101–110 of 173 posts
That's great! I'm excited that you're excited. I imagine we'll see a lot more non-profits in YC shortly. Will 2013 be the year of many such non-profits, like 2012 was for hardware startups?
I'm curious if there's a reason Watsi couldn't or shouldn't be a for-profit company? I like the fact they're not taking a transaction fee. But, it seems to me that they're also a benefit to healthcare providers, insurance companies, and big pharma (after all, the money raised is going to end up in their pockets). Aren't there ways Watsi could make money from these companies?
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Is there a kind of care I'd be funding using Watsi that I wouldn't be funding as effectively if I routed contributions directly to PIH? Or is the big advantage to Watsi (from a 1000ft view) that it creates an especially compelling way to get people to contribute on-the-ground operating funds to places like PIH? The latter is certainly a huge big deal, in case I sound skeptical. I'm just trying to refine my understand…
You also have to take into account the amount of time it would take for PIH to deal with direct contributions. It's a non-trivial problem for these organizations to focus on that aspect when their core competency is to focus on the medical work they do. We've seen this a lot at Kiva where our partners are able to do things they could not have done otherwise because we are providing a source of funds that they don't h…
Well it is good for people in Nepal. But what about the USA, especially disabled veterans, people on disability, people on no or low income, homeless people, and others who cannot afford their healthcare and got shafted by the federal government? There are some charities, but they collect funds with Quadriga Art, that keeps the lion's share of the donations and little to no money goes to the charity or people in need…
Watsi was founded on a few simple principles, and 2 that we apply to every possible treatment are "low cost, high impact". Unfortunately, health care in the US is not low cost. It's ridiculous.
I hope one day we can collaborate with an organization or 2 that will take on the challenge! Until then, there's Give Forward, which does a great job itself.
I'm pretty sure that GiveWell (whom I adore) wouldn't like Watsi very much. It doesn't maximize the utility of donations to spend lots of money saving the lives of a handful of people vs. other interventions that can save the lives of many more people suffering from diseases like malaria at a much lower cost per patient than the interventions that Watsi is promoting. I think Watsi donors will feel good about helping…
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…
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 existed?
Of course they wouldn't. But what if, instead of creating Watsi, you had put the same effort into advocating for more efficient charities? (This is a serious question. I actually wouldn't be completely shocked if it turns out that that would have been less effective.)
> Nyaya Health, which was rated one of GiveWell's "Standout Organizations" last year.
However, they didn't estimate its cost-effectiveness. And on that metric... I go to your website and see that $1000 can stop someone from maybe becoming infertile, and that just doesn't seem like it can possibly win against malaria nets. (Looking deeper, that seems like one of the lowest value treatments available, but I don't expect the others to win either.)
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you guys are doing this. I'm not convinced you're doing the best you possibly could, but you're doing far better than me. I absolutely think your impact on the world is massively positive. But I don't anticipate donating to you myself any time soon.
Wow, I'm really taken away the fact that you're using PayPal. First of all, you're in YC, where's the brotherly support of using other YC companies? You got WePay and Stripe, and you're not using either.
I'm personally not a fan of the concept of donating to help a specific person, rather than a cause, but am unsure whether I'm a rare exception or whether many people have the same view as me - hopefully a few replies could help answer this? When I say not a fan of the concept, I absolutely don't mean I disapprove. I don't have any problem with organisations raising money this way, nor with people choosing to donate m…
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Will they also be going through dinners, office-hours and the like? I could see this being a good way to help new non-profits get over the initial hump of raising awareness, getting administrative issues sorted out and so on. Certainly a service worth more than just the money provided.
Yes, everything is the same. They're going to present at Demo Day too (lots of rich people in that room).