111–120 of 173 posts
I also use Kiva [1] which is brilliant in a different way. You can loan money to people so they can fund their businesses etc.
I'm off to donate to Watsi now.
[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4424081 [1] http://www.kiva.org/
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So, the really cool part is this: "At Watsi, 100% of your donations directly fund medical treatments. Watsi.org is separately funded. They pay all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations. They even eat the credit card processing fees." It doesn't sound (as) cool me if the founders can only do this until they go broke. It looks like they do accept direct donations to fund their ope…
Very good point. We certainly don't want to go broke! However, we feel very strongly that Watsi should be run like a successful startup, and not like a traditional non-profit. Sustainability is extremely important to us. I'm a terrible fundraiser, and I want nothing more than for us to cover our own overhead. However, it just doesn't make sense to implement revenue generating features (e.g. take a cut of donations, w…
Kudos for taking the leap Watsi!
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It is not so obvious. There's a lot of suffering going on in your country too. Charity comes from the heart, and where you should direct your love is your own choice. If you feel the people in your country are closer to you, there's no shame in helping them before others. We are human after all.
Nobody is saying you shouldn't give to local people in need. There are clearly many deserving outlets for charity.
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Charitable giving isn't a zero sum game. Instead of taking a piece of the charitable pie, we're expanding it by offering donors and patients a new opportunity. If Watsi didn't exist, many of the patients on our site would have likely died. How do you quantify that impact? How do you prove that all the donations made via Watsi would have been allocated to some other cause had we not existed? Also, I'd like to say that…
> If Watsi didn't exist, many of the patients on our site would have likely died. How do you quantify that impact? Roughly, by comparing it to the number of people who die in other hypothetical scenarios. You can't get exact numbers, but you can do a damn sight better than saying "it can't be done". > How do you prove that all the donations made via Watsi would have been allocated to some other cause had we not exist…
Anecdotally, I'm not someone who normally gives to charity, but I gave through Watsi, because I could see and to some degree feel the real impact of the money. As a secondary effect, I actually feel more charitable, whether that means I will give to other types of organizations remains to be seen, but I would not discount the halo effect systems like Watsi may have.
So, the really cool part is this: "At Watsi, 100% of your donations directly fund medical treatments. Watsi.org is separately funded. They pay all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations. They even eat the credit card processing fees." This works great with Watsi's crowdfunding-style model. It probably wouldn't help with things which need legs on the ground full-time, but it would…
So, the really cool part is this: "At Watsi, 100% of your donations directly fund medical treatments. Watsi.org is separately funded. They pay all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations. They even eat the credit card processing fees." It doesn't sound (as) cool me if the founders can only do this until they go broke. It looks like they do accept direct donations to fund their ope…
So, the really cool part is this: "At Watsi, 100% of your donations directly fund medical treatments. Watsi.org is separately funded. They pay all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations. They even eat the credit card processing fees." This works great with Watsi's crowdfunding-style model. It probably wouldn't help with things which need legs on the ground full-time, but it would…
So, the really cool part is this: "At Watsi, 100% of your donations directly fund medical treatments. Watsi.org is separately funded. They pay all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations. They even eat the credit card processing fees." It doesn't sound (as) cool me if the founders can only do this until they go broke. It looks like they do accept direct donations to fund their ope…
Why? Fundraising to cover your overhead costs when you're small is relatively easy but comes increasing harder year after year as you grow.
The reason most non-profits take a portion of donations for overhead costs is so that they can keep the lights on and (hopefully) become better at providing their services more efficiently. Moderate overhead percentages are not a bad thing for non-profits. As a donor you should want the organization that you're supporting to have a way to pay their bills, investing in productivity improvements, and build scale.
I applaud Watsi's commitment to passing 100% of donations onto patients and I'm cheering them on to find a sustainable funding model over the long run.
This is really great to see. I am just curious, how do they ensure that the funds are actually used for the intended person's health issues? How do you prevent scammers and posers who just want to get money? I have a bit of experience here and would say it is a non trivial problem if you do not have an operation on the ground. You could donate to organizations that you trust but then you get back to the same old prob…
We prevent scammers by going through trusted organizations. The funds go directly to the organization that is providing treatment (i.e. the hospital or clinic), and never into the hands of the patient. As well, patients aren't able to solicit Watsi funding. In fact, they don't even know we exist until a doctor at one of our partner organizations has identified them as a candidate and presents them with the opportunit…
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Was just about to ask about Stripe helping out a charity and fellow YCer. Awesome to here that they are hooking you guys up. Even with Paypal I already went through 4 donations or so, but Stripe would make the process even more addicting.
Thank you for donating! It's amazing for us to hear from people that have already supported so many patients on Watsi.
Aside from the human connection mentioned in the post, by far the most compelling aspect to me is the "fixed" attribute. There's something so satisfying about isolating a problem, then fixing it. Many charities feel like an investment. This feels like a transaction. Edit: Here by transaction, I mean it's something that has a very high chance that it's working out. When I order a shirt online, there's a high probabili…
We (masporloschicos.com) have been doing roughly the same since 2005. (instead of health we focus on malnutrition) Note- site is in spanish - targeted to the Argentine audience We are a bit less granular though - instead of matching against an individual, we match a specific soup kitchen. But we keep donors updated with newsletters, pictures, letters from the kids and so on. edit: this level of udpates keeps donors e…
1) We may have a slight advantage working in healthcare. Our partners already collect patient info (and sometimes even photos) for patient medical records, so requesting they send us that info isn't a big ask.
2) We leverage technology to ensure we can efficiently process and allocate donations. Look at kiva.org - they've leveraged their platform to fund individual microloans for nearly a million people, and that's a much more complex process (because of repayments, interest, currency conversion, etc.) than a one-way donation for a medical treatment.
Happy to talk more offline if there's any way I could be helpful: chase at watsi dot org.