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Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

ycombinator.com

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Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#161

Post by philwelch »

tinco wrote: post #143
philwelch wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you feel the people in your country are closer to you That's the nationalistic bigotry I was talking about. That's like saying if there was a charity that only helped white people, maybe I should contribute to that because I feel that people of European descent are "closer to me".

It is not bigotry, you are misinformed. Black people contributing to http://blackcharities.net/ are not bigots, they merely support those whose fate they identify with.

Sure, people are more likely to help those they identify with. That means they're more likely to ignore the plight of people they don't identify with. And that is bigotry. And criticizing a charity for not enabling that is also bigotry.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#162

Post by philwelch »

loceng wrote: post #141
philwelch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it's plainly obvious that people in those other countries need our help more than people in the United States. What other concern is there? "I'd like to help people in MY country" is just a vaguely nationalistic bigotry.

There are millions and millions of people, tens of millions in North America, that aren't taken care of well or properly. Fixing people when they're bad enough to absolutely need help or they'll die, otherwise letting them suffer, isn't a great attitude to have; Not saying that is your attitude, though it's what our culture currently has in place.

Except it isn't. That's the whole problem--people have natural ingroup/outgroup biases where the suffering and death of people in groups they identify with is given more weight. Wars are criticized, not on the basis of the hundreds or thousands of foreign civilian casualties, but on the basis of thousands of military casualties suffered by our own side. National law is reevaluated on the basis of American children dying in a shooting, but Middle Eastern children dying in a drone strike go ignored. People would rather donate money to save an American from financial hardship than to save a Haitian from death or lifelong crippling, implicitly leaving the Haitian to suffer and die.

To some extent this is just human nature. But it's a problem that people think this way, and I would prefer to solve this problem than exacerbate it.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#163

Post by dmoney »

tptacek wrote: post #66
dmoney wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

HN is bad at subtext, so let me offer you a decoder ring on the subtext of the 'pg story we're commenting on: YC is working on addressing the problem of funding Watsi's overhead. The point of the service is that end-users don't fund Watsi, they fund patients. In the same sense as you need to take it sort of on faith that Airbnb can bootstrap and maintain a two-sided market for short-term lodging, you should probably…

Wow, I'm the embodiment of HN being bad at subtext! :P

On the one hand, I see your point, and I went and helped a little girl (as it happens, a different one). Maybe it doesn't need to be sustainable. It sounds like they've got it covered for now, and if they "only" help a few hundred people before they have to look for other work, that's pretty good.

On the other hand, I don't think it's off-topic to comment on the viability of a business model on a forum about startups. I know it's working in practice, but can it work in theory? :)

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#164

Post by dmoney »

chaseadam17 wrote: post #90
dmoney wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like to poke holes in ideas, so I hope that didn't come across as too negative. I partially funded a patient, and it strikes me as a good sign that I've been refreshing the page to see that she gets the rest of the funding she needs. So I hope you are successful (beyond the people you've already helped, so mad props for that!).

Also, I like the "tip" idea.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#165

Post by dmoney »

dbaupp wrote: post #150
glimcat wrote: post #5

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…

Although it is a good sign, it's not that cool. The operating overhead of a charity should be largely irrelevant to working out if it is a good charity. For example, given charities X and Y both distributing anti-malaria pills (or something). X and Y are identical except X has operating overheads of 80%, and distributes 50 pills per dollar donated and Y has no operating overhead, but only manage 20 pills per dollar d…

Why can Y distribute fewer pills if they have no overhead?

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#166

Post by ceras »

philwelch wrote: post #126
tinco wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone is saying giving to local people is nationalist and bigotry, I am merely refuting that.

There are some ways that I preferentially give to local people because it's easier. I've helped more street beggars in my neighborhood than in Port au Prince because I don't walk down the streets of Port au Prince. But when it comes to paying for perfect strangers to receive medical treatment, and I'm choosing between someone in the US, whose medical treatment costs more, and who will receive the medical treatment an…

I agree with all you said, but here is one additional point: per dollar, you can fund a lot more outside of the US than you can inside. Those $1000 surgeries in Cambodia would cost far more here. You have to decide if you want to use your $5000 to help 5 people in poorer nations or 1/2 of a person in the US.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#167

Post by toddnessa »

A really great idea. I have been befriended by a native pastor in Kenya. His son came down with something unexpected and had to go to the hospital. The hospital did not want to let the kid out until he was fully paid up and he couldn't pay it all . This escalated the bill even further. Something like this could have really helped.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#168

Post by cko »

eranation wrote: post #123

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$. T…

You're not alone - the first person I clicked on was a "cute photo" - then I scrolled further down and was disappointed to see that another cute photo had already been fully funded (disappointed because I couldn't join in on the action). I'm only minimally uncomfortable with this, however.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#169

Post by dataisfun »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #13
eduardordm wrote: post #6

pg, I wrote this minutes ago in a thread about the 3rd world. If you ever come across a startup that solves this please fund them: "The biggest problems right now involve education and health. Example: 60-80% health problems follow the same pattern: you see a doctor, he asks for blood/urine tests, you get the results, go back to the doctor for a prescription. Build something that the poor can explain their symptoms a…

This would be illegal in the US AFAIK. The law and the US government are the biggest barriers to medical innovation right now.

What's illegal about it?

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#170

Post by volandovengo »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #25

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…

I work with http://www.vittana.org, which has also found success with this model.

Overall our customer research has found that people find it a lot more compelling to give money to the individual than to hand money to an anonymous institution, even though on the backend it may be treated exactly the same.

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