
Show HN: We created a funeral fundraising site - butternick
http://www.guidestick.com
======
butternick
Hello HN I’ve been bootstrapping in the end of life space for 4 years with my
company thinkwillow and we’ve recently released a dedicated funeral
crowdfunding site to help people tackle funeral poverty by raising money from
family and friends.

I’m looking for some feedback, good and bad and questions about the end of
life industry.

Excited to hear your thoughts.

------
gus_massa
Are you based in the UK? I assume that everything is based in USA so it's
strange to see a pound sign and that the cost is "2.9%+20p". [Hi from
Argentina, anyway.]

If you are charging $0, how do you expect the business to get money?

Can someone send a donations that get automatically distributed in funerals
that are not reaching a minimal amount of money?

The guy in the tree in the about page in a site about funerals is creepy. I
see it and I imagine he is going to fall. Perhaps it is a cultural thing,
perhaps it is only me that get concerned.

Do you have any protection for spam? [There are fake Facebook profiles that
send friend request to many user, and some of them accept the request. I
imagine that as a follow up scam, they can send a money for a fake funeral
from your platform.]

~~~
butternick
We are based in the U.K but the site also works for US based funeral
organisers. We’re getting traffic from all over the world as we assume paying
for a funeral is a challenge globally.

There is no minimum ‘target’ for a campaign all donations are available for
the funeral organiser. Labelling a campaign a ’failure’ for not reaching a
targets didn’t seem fair and I’m sure every penny is helpful.

‘The guy in the tree is creepy..’ lol coming from a place with small trees I
never considered tree climbing as all that risky but you do have a point.

The site is named guidestick as we’re here to give people guidance through
what can be a tricky process and the photo is an attempt at a visual metaphor
for that support. I can appreciate the image might be a bit to abstract.

To make money we’ll offer additional ‘paid for’ features such as hosting
details about the funeral (maps, email invites, memorials and live streams)
eventually we’d like to offer the organiser a platform to plan and save for
their own funeral.

We’re manually checking all the campaigns that are launched but we’re looking
into better spam protection to protect donator. We suggest not donating to
people you’re not in contact with.

Thank you for your time and feedback it’s really appreciated.

Do you think you’d use a service like this?

~~~
gus_massa
Here the funerals are quick. If someone dies, there is a small party [1] for
50-100 people the same day or the next one. People don't stay to much, so you
would have like 30 at a time at most. The next day, the body is carried in a
black car to the cemetery. The family and friends go in other cars in a small
line.

So there is no much time for a fundraiser. Also the health insurance or the
work union may cover part of the cost.

The cost is about US$300, so the £20 per donation is at least a 10% of the
total, so it's too high for us. (The cost vary if you want a nice wood coffin,
how many flower, how many people expect to go, ...)

Don't worry too much about the photo. I'm not offended or something. It is
just slightly odd.

[1] I'm not sure about the correct word here, "funeral"?

~~~
butternick
It’s great Argentina has some kind of safety net for families this is really
not the case in the U.K.

The average cost of a funeral is nearly $5k and rising and social pressure
means the poorer a family is, the more likely they are to spend big.

There is a financial support scheme from the U.K.goverment but this can only
be accessed after you’ve already paid for the event. Sadly this leaves many
with loan sharks as their only option and ‘funeral debt’ averages nearly $2k
per family in Britain.

Because death is a taboo no one really talks about this issue. We’re really
hoping to change that as technology can make a big difference in this area.

The speed of Argentina's funerals organization has a lot in common with Jewish
and Muslim funerals, who also have funerals within days of a death. We
encourage people to fundraise before or after the event. Especially as there
can be a lot to organise in such a short space of time.

~~~
gus_massa
> _Because death is a taboo no one really talks about this issue._

I think that is the biggest problem. Asking for money is another kind of
taboo, and you are mixing both. For example, it would be wise to raise money
for the funeral of a terminally ill patient, but it's creepy.

Do you have some kind of funeral insurance there? Anecdote time:

The sister of my grandma has a funeral insurance, but she didn't tell anyone
clearly. She only said "Don't worry because when I die, everything will be
arranged."

The family found the insurance a few month after she died, so it was not used.
Anyway, she luckily lived too long, so I'm not sure if it was still valid.

