The Story Behind Almost Basic
Ten years ago, after twenty years leading a senior high youth ministry at a church, I (Bob Weishaar) cofounded two.fifty.four Teen Center to create something simple but vital: community. The goal was a space where teens could feel safe, seen, and supported. And that’s what we built.
But year after year, we’ve been derailed by the same thing: unmet basic needs.
A kid goes missing for a month — it turns out their car broke down. Another moves away in search of cheaper rent. Food insecurity lingers at the edges. Again and again, real community gets blocked by solvable problems — not emotional ones, not spiritual ones, but financial ones.
That’s frustrating. If money can solve a problem, we should let it. Our time is too valuable to be spent patching holes that dollars could fix. We need to save our time for the work only time can do — like building trust and belonging.
That’s why I created Almost Basic — to build a scalable, dignity-preserving way to transfer money from those who have it to those who need it, in the absence of Universal Basic Income.
What We’re Solving For
We want to scale generosity — without strings, shame, or paternalism. We all have something to offer, but some of us are blocked by money. Our challenge is simple: can we unlock participation by handling the basics?
What’s the Investment Opportunity?
This isn’t charity. It’s infrastructure. And like all good infrastructure, it creates measurable returns — the kind that could support mission-aligned investors:
Poverty is expensive. Late fees, payday loans, overdraft charges — the poverty industry extracts billions. A donor-backed "resiliency product" could interrupt that, offering real value with fewer leakages.
Potential is unlocked. When we stabilize young people, we keep them on track to contribute, lead, and return value to society — and maybe someday, to the system that helped them.
Time is worth money. As someone who works in community every day, I would gladly pay to have someone solve the basics so I can focus on what I do best: investing time in people.
Social risk pooling. When people know there’s support if they fall, they’re more willing to use their own safety net to help others. That’s how generosity scales: when it feels safe.
Almost Basic is a bet on a better way to move money — not through guilt, and not through bureaucracy, but through trust, automation, and alignment. We’re inviting investors to help build the rails. Let’s replace the poverty industry with a generosity engine — one that works for everyone.
Bob’s Bio
Bob believes strongly in the idea of coordinated unconditional cash transfers like UBI. Bob has a few experiences that shaped his view of why cash is the answer.
He is good at math. Pure luck. He knows he did nothing to deserve it. And that led to a well-paying job after getting a Ph.D. in math and becoming a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS).
He works as an actuary and loves the role insurance plays in making people more resilient. Resilience means you need a smaller buffer. A smaller buffer means more freedom. UBI is resilience for (much, but not all of) life.
He was asked to lead a youth group in a church 30 years ago. That led him to eventually co-found a nonprofit community teen center. He tutors math and hates having to tell talented kids that, if their goal is money, silly jobs too often beat important or interesting ones.
He’s met some of the hardest working people in the world. These are the single moms, living on the edge, and served by a nonprofit that shares space with the teen center.
His role models almost all took the sacrificial route, bringing their A-Game to charitable efforts, and piecing a living together with the time that was left over. He wants role models spending more time helping people thrive, not constantly pulled into helping them survive.
He has good friends on both the left and right who aren’t afraid to challenge him.
He grew up praying: “… Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven ….” and believes strongly that we’re not just called to be generous to the poor, we’re called to end poverty.
Disclaimer from Bob: As a credentialed actuary (Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society) I’ve spent my career thinking about risk, resilience, and systems that break under pressure. But the ideas shared on this site—especially around Universal Basic Income—are not formal actuarial opinions or professional advice. While I bring the mindset of an actuary, this work is not affiliated with any employer or actuarial organization. They’re part of a personal exploration: a thought experiment grounded in systems thinking, economic curiosity, and a deep desire to build something better. Please treat this work as an invitation to think, not a technical report. Any errors or oversights are entirely my own.