Hi HN, OP here.

There is about a terabyte of XML IRS disclosures behind this number, so it's quite an exercise to derive. A few other interesting stats that explain the stat further:

- "Revenue” is not the same as donations - The the nonprofit dataset includes hospitals, universities, insurers and other tax-exempt businesses. Even patient fees, tuition, and investment income count as this revenue.

- The revenue skew is pretty extreme: $164k is the median, $6.43M is the average

- Scale attracts more scale: The concentration of revenue is increasing over the years

- As you can guess: hospitals and universities are among the largest orgs by revenue.

Definitely a different view of what a nonprofit means!

Top 1% of U.S. nonprofits account for 75% of revenue

mtweak — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:33:42 +0000

Article URL: https://data.charitysense.com/blog/the-4-trillion-blind-spot

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118053

Points: 20

# Comments: 3

New comment by mtweak in "Show HN: Bullshit Detector – agent skills that fact-check videos and articles"

mtweak — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:38:19 +0000

This is extremely problematic. Much of news is highly syndicated, so what looks like 10 credible sources are actually just 2. I think the best you can aim for is empirical sources: receipts, videos, photo evidence, public disclosures directly at the source. Archiving is ok if disclosed.

I don't think LLMs can discern truth when the majority of news sources are incentivized primarily for views.

New comment by mtweak in "Show HN: XY – A Fast, composable, GPU-accelerated interactive plotting library"

mtweak — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:41:52 +0000

I can imagine this useful to 'compress' gigabytes of data onto a 2d canvas quickly. For that, I appreciate the effort.

One thing that would be useful is to read up on Ed Tufte's principles of data visualization. Many graph libraries don't implement basic visualization principles to make they key point clear, easy to see while still keeping the full depth and complexity of data visible.

New comment by mtweak in "What Nonprofit CEOs Earn"

mtweak — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:49:50 +0000

Hi HN,

After building a greppable dataset form 990 filings (~8.8M filings over 12 years), I've gotten more questions about how much leaders within nonprofits get paid. It turns out that the sector is extremely diverse: hospitals, insurance, grantmaking foundations, and hobby groups. The highest median top pay go to medical professionals rather than CEOs. There were also some interesting patterns across religious affiliation and geographic location of headquarters.

If there’s another way you’d like to see the data sliced, let me know and I’ll see what I can pull.

Mazhar

What Nonprofit CEOs Earn

mtweak — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:44:20 +0000

Article URL: https://data.charitysense.com/blog/what-nonprofit-ceos-earn

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024558

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by mtweak in "Perfection is not over-engineering"

mtweak — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:05:16 +0000

I'm also wondering if "perfect" and "good enough" are not really as important now vs. when a team of software engineers had to spend sprints implementing features. The rate of iteration is faster now, the rate of regenerating entire code bases is days. We can perhaps over engineer /more/ today than before.

Show HN: CharitySense Nonprofit Due Diligence

mtweak — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:20:07 +0000

Research the US-based nonprofits before donating. You can search for nonprofits or causes and dive deep into IRS and website disclosures. This is less like a charity rating site like CharityNavigator and ProPublica and more about helping donors decide whether to support a nonprofit or not.

Since the last update, I've taken in a lot of feedback and included foundations, trusts, and small entities totally over 8.8M filings and 2.2M entities.

Beyond any general feedback, what I'd love to know: what questions do you ask before donating?

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291834

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48979242

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by mtweak in "Where hard water causes kidney failure: a field visit to eastern Ethiopia"

mtweak — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 01:12:51 +0000

OP here: I visited the dialysis center in Jigjiga last year while doing field work with Amoud Foundation. The CKDu link to fluoride in groundwater was new to me. It seems most water infrastructure programs are scoped to access, not purification grade. Happy to answer questions on the data or the field visit.

Where hard water causes kidney failure: a field visit to eastern Ethiopia

mtweak — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 01:02:14 +0000

Article URL: https://charitysense.com/insights/the-cost-of-bad-water

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484201

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by mtweak in "$3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year"

mtweak — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:50:57 +0000

Not wrong

New comment by mtweak in "$3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year"

mtweak — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:50:30 +0000

Agree.

New comment by mtweak in "$3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year"

mtweak — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:42:30 +0000

Yes, non-profits is a superset of "charitable non-profits". The IRS puts all 501(c)(3) organizations under the same filing framework. Hospitals and universities are in there alongside food banks and shelters. Breaking them out by NTEE code gives a more granular picture is a great idea.

New comment by mtweak in "$3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year"

mtweak — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:41:05 +0000

Fair point. I updated the article. The 7.7% is the "Grants and other assistance" line on the 990, and it applies to the $500B charitable nonprofit portion, not the full $3T. A food bank distributing food shows up under program expenses, not grants. The original framing was too easy to misread.

The bigger issue is that even the program expenses line doesn't tell you whether the program worked. A food bank spending $2M on operations could be feeding 50,000 people or 5,000. The form doesn't say.

$3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year

mtweak — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 21:56:16 +0000

Article URL: https://charitysense.com/insights/the-3-trillion-blind-spot

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291834

Points: 106

# Comments: 85