The New Story Model
An innovative nonprofit that transforms slums into sustainable communities around the world
A nonprofit dedicated to building low-cost housing. It uses a model of transparency, local partnerships, and participatory design to ensure that its partners, architects, and urban planners are building homes that fulfill a community’s needs. All donations go toward building homes; the nonprofit has funded 290 homes and built 174 of them so far, including 151 in Leveque, Haiti. New Story, a Y Combinator-funded nonprofit, is structured differently: Large grants cover administrative costs, so each dollar given by individual donors can go directly into the nonprofit's work building affordable housing in some of the poorest communities in the world. When donating to build one of the homes the nonprofit is currently building in Haiti post-Hurricane Matthew, for example, that donation is used solely for construction costs. As the house one helps fund is built, the donor gets updates and when complete, the nonprofit sends a video of the family moving in.