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Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
101–110 of 118 posts
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've long played around with the thought of what would happen if someone started something like the universal-fund you mentioned, but had it snowball like a sovereign fund? (ie, instead of spending the in flow, invest it and only spend the profits from the investments, for example) ... Particularly for basic needs like housing,food,clothes... Like what if instead of giving a charity $100 we created 41c per month? of…
Some nonprofits do run largely off endowments. One big issue is that it's a PR problem; most people don't really understand it. They'll look at the non-profit and say "why does that need to raise money, it's rich". You saw this a lot with Harvard in Trump's recent funding war with it, say.
And the biggest expense of the most successful charities is fund raising. It's a viscous cycle and when Watsi came along they showed maybe an alternative path.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#103Nice story, glad to see launches like this and that is not all about self promotion and money.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#104Congratulations! I remember your launch all those years ago and am not surprised by your team's success. It's great seeing tech used for good.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of those charities are precisely in the process of being "cracked open", or have been captured by small groups who manage them as their personal fiefdom. The level of everyday corruption in this country is incredible.
> captured by small groups who manage them as their personal fiefdom Isn't that intrinsic to what a charity is ? They don't have customers, they're not trusts set up on behalf of someone else specific, they're a tax exemption with an ideological mission. (still short on named examples in this subthread)
The key there is "ideological mission", which is immediately abandoned in all but name in favor of slinging money around the non-profit industrial complex.
Edit: A great example that comes to mind for me is Wikimedia. They beg for money every year telling you that it's to keep Wikipedia running, but not only do they have enough money to keep running for years, not only is running Wikipedia not their main expense, but they redonate some of that money to other nonprofits. Even if you agree with the missions of those other nonprofits (which are not in line at all with the mission of Wikimedia), you're trusting that an organization that already lied to you about where the money is going is making good choices with that money.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've long played around with the thought of what would happen if someone started something like the universal-fund you mentioned, but had it snowball like a sovereign fund? (ie, instead of spending the in flow, invest it and only spend the profits from the investments, for example) ... Particularly for basic needs like housing,food,clothes... Like what if instead of giving a charity $100 we created 41c per month? of…
What you need to consider is that you also get compounding returns by treating a patient. They can now be more productive and contribute to their local economy. They might plausibly have a higher return rate (in wellbeing terms) than your alternative investment into stocks.
Precisely. Things become clear when we think of benefits for people instead of monetary terms.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#107@chaseadam17 - What advice or lessons would you share for others looking to pursue a company which focuses on public good or nonprofit?
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#108This is wildly cool. I donated to a patient and now make a very small monthly donations. #this
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#109Ohh, thanks for the reminder! I’ve been a Universal Fund member briefly, but I’ve lost my job soon after, and have had it paused since then. I do have some stable income again now – will resume my subscription later this month. :) One thing I didn’t like back then (IIRC) was the fact that you couldn’t opt out of receiving the patient stories with your monthly receipts. While genuinely heartwarming, I’d prefer to chec…
We'd love to have you back! Just let us know and we can turn off the patient updates for you anytime.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#110This is truly great - just joined the universal fund. I tried to signup from the nav bar but kept getting a 500 error from the sign_up.json endpoint. I had to go through the Donate flow to be able to create an account.
We just deployed a fix for this, thanks for reporting! (We recently enabled Cloudflare caching which exposed a pre-existing CSRF issue, now fixed)