I think this has a lot of potential, you just need a good catalyst to accelerate this beginning process would be a retweet by a person with lots of followers... an indie musician that I know got retweeted by howard stern (5+ million followers) and his song (that was really good) went viral. The idea of the website is really good as well, people just need to discover your website. I would look for any musician, actor that has 500k+ followers and try to get a retweet from him and then move to bigger fishes...
Totally! We need to get a few big names to help jump start our growth. We're going to start reaching out to people today. We'd love to fund all these treatments our first day live!
>>The instant she opened the folder everything came together. There was a full-sized photograph paper clipped to the inside left cover and a document stapled to the right. The photograph showed a young boy with an incision across the width of his iodine-stained chest. The document to the right outlined the patient’s medical condition. The young boy was her son.
Great work! Landing looks clean and within 15 seconds I know exactly what the core message and values are. I appreciate the work you guys have done to make it as transparent as possible as I know that is a major point of contention when it comes to crowdfunding.
Small nit: Is it just me or is the "email" button on the profile page actually popping up the share modal on hover?
Questions: how do you select who gets on the site? What protections are in place to prevent scammers listing fake illnesses? What proof is required before funding is handed over? Is funding handed to patient or doctor or someone else??
1) We work very closely with our Medical Partners to identify the lowest-cost, highest-impact profiles possible. Their Doctors identify the patients based on our criteria, and then we verify and accept the profiles as we receive them.
2) We only deal with our Medical Partners. Funds are sent directly to the partner to pay for the cost of treatment, and NEVER sent to the patient. The patients don't even know we exist until the Doctor tells them that they have been selected as a candidate for Watsi funding.
3) We require a full written profile from our Medical Partner's doctor, a photo, and a signed release waiver. After the treatment is provided our Medical Partners send us proof of the cost of treatment for our records.
4) We never deal with patients, only with our Medical Partners. As you can tell, a lot of trust is placed on our partners, and that is why we only partner with the best. You can read about the partners on our site, but currently they are:
This breakdown needs to advertised more on the site. i browsed around a little and didn't know this is how it works. youre going to have a challenge of people trusting you... and this breakdown really helps get past that.
Just because a Medical Partner has fame does not mean that they are trustworthy!
I am concerned about fraud from MP's, especially as you expand and add more of them. One of the techniques that Kiva uses is sending out Kiva Fellows who, among other things, verify and audit the local bank's process and borrowers.
As you scale, you need to build in verification processes. As someone who has been living and volunteering for an NGO in Africa, I can't stress how important it is to build in transparency and accountability systems - on the ground. Fraud is rampant, even by doctors (for example, at a public hospital, the poor have to bribe the doctors to be soon in a reasonable amount of time). You don't want to create a situation similar to this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/orphans-...
And there are three cases that immediately come to mind to worry about: 1) Is the patient real, 2) Is the patient truly in need, and 3) Is the cost of the treatment true?
All in all, it's a great idea. I implore you to please execute well to maximize impact and minimize unintended negative consequences. There are too many projects out here that were started with great intentions but end up doing more harm than good on the ground.
The one thing you need to focus on above all else is transparency and preventing scams. Video of the actual person who needs the treatment would go a long way, as would video updates along the way. I'm thinking an Android app that the locals could use to document the process.
If you solve that properly, this will really take off and do a lot of good.
Also, you're going to eventually need to take a very small cut of the donations to pay living expenses for your volunteers. 100% to the patient sounds great, but for my donation, I'd prefer to know that there is someone dedicated full-time to the cause and overseeing the process, and receiving a reasonable salary for it. Of course, be 100% transparent about those salaries as well.
Great points. Transparency is huge, and we have done everything possible to put as much info on our site as we can. We love the app idea, and building an app for the MP's to document the entire process (patient work up, waiver, profile info, provide updates, track recovery, etc.) as easily as possible is one of our next steps.
We definitely need to make some money to keep this thing going. But right now we are still just looking for proof of concept. If we fund these treatments, then our goal is to go out and raise money to really expand the organization. We have tons of financial sustainability ideas, a few are:
1) a "tip" jar where donors can add to their donation to cover overhead
2) Grants and competitions
3) Co-branded CSR programs for companies
Your operation could maintain 2 sets of cash flow: one for patient care, and one for administration. Maybe you could qualify for NGO status and get some government to fund some of the administration side.
This would be somewhat similar to Costco's model, where most (all?) of employee wages come from membership card fees, not product revenue. With this model, you could still let people donate 100% of their funds to the patient if they wanted.
You could even make a slider with an animation that displays the percent which goes to each part of your business - so 10% or 15% of the donation could goto administration.
Those are awesome suggestions. Thank you! We were actually just approved as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the states, and that will open us up to a lot of funding opportunities. But we love the Costco Model idea!
You could even make a slider with an animation that displays the percent which goes to each part of your business - so 10% or 15% of the donation could goto administration.
This is a great idea. Check the Humble Bundle's (http://www.humblebundle.com/) sliders at the bottom of the page to see how they handle their "Humble Tip", maybe you guys can do something similar.
I also strongly suggest this humblebundle ui on 'Question 2' on the bottom. This would be ideal... HOWEVER, there also is the possibility you end up having not enough for the patients and plenty for the salaries.
Maybe make it 'what is the max percent you want to see spent on admin cost'. that way you are allowed to use as much as you'd like to for the patient.
I have experience running a website that made running costs + more from donations, let me know if you want to have a chat about what worked and what didn't!
> I'm thinking an Android app that the locals could use
I have no data to back me up here but I'm not sure whether people in countries like Ethiopia (just an example 'cause it was on the OPs front page) are rich enough to possess the necessary hardware to run Android apps.
Travelling around India, Indonesia, Laos, and so on, I found that even if someone lived in a shack, there was still a good chance they owned a cell phone. Now, that's just anecdotal obviously, and typically not smart phones, but still, it may the number may be higher than you expect.
This service has a tremendous potential to do good and help people in need.
As the previous poster mentioned, I too recommend you guys continue focusing on transparency and preventing scams. You don't want the service to be ruined because of a few bad apples.
IMO, a smartphone/android app would probably not be accessible for many of those living in developing countries. But the general trend I've been hearing about is that a growing number of people living in developing countries are getting access to basic cellular/text service.
Like I said above, transparency and accountability are our two strongest values, and we've spent a very long time making sure our operations are as legit as humanly possible.
Right now we are only working with three partners, all of whom we have a personal relationship with and trust 100%. That said, if/when we expand, we won't have the luxury of only working with people we know and that's going to make the due-diligence process more difficult. But unlike other NGO's (like global giving, kiva, etc.) we don't need a ton of partners to grow. A single partnership with an organization like Doctors Without Borders would ensure we have enough profiles for a lifetime.
However, I love the idea of having the community regulate the Medical Partner via SMS or something like that (sort of like an, "am I driving poorly? call 1-800... for healthcare providers). Great idea!
I don't think we need video of the process. If the people want to do it fine, but making them put on a show of themselves I think is a bit much. As a person, not only are you sick and need help from others but you need to be a documentary just to prove to people you aren't a scam, little much -- it's one thing to have a photo and story so it makes it real but as long as there is some trusted third party verification, I think that's enough. There are actually charities that have been doing this sort of thing longer than most of us have been alive that have figured this out, good idea to learn from them.
I really like that you brought up third-party verification. We think that's the most efficient and responsible way to scale our due-diligence process. Currently, in addition to being verified by us, all of our partners have been verified by multiple third parties (Partners in Health, Givewell, CNN, ABC, HBO, etc.) and they are all 501(c)(3) organizations which means that they are also overseen by the US Gov.
I agree that learning from other charities is the best way to evolve. Kiva has a pretty awesome due diligence process that we would like to pick and choose elements from as we grow: http://www.kiva.org/about/risk/kiva-role
Like Kiva, it would be good to also list the "sponsor" (read: 501(c)(3) name) on the patient's profile/donation page. If that sponsor name also included a link to a basic sponsor profile page showing further sponsor information, that would be a step in the transparency direction for me. I'm hesitant to donate until I see which charity is sponsoring the person who needs treatment.
EDIT: I dug through the pages and found a link to a Google Spreadsheet doc with basic information regarding the sponsor for each patient. This is one area I would definitely improve into a sponsor link on each patient's donations page. But all-in-all, great stuff!!
Thanks! The Google Doc could definitely use some improvement, but for now it seems to do the job.
Did you get a chance to click on the Medical Partner link on the patient profiles? It opens a lightbox with some info on the partner.
But we'd love to have more robust pages with tons of awesome info (map, financials, photos, data, etc.) for each Medical Partner. We just need to raise the money to pay for the quality dev time we need!
Please be careful and ensure that your partners have been verified, evaluated and audited regularly by experts who specialize in it and are on the ground. For example, CNN, ABC, and HBO are not experts in this area and are by no means doing it on an ongoing basis. The partner can easily showcase needy cases when the cameras show up for a week and then go back to scamming once the cameras leave.
A 501(c)(3) means that it is a type of legal entity with certain tax benefits. It is not overseen by the US Government, except by the IRS to make sure for example that it is not a business pretending to be a non-profit. They do zero checks on efficacy and impact.
The advantage of sharing the individuals' stories is not only for preventing scammers. Connecting with recipients would be hugely motivating for your donor base. DonorsChoose.org is an excellent example of an online charity that built a scalable feedback loop into its donation process (I ran marketing there for a few years). At DonorsChoose.org, donors fund teachers' projects, and then teachers submit pictures online of the project taking place in the classroom. It brings donors back over and over again.
That's exactly what I wanted to say. Please don't blow this. Your "service" could really make a difference for a lot of these people, and hopefully thousands more when you grow. But only if you keep it transparent and scam-free so people feel safe donating money (or "funding their treatment", as you put it).
We won't blow it. Our entire team has worked abroad (5 former Peace Corps Volunteers, international doctor, etc.) and we put transparency and accountability first. We're extremely anal about reducing risk, and we plan to grow slow to ensure we don't over-extend ourselves.
If there is any information with regard to transparency that you don't see on the site, please let us know and we will add it. Thanks for the support!
We have a pretty awesome team. Everyone is part-time, and we are all 100% volunteer. We know that's not sustainable, and we will need to raise money to scale, but it's pretty rad nonetheless! (And we all make way more at our day jobs than we would ever make working full-time for Watsi).
You probably have a deluge of emails so I'm going to harass you from every vector :)
Hey there, my name is Joe and I want to work for you for free.
In the summer I work in the US as a skydiving instructor. In the (north american) winter I travel around, mostly to third world countries in southeast asia.
I want to volunteer and find people in need of medical care. My girlfriend is Filipino and as a native speaker we could really do some good there, as well as in other countries in the area.
I have many years of experience in the wild, the Mongolian steppe (three months on horseback), the Brazilian jungle (4 months on foot), and all of southeast asia.
I can cover all my own expenses and won't need a dime for travel or in country needs.
>The one thing you need to focus on above all else is transparency and preventing scams.
While I think transparency is important. It's disappointing that this project attracts suspicion, especially in the light of Kickstarter projects for non essential consumables attracting millions with little to no oversight/transparency.
> Also, you're going to eventually need to take a very small cut of the donations to pay living expenses for your volunteers. 100% to the patient sounds great, but for my donation, I'd prefer to know that there is someone dedicated full-time to the cause and overseeing the process, and receiving a reasonable salary for it. Of course, be 100% transparent about those salaries as well.
This might also be accomplished with a "tipping" model. Always advertise the full 100%, but when they go to "checkout", give them the option of tipping the organization. Make a default recommendation of, say, 10%, but let them pick their own tip amount as well.
It would be interesting to see what the average tip amount would be here.
We are definitely considering experimenting with a donation "tip" feature. Based on our research, the average tip on peer-to-peer giving and lending platforms is about 5% of the total donation amount for a first time donation, and virtually nothing for recurring donations (people usually only tip once). It's not enough to run an organization on, but it's a great potential source of revenue to help cover some overhead costs.
Don't discount it. Your numbers are about right, but that can definitely be enough to run an organization. Kiva has about 80 full time staff and about 3/4s of their funding comes from lender tips.
I was thinking the %100 made sense. And that they rely only on donations specifically to them. So like I'd pay the 10 bucks to the child with cancer. And separately I'd add a dollar for them. I'd like that. Then we can decide how rich we want to make you.
video, or other content doesn't help prevent scamming. It just pulls a few more heart strings, in the eyes of the viewers (thus "more sincere").
Additionally, what about people who don't have access to video, or do a poor production job?
If you want transparency, it has to be done by the organization (lots of foot work and following up with where the money was spent by the implementing orgs).
Awesome site, congrats on making the world a better place.
I would suggest that you integrate directly with reputable organizations - it will place an abstraction between you and potential backlash for scamming. Also allows you to provide aid where you don't have direct reach already.
Another idea would be to integrate with hospitals/care givers directly, so you know the money is being spent properly. Hospitals/care givers will be less likely to scam you, as they can benefit in the long term and do have something to lose if caught scamming.
Also, the feedback cycle you have in place is also very exciting. I don't want to downplay what you are doing by likening it to gamification, but positive feedback is key for repeat donations.
From a consumer standpoint, my main qualms when it comes to donations are (1) Control over where my money is spent, and (2) Knowing that my money spent is being put to good use. You guys have the opportunity to knock both those problems out.
Agreed! The update loop is going to be really big for us. We are also considering some other features that would add to the gamification of the site (karma points for donating/sharing, becoming an ambassador for a particular profile, etc.) but those are still all in the brainstorming phase.
Like I said above, transparency is the single most important thing to us, and we spent more than a year establishing our partnerships. If you have any specific questions about transparency and accountability, I am more than happy to field them here. We also have a ton of info on our FAQ: http://watsi.org/faq
Totally. This is actually what we are doing. If you look on the patient profiles, you will find information about the Medical Partners (the healthcare providers).
The thing I am most proud of is that our Medical Partners are absolutely unbelievable. We have a Partners in Health Clinic (Paul Farmer's Organization), an amazing doctor in Ethiopia who our team doctor worked directly with (Dr. Rick Hodes), and a great NGO in Guatemala (featured on ABC).
This is excellent. The funding process is fast and seamless. It took me literally less than 30 seconds to fund a treatment. Kudos for an amazing idea and excellent execution.
I really appreciate the offer, but just to be clear, I didn't fund the whole treatment! (I'm a beer drinker, but I live near Toronto and won't be near San Francisco any time soon - but if plans change, will do.)
I know you've had a ton of ideas thrown at you in this thread, but I've been thinking about your site since donating and I think what would be really amazing, if you can accomplish it somehow, is a way to encourage people to donate regularly.
There are probably many ways you could do this, but here's one: allow people to donate a sum of money, up front, that is not assigned to a particular person who needs treatment. Periodically prompt this person to fund treatments using some portion of this sum. Alternatively, support subscription billing where each time the money is withdrawn, the person is notified and asked to assign the money that was withdrawn to a particular person who needs it.
I really feel that a recurring process of some kind could both vastly increase the amount of money you raise, and also benefit donors by giving them a periodic uplift in their mood and level of happiness. It could become, if this word is not too misplaced, addictive.
Those are awesome ideas! We had never thought of loading up on Watsi Credit (with a large, one-time donation) and I think that's a super cool option to offer donors. No doubt we are going to see a major decrease in traffic after this HN post, and working on ways to retain donors is going to be our next big challenge. Thanks again for the feedback and support, we all really appreciate it! (And if you do come to SF, the beer offer still stands :)
I'm in love with the idea, but the frequency that payments get bounced via Kickstarter bothers me when the funds are applied directly do medical procedures like this.
I'm typically against organizations that need to live off donations. I think it's an impractical and unsustainable model. Your cause is very close to my heart and I would love to support it, but I'm a creature of convenience. I could make one donation now, but would fail to continue making donations. The two solutions I have seen that are successful at solving this problem are:
1) Automation. E.g. in the movie Office Space they take shavings off transactions (amounting to a few cents or less at a time) and pool them together. Another example: Auto-rounding up my grocery receipt, etc.
2) Recycling funds. I don't see how this would work in a donation based system where cash-flow is one directional, but it works really well for something like Kiva where funds are returned and the option to recycle is extremely easy.
If any non-profit is to be sustainable, they must put in a HUGE amount of effort to obtain large enough recurring funds or make it really easy to provide funds. Since you are targeting individuals, it's going to be difficult to do the former. The latter will take a little more thought.
They could offer a subscription model, and then make it a monthly "game" of deciding where your money's going to go. Lots of people are willing to become sustaining members of charities.
Or, I'm a member of a meta-charity called Foundation Beyond Belief, in which my contribution is distributed to various nonreligious charities based on priorities I set (e.g. 25% of funds to environmental causes, 50% human rights, 25% poverty, or whatever). So for Watsi, maybe I could predefine, say, types of medical treatment, country/region, etc. and then the system heuristically determines where to disburse.
And now that I think about it, Kiva optionally does something similar, so that loan repayments don't just sit stagnant in people's accounts because they haven't gotten around to manually distributing them.
Yep, still growing.
In fact they have a pretty cool "free trial" program running right now, where you can assign the funds of a single large lender. (It's a little bit like matching, but you don't even need to put up anything to be matched)
These are great points. We would love to enable recurring donations. For example, you could allocate X% of your income every month to "Watsi Credit." We also think that a program like this would be great for Corporate Social Responsibility Programs.
Members of our team work for Kiva and Vittana (and I worked in microfinance for 4 years) and we would love to eventually try and offer a healthcare loan product (or at least encourage patients to open savings accounts). That said, there are lots of things that make this a tough market (e.g. people don't plan to get sick like they plan to start a business, cost of treatment can be more than they could ever repay, etc.). In all honesty, we can't even figure out healthcare in the US, and it's twice as hard in countries like Ethiopia.
Devil's advocate to myself: I heard Jessica Jackley speak once and one of the stories she told that stuck was about the that company offered to automate thousands of dollars to Kiva to go towards microloans. She refused because she wanted people to have a personal connection with borrowers.
I would love to say that if you took X% off my paycheck, I would sign up instantly. But I would just be escaping my responsibility as a citizen then.
It's a tricky situation because I want automation for cash flow, but at the same time I want intimacy with the program and the people it involves.
Exactly. I think that's where the "Watsi Credit" idea comes in. You could allocate $X per month, then head over to Watsi and spend your credit whenever you like. The donation is automated, but you still get to choose who you support.
Does that sound like something you would be interested in?
That's a great idea. Perhaps you could select from three options: 1)Receive an update every time you have new credit and allocate it yourself 2)If you don't allocate within X days the credit is automatically allocated to a patient OR 3)Automatically allocate all credit to patients' based on X criteria (location, age, etc.).
I second the concerns raised by
alexanderh. Perhaps directing unallocated funds strictly on a needs basis would go some way towards addressing such concerns?
Such a scheme would also address the question of whether a patient should be expected to sacrifice their privacy in order to obtain funding.
I'd like this very much, but I'd also like to have it made as easy as possible to spend the credit. I made some quick suggestions in another reply, but I'd like to get an email (or App notification, or something) that prompted me to select from a handful of candidates that were selected in some way (where "some way" can be a lot of different things.
I appreciate that people want to have a connection to the people they fund, and I'd like to have that as well, but I don't necessary need it before I commit to funding--I just want to be able to follow up later on.
In case anyone couldn't get to the site for a bit, our hosting provider Heroku was seeing some issues with apex/naked domains: https://status.heroku.com/incidents/421 Hopefully it's resolved now. I cranked up another dyno just in case.
Awesome guys, really nice and fast funding process (though if payment fails you are stuck with plain red message in blank page, you could improve on that one).
The advice I can give you - steal best parts from Kiva, they have great and successful site. One of the things I missed was "tip" donation along with the treatment donation.
We love Kiva, and we hope to implement a "tip" option very soon. We just need to head out into the real world and raise some cash from grants, philanthropists, whatever, so we can pay to build all the features we want!
Awesome site! One point of feedback: the PayPal workflow is so bad it almost made me stop my donation. It would be much easier with a standard CC payment option.
Having had a little experience with both, I'd concur that Stripe is probably going to be easier to integrate. (Although my Braintree experience is more limited and dates back 2 years or so.)
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] thread>>The instant she opened the folder everything came together. There was a full-sized photograph paper clipped to the inside left cover and a document stapled to the right. The photograph showed a young boy with an incision across the width of his iodine-stained chest. The document to the right outlined the patient’s medical condition. The young boy was her son.
Thinking of it, it would be just as amazing (and ironic) if the woman's story was a scam too. Something about fate/karma or nature balancing itself.
Small nit: Is it just me or is the "email" button on the profile page actually popping up the share modal on hover?
Questions: how do you select who gets on the site? What protections are in place to prevent scammers listing fake illnesses? What proof is required before funding is handed over? Is funding handed to patient or doctor or someone else??
1) We work very closely with our Medical Partners to identify the lowest-cost, highest-impact profiles possible. Their Doctors identify the patients based on our criteria, and then we verify and accept the profiles as we receive them. 2) We only deal with our Medical Partners. Funds are sent directly to the partner to pay for the cost of treatment, and NEVER sent to the patient. The patients don't even know we exist until the Doctor tells them that they have been selected as a candidate for Watsi funding. 3) We require a full written profile from our Medical Partner's doctor, a photo, and a signed release waiver. After the treatment is provided our Medical Partners send us proof of the cost of treatment for our records. 4) We never deal with patients, only with our Medical Partners. As you can tell, a lot of trust is placed on our partners, and that is why we only partner with the best. You can read about the partners on our site, but currently they are:
a) Dr. Rick Hodes (CNN Hero Finalist) http://rickhodes.org/ b) Nyaya Health / Partners in Health (Givewell rated them as top 1% of all non-profits) http://www.nyayahealth.org/ c) Wuqu' Kawoq (featured on ABC) http://www.wuqukawoq.org/
Beyond just partnering with the best, we have personal relationships with each one of our MP's. Feel free to learn more in our FAQ: http://watsi.org/faq and on our transparency document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZ...
I am concerned about fraud from MP's, especially as you expand and add more of them. One of the techniques that Kiva uses is sending out Kiva Fellows who, among other things, verify and audit the local bank's process and borrowers.
As you scale, you need to build in verification processes. As someone who has been living and volunteering for an NGO in Africa, I can't stress how important it is to build in transparency and accountability systems - on the ground. Fraud is rampant, even by doctors (for example, at a public hospital, the poor have to bribe the doctors to be soon in a reasonable amount of time). You don't want to create a situation similar to this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/orphans-...
And there are three cases that immediately come to mind to worry about: 1) Is the patient real, 2) Is the patient truly in need, and 3) Is the cost of the treatment true?
All in all, it's a great idea. I implore you to please execute well to maximize impact and minimize unintended negative consequences. There are too many projects out here that were started with great intentions but end up doing more harm than good on the ground.
If you solve that properly, this will really take off and do a lot of good.
Also, you're going to eventually need to take a very small cut of the donations to pay living expenses for your volunteers. 100% to the patient sounds great, but for my donation, I'd prefer to know that there is someone dedicated full-time to the cause and overseeing the process, and receiving a reasonable salary for it. Of course, be 100% transparent about those salaries as well.
We definitely need to make some money to keep this thing going. But right now we are still just looking for proof of concept. If we fund these treatments, then our goal is to go out and raise money to really expand the organization. We have tons of financial sustainability ideas, a few are:
1) a "tip" jar where donors can add to their donation to cover overhead 2) Grants and competitions 3) Co-branded CSR programs for companies
Hope that helps to answer your questions!
This would be somewhat similar to Costco's model, where most (all?) of employee wages come from membership card fees, not product revenue. With this model, you could still let people donate 100% of their funds to the patient if they wanted.
You could even make a slider with an animation that displays the percent which goes to each part of your business - so 10% or 15% of the donation could goto administration.
I love your idea, it's tremendous. Good luck!
This is a great idea. Check the Humble Bundle's (http://www.humblebundle.com/) sliders at the bottom of the page to see how they handle their "Humble Tip", maybe you guys can do something similar.
Maybe make it 'what is the max percent you want to see spent on admin cost'. that way you are allowed to use as much as you'd like to for the patient.
You never know!
I have no data to back me up here but I'm not sure whether people in countries like Ethiopia (just an example 'cause it was on the OPs front page) are rich enough to possess the necessary hardware to run Android apps.
As the previous poster mentioned, I too recommend you guys continue focusing on transparency and preventing scams. You don't want the service to be ruined because of a few bad apples.
IMO, a smartphone/android app would probably not be accessible for many of those living in developing countries. But the general trend I've been hearing about is that a growing number of people living in developing countries are getting access to basic cellular/text service.
Right now we are only working with three partners, all of whom we have a personal relationship with and trust 100%. That said, if/when we expand, we won't have the luxury of only working with people we know and that's going to make the due-diligence process more difficult. But unlike other NGO's (like global giving, kiva, etc.) we don't need a ton of partners to grow. A single partnership with an organization like Doctors Without Borders would ensure we have enough profiles for a lifetime.
However, I love the idea of having the community regulate the Medical Partner via SMS or something like that (sort of like an, "am I driving poorly? call 1-800... for healthcare providers). Great idea!
I agree that learning from other charities is the best way to evolve. Kiva has a pretty awesome due diligence process that we would like to pick and choose elements from as we grow: http://www.kiva.org/about/risk/kiva-role
EDIT: I dug through the pages and found a link to a Google Spreadsheet doc with basic information regarding the sponsor for each patient. This is one area I would definitely improve into a sponsor link on each patient's donations page. But all-in-all, great stuff!!
Did you get a chance to click on the Medical Partner link on the patient profiles? It opens a lightbox with some info on the partner.
But we'd love to have more robust pages with tons of awesome info (map, financials, photos, data, etc.) for each Medical Partner. We just need to raise the money to pay for the quality dev time we need!
The US govt does not do significant oversight of 501(c)(3) organizations. They don't care at all about effectiveness.
A 501(c)(3) means that it is a type of legal entity with certain tax benefits. It is not overseen by the US Government, except by the IRS to make sure for example that it is not a business pretending to be a non-profit. They do zero checks on efficacy and impact.
If there is any information with regard to transparency that you don't see on the site, please let us know and we will add it. Thanks for the support!
Not to mention the 11 staff members they have, who probably are not in this just for the joy of saving adorable little African babies.
You probably have a deluge of emails so I'm going to harass you from every vector :)
Hey there, my name is Joe and I want to work for you for free.
In the summer I work in the US as a skydiving instructor. In the (north american) winter I travel around, mostly to third world countries in southeast asia.
I want to volunteer and find people in need of medical care. My girlfriend is Filipino and as a native speaker we could really do some good there, as well as in other countries in the area.
I have many years of experience in the wild, the Mongolian steppe (three months on horseback), the Brazilian jungle (4 months on foot), and all of southeast asia.
I can cover all my own expenses and won't need a dime for travel or in country needs.
Let me work for you.
While I think transparency is important. It's disappointing that this project attracts suspicion, especially in the light of Kickstarter projects for non essential consumables attracting millions with little to no oversight/transparency.
Watsi have done much more than the average Kickstarter campaign to show where the money goes and who's involved: http://watsi.org/faq#really-100-of-my-donation-goes-to-the-c...
The skepticism or desire for transparency here stems directly from the service they say they provide.
One shouldn't be cynical of holding people to their own standards otherwise the words are meaningless.
This might also be accomplished with a "tipping" model. Always advertise the full 100%, but when they go to "checkout", give them the option of tipping the organization. Make a default recommendation of, say, 10%, but let them pick their own tip amount as well.
It would be interesting to see what the average tip amount would be here.
If you want transparency, it has to be done by the organization (lots of foot work and following up with where the money was spent by the implementing orgs).
If you guys do nothing else in your careers you'll still be able to say you've made a difference. That is truly awesome.
Congrats!
I would suggest that you integrate directly with reputable organizations - it will place an abstraction between you and potential backlash for scamming. Also allows you to provide aid where you don't have direct reach already.
Another idea would be to integrate with hospitals/care givers directly, so you know the money is being spent properly. Hospitals/care givers will be less likely to scam you, as they can benefit in the long term and do have something to lose if caught scamming.
From a consumer standpoint, my main qualms when it comes to donations are (1) Control over where my money is spent, and (2) Knowing that my money spent is being put to good use. You guys have the opportunity to knock both those problems out.
Like I said above, transparency is the single most important thing to us, and we spent more than a year establishing our partnerships. If you have any specific questions about transparency and accountability, I am more than happy to field them here. We also have a ton of info on our FAQ: http://watsi.org/faq
The thing I am most proud of is that our Medical Partners are absolutely unbelievable. We have a Partners in Health Clinic (Paul Farmer's Organization), an amazing doctor in Ethiopia who our team doctor worked directly with (Dr. Rick Hodes), and a great NGO in Guatemala (featured on ABC).
https://twitter.com/logo
I know you've had a ton of ideas thrown at you in this thread, but I've been thinking about your site since donating and I think what would be really amazing, if you can accomplish it somehow, is a way to encourage people to donate regularly.
There are probably many ways you could do this, but here's one: allow people to donate a sum of money, up front, that is not assigned to a particular person who needs treatment. Periodically prompt this person to fund treatments using some portion of this sum. Alternatively, support subscription billing where each time the money is withdrawn, the person is notified and asked to assign the money that was withdrawn to a particular person who needs it.
I really feel that a recurring process of some kind could both vastly increase the amount of money you raise, and also benefit donors by giving them a periodic uplift in their mood and level of happiness. It could become, if this word is not too misplaced, addictive.
You are doing a great thing, and I applaud you
Now that's CRM! I can't think of a single possible better way of making a customer happy. I'm telling everybody I know about this.
The payment process was seamless, the design is lovely and the cause, well, of course.
You guys are amazing.
1) Automation. E.g. in the movie Office Space they take shavings off transactions (amounting to a few cents or less at a time) and pool them together. Another example: Auto-rounding up my grocery receipt, etc.
2) Recycling funds. I don't see how this would work in a donation based system where cash-flow is one directional, but it works really well for something like Kiva where funds are returned and the option to recycle is extremely easy.
If any non-profit is to be sustainable, they must put in a HUGE amount of effort to obtain large enough recurring funds or make it really easy to provide funds. Since you are targeting individuals, it's going to be difficult to do the former. The latter will take a little more thought.
All this said, I wish you the best of luck.
Or, I'm a member of a meta-charity called Foundation Beyond Belief, in which my contribution is distributed to various nonreligious charities based on priorities I set (e.g. 25% of funds to environmental causes, 50% human rights, 25% poverty, or whatever). So for Watsi, maybe I could predefine, say, types of medical treatment, country/region, etc. and then the system heuristically determines where to disburse.
And now that I think about it, Kiva optionally does something similar, so that loan repayments don't just sit stagnant in people's accounts because they haven't gotten around to manually distributing them.
Check it out: http://www.kiva.org/invitedby/giblfiz
Members of our team work for Kiva and Vittana (and I worked in microfinance for 4 years) and we would love to eventually try and offer a healthcare loan product (or at least encourage patients to open savings accounts). That said, there are lots of things that make this a tough market (e.g. people don't plan to get sick like they plan to start a business, cost of treatment can be more than they could ever repay, etc.). In all honesty, we can't even figure out healthcare in the US, and it's twice as hard in countries like Ethiopia.
Thanks for the feedback. We love it!
I would love to say that if you took X% off my paycheck, I would sign up instantly. But I would just be escaping my responsibility as a citizen then.
It's a tricky situation because I want automation for cash flow, but at the same time I want intimacy with the program and the people it involves.
Does that sound like something you would be interested in?
We'd love to implement this!
Such a scheme would also address the question of whether a patient should be expected to sacrifice their privacy in order to obtain funding.
I appreciate that people want to have a connection to the people they fund, and I'd like to have that as well, but I don't necessary need it before I commit to funding--I just want to be able to follow up later on.
Thanks for all the love!
Good luck!