Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

Our team was heartbroken to hear the outcome of that treatment as well. (You've now got three of our team sitting around discussing your incredibly poignant comment.)

It's certainly a bit of a dilemma, but we've made a promise to be 100% transparent, even when it hurts.

FWIW we've found ourselves even more dedicated to Watsi since receiving our first negative outcome. We always knew that what we were doing was real and important, but there's something about death that really puts the gravity of the problem we're attempting to solve into perspective.

I'm so glad this was funded, I remember when it was initially posted, and the simple, brave solution, and I salute to YC for funding and mentoring this.

One small thing, although I just donated 50$ for two people, I found myself to be a bit uncomfortable with my actions,

I didn't really pay attention much to who I'm donating to, just clicked on the first picture that caught my eye without thinking, and donated 25$. Then I noticed, I'm donating to a 1 year old baby, with a cute photo. I really want to think of myself as someone who pays more attention, reads and makes a decision based on facts, medical condition, urgency, and likelihood to succeed, but no, I just clicked based on prejudice, 1 second first impression, biased decision, without noticing I did so.

Then I saw a 37 years old woman and noticed she got much less donations although her total needed amount is higher, perhaps her medical situation is less severe, but I would be naive to think that that's the only reason. So I asked myself, am I doing some sort of unconscious decision that is not really fair and unbiased? I would lie if I say I didn't.

So I donated 25$ to her as well, just so I feel a little better with myself, and then I thought, well, this is a feature request.

So to avoid the "cute baby gets more donations" bias, what would make it a little nicer to me is to donate without knowing who it goes to, I'd like a button that says - "donate to most medically severe case", or "donate to most time sensitive case" and have someone else make the decision. This will make me feel a little more in peace with myself, and actually might make such biases less common. Right now it might not have affect, but as it will hopefully grow to help more people, having such "donate to who needs it most medically" option will help prevent such gaps.

Also moving to a better payment system, Stripe or even Google checkout will make it a much nicer experience.

EDIT: the baby's profile was on the home page, where as the woman's profile was one click deeper, so this could be another reason, but this brings another enhancement, please automatically promote / rotate profiles that have less donations / most urgent medical conditions to the front page

Another feature I'm missing is to allow subscription, I would think many would be happy to donate 5$-20$ a month and automatically give it to those who have the least donations, or must urgent medical condition. Getting traffic is hard and critical for making this work, and not every day you get to HN front page, I would take advantage of it and offer a recurring donation as soon as possible.

As a member of the non-profit community (I help run GlobalGiving.org, one of the first non-profit crowdfunding platforms), we're actually doing the exact opposite. My first response to reading this? Sending Watsi an email letting them know that I've got 10 years of hard data on what works and what doesn't for motivating donors to give to specific projects and a standing invitation for me to share this knowledge with them.

At least within the tech non-profit world (GlobalGiving, Kiva, DonorsChoose.org, charity:water, etc) we're all very friendly and supportive of each other. We're so strapped for resources that it only makes sense for us to help each other out.

After all, we're all in this to make the world a better place and know that we can't do it alone.

So good luck Watsi and you've got my email. :)

It sounds to me like that what you want to work with is the more traditional charity model. You don't know who your funding will support generally, you can subscribe, they have staff that steer the funding toward the most urgent needs.

So have a look at the Medical Partners that Watsi uses. See about donating there.