
Watsi (YC W13) raises $1.2M first-of-its-kind 'philanthropic seed round' - chaseadam17
http://blog.watsi.org/post/56425387090/announcing-our-1-2m-philanthropic-seed-round
======
aresant
This is awesome, I just donated and tried it out.

If you guys are open to some conversion rate optimization testing ideas I saw
a few areas that would likely respond to treatments - drop me a line via my
profile and I'd be happy to have our team put together a free breakdown and
help out where we can resource wise.

~~~
aresant2
Darn it, my "anti-procrastination" parameters set in when I was writing an
EDIT to my comment above, sorry for creating a secondary account but wanted to
leave this here before I forget and maybe round up some other good HN ideas:

1) People won't click what they can't see - I've now encountered the watsi
blog a few times via media. Link to Watsi.com from the header of the blog.
Stick a call to action on the right side that links directly to "Donate Now".
The "Donate Bitcoins" is cool, but that goes to Watsi opps vs your core biz.
Ideally dynamically pull down the "closest to being funded" profile and stick
it there w/a big button.

2) In checkout I used PayPal and I almost I clicked off before I saw there was
another step required in the "You're about to confirm your donation" and then
"Complete Donation". I'd test a little bit of a bolder statement there, would
be interested to see abandons there but glad to see that you are storing the
session.

3) Improve visibility of after-checkout links / actions - After funding you
provide social links to share the message, get those higher up / directly
under the top paragraph of text. Also include your "View Other Profiles"

4) I was compelled to donate a second time when I realized that I could be the
"Final funder" to close out a campaign - that seems like a really solid way to
drive a secondary call to action in the email that you send and gives
immediacy that is otherwise lacking.

5) Your instant email is great, but with more and more email clients blocking
images by default (1) it's a lost opportunity - this is what I saw in my gmail
client [http://imgur.com/u9AifHM](http://imgur.com/u9AifHM) \- get some basic
ALT tags in there as a quick fix, as a longer term fix shrink your logo way
down, put block text in the top image quadrant along with a call to action eg
"Thank you for funding [NAME]'s medical treatment - click here to meet other
new patients on Watsi!"

(1) [http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-
work/image-...](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/image-
blocking/)

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tptacek
Watsi could use an API, so that I can rig code up in (for instance) contests
to submit a donation every time a player finishes.

That would also have the beneficial effect of potentially randomizing some
donations across the patient portfolio.

~~~
jc00ke
That's a really good idea. We started sketching out the API a bit ago but had
to put it on hold. It's something we want/need to get right. Hopefully I get
some time in the next few months to get started on it.

~~~
swamp40
When you do get a chance to work on the API, I have an idea to tie donations
to wristband activity monitors - so a sponsor such as a parent, etc. could
donate into a holding fund, and then the fund gets released to your patients a
bit at a time as the wristband wearer walks/runs.

People have a great need for a sense of purpose in their lives, and tying
_their_ activity to the well being of another seems like a win-win.

So, if you could keep that use case in mind while designing your API...

~~~
sillysaurus
That is actually an incredible idea.

~~~
kevinconroy
Yep. That's exactly what Striiv does: tracks your activity and lets you donate
to a variety of projects around the world for clean water, reforestation, and
preventing polio via GlobalGiving.org.

[http://www.striiv.com/](http://www.striiv.com/)

------
chaseadam17
We're searching the world for a front-end developer to join our team in time
to travel with us to Nepal on August 20th. If you or anyone you know is
interested, drop us a line! [http://bit.ly/1boYhK8](http://bit.ly/1boYhK8)

------
qeorge
Anyone reading this has enough time and money to fund another person now:

[https://watsi.org/fund-treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments)

Do it.

~~~
atonse
I just tried to donate and since I use 1password to pre-fill the CC info,
their form validation didn't kick in, and the "Confirm Donation" button was
still ghosted out. I had to do some sleuthing and simulate some KeyUp events
before it was enabled.

If anyone from Watsi is looking, please look into this (might be an edge case
though). I was close to a "eh, let me do this later." \- which is bad.

~~~
jc00ke
This is a known issue with tools like 1password and LastPass. I'm not sure how
to fix it. If you have any ideas, please hit me up on Twitter: @jc00ke.

~~~
mildavw
I would skip the auto-validation and let the user hit the always-enabled
"Confirm Donation of $xx" button to validate the form. Tried and true and
catches the auto-fill cases.

~~~
jc00ke
Yeah, we'll consider that. Thanks Dave! ;-)

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bernardom
Just freaking tremendous, guys. You're doing something magical: directly
connecting philantropy to tangible results.

How can we help you spread the word? What's your media strategy? What's the
pinnacle- the Today show? Somebody paying for a primetime ad?

~~~
gracegarey
Thanks so much! Really appreciate the kind words.

Re: media strategy. Broad, national, mainstream outlets will be our next big
challenge. Today would be amazing. Good Morning America, Frontline World News,
60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper, Fareed Zakariah, Ellen, Diane Sawyer, Nick
Kristof, Al Jazeera...any of those would be a pinnacle :)

~~~
qwertzlcoatl
I live in Heidelberg, Germany and I can't even fathom how many people here
would be intrigued by watsi. I just found out about it and am blown away by
how effective a simple idea can be executed.

You guys should get a grip in europe. Are you planning on making regular bank
transactions possible in europe? For traditionally-minded people who'd like to
donate.

~~~
jc00ke
We have had some traction in Europe already, but it's been a while since we
ran the numbers. We do have a blog post on the topic: [http://j.mp/is-
generosity-geographic](http://j.mp/is-generosity-geographic)? and we'll be
looking to expand wherever we can.

As for regular bank transactions, we're going to explore it. For now you can
hook up your bank to your Paypal account. It's not ideal though, we know!

Thanks for your support!

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dnautics
Serious congratulations. The idea of separating overhead from donations is a
important idea that needs to be emulated more in the charitable community.

~~~
jseliger
_The idea of separating overhead from donations is a important idea that needs
to be emulated more in the charitable community._

Most already do, but that's actually a _problem_ for most charities, since
they can't figure out how to scale or operate more efficiently because their
budget is tied so directly to services.

For more than this, see the reasoning and extensive examples in Ken Stern's
book _With Charity For All_. I wrote about it here:
[http://blog.seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-
ken-...](http://blog.seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-ken-stern-
book-discussion/) , and anyone interested in how the charitable subset of
nonprofits actually operate should read the book.

(I'm a consultant who does grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies and
have heard a million laments on this issue.)

~~~
j_s
I would be interested in your take on Dan Pallota's perspective (below,
several times); he seems to have a lot of exposure with his claim that
nonprofit isn't working as well as it could, primarily because of the focus on
"overhead".

\--

Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

[http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html)
(20 min video)

    
    
      > nonprofits [...] are rewarded for how little they spend 
      > -- not for what they get done
    

Pallotta on Charity and the Culture of the Non-Profit Sector

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/dan_pallotta/](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/dan_pallotta/)
(1 hr EconTalk podcast)

    
    
      > The use of overhead as a measure of effectiveness makes it difficult for 
      > charities to attract the best talent, advertise, and invest for the future
    

Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential

[http://amzn.com/B003BLY740](http://amzn.com/B003BLY740) ($15 340 pg. Kindle
book)

    
    
      > double-standards place the nonprofit sector at extreme disadvantage to
      > the for profit sector on every level

~~~
glaugh
There's been some rejoicing in my nonprofit nerd circles about a recent
acknowledgement by a few important nonprofit rating orgs that overhead is a
bad measure of effectiveness: [http://www.guidestar.org/rxa/news/news-
releases/2013/2013-06...](http://www.guidestar.org/rxa/news/news-
releases/2013/2013-06-17-overhead-myth.aspx)

~~~
dnautics
it's not universally bad, it's just important to acknowledge corner cases.
It's important to remember that a 'high overhead' though, does correlate to
bad performance.

~~~
j_s

      > It's important to remember that a 'high overhead' though,
      > does correlate to bad performance.
    

Dan Pallota's entire point is that this line of thinking is wrong.

~~~
dnautics
I don't think either of us have real statistics on this. I do know within
certain nonprofit (mostly research, but not exculsively) organizations I've
been in/worked with, increasing overhead has correlated with my personal
dissatisfaction. The place where I volunteer, for example, spent a lot of
money on a posh warehouse to prepare food, which was very different from the
church that it operated out of - meals then were only delivered MWF instead of
daily, and the client base shrunk, there may be a bit of mission creep too
(but I'm not quitting volunteering for them quite yet). When I lived in DC, I
was dismayed at that location's "parallel" (i.e. does the same thing, but
unrelated) organization for similar reasons, except it had gone down the other
side and was no longer delivering hot meals even, so I chose a different place
to volunteer.

In the sciences, high overhead (as charged on top of grants given by taxpayer-
funded organizations such as NIH, NSF, DOE) inevitably means questionably high
payouts to the executive-level presidents, and what not. Now that I know how
to read 990s, I am looking through the history of a particular nonprofit
science research org; 10 years ago it was entirely run off of its endowment
and had a promise to the researchers of independence from the tyrrany of
grants. Over the course of the decade, the active scientist corpus has shrunk
by 3/4, the president gets paid 3x more, the endowment is < 20% of what it
used to be, and PIs are being pushed to apply for soft money, and they are
negotiating overheads of 60% or more.

Then there are spectacularly bad organizations such as the Harlem Boy's Choir,
which I have no personal experience with, but certainly serve as cautionary
tales.

------
ericwu01
Congrats to the Watsi.org team!

~~~
gracegarey
Thank you for everything, Eric!

------
josh2600
This is really cool, but does it scale?

I tend to think of Watsi as sort of a one-off, at least right now. Do you
think it will become easier to make philanthropic ventures if funding them
becomes similar to funding Venture companies? I mean in a way it already is,
except you write a grant instead of pitching a capitalist.

Does this pave the way for more non-profit venture companies or is this just a
one-off?

EDIT: Massive congratulations to the team at Watsi :). Job well done.

------
jaxomlotus
I just funded a pregnant women's medical care and it only cost $215??? In the
USA it cost tens of thousands of dollars. Amazing.

On a separate note, this is an AWESOME idea and service. Trust the private
sector to take on poverty, where the government has failed to date.

~~~
gohrt
In the USA, the doctors, nurses, and admin staff all live a more expensive
life than their colleagues in less developed countries (and not in strictly
bad ways). I'd also suspect that your $215 wouldn't cover, say, an emergency
caesarian, or an epidural and similar drugs.

~~~
rdouble
I can't speak to everywhere, but in Kenya (the funding in the OP was for a
Kenyan) many of the charity medical facilities are run by religious
organizations, who recruit religious medical professionals from abroad to
volunteer their time and services. If an OB/GYN happens to be volunteering the
person could very well receive a C section. They also have stockpiles of
various drugs which they've received from donations, so they could get an
epidural if they happened to have the right stuff in the stock room.

------
gmisra
Serious questions:

1\. Do you think there may be selection effects in this type of donation
model? How do you plan on preventing discrimination against the less
photogenic?

2\. Do my dollars, etc actually go directly to specific individuals, or is
there a layer of intermediation a la Kiva (over which there was some confusion
and "controversy" [1])

3\. In a world where watsi-like treatment model becomes successful, do you
believe that creating these individual-to-individual dependencies is a net
positive improvement for society?

[1] [http://pages.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2009/11/11/kiva-
transparen...](http://pages.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2009/11/11/kiva-transparency-
and-p2p-microlending)

~~~
eterm
A "random" button (super smash bros style) which picked a random from page
then post donation confirm showed you who was picked would help address the
photogenic issue.

Also, some UK localization allowing gift aid would help you scoop up my tax
with the donation. (Unless I missed it already, I'm only browsing on mobile.)

~~~
jc00ke
Thanks for the UK idea. Luckily we can also chat with Prizeo, one of the
companies in our YC batch.

------
mfrank
This is great news but I'm pretty sure this it is not a "first of its kind"
occurrence as there are a number of vehicles (e.g. New Profit in Boston) that
specialize in these types of strategic venture-like philanthropy investments.

~~~
avemuri
Yup. There's a bunch of impact funds that do this kind of investment and
measure themselves on metrics other than IRR. eg. Khosla Impact, Acumen, etc
etc.

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bradleybuda
Very excited for and proud of the entire Watsi team!!

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hesdeadjim
The absolute hardest part I have when donating on this site is having to
choose who gets your money. It hurts me a lot realizing just how much help
people in poverty need, and it hurts even more knowing that I (or anyone else
for that matter) lack the resources to help everyone in need.

That said, congrats to the team for tackling such a worthy cause.

~~~
king_jester
> ...and it hurts even more knowing that I (or anyone else for that matter)
> lack the resources to help everyone in need.

This isn't really true, most issues about resource distribution are political
in nature and are not the result of a lack of resources.

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c4urself
Awesome news guys -- cheering this on!

EDIT: Cheering => Donating -- [https://watsi.org/fund-
treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments)

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purephase
Seriously, your goal is awesome and I love it. Aside from donations (which
I've done) is there anything else that we can do to help?

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cindywu123
congrats watsi! you guys are my fave

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changdizzle
This is incredible, question for you guys, do you avoid having to pay the
PayPal fees if I pay with funds from my bank account? If so, everyone should
try to do that to save the small percentage charge.

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softbuilder
Good job guys!

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dome82
Congratulations guys, it is an awesome news. I really love your mission and
you have done wonderful job until now. Keep going like that!

Wish you luck for the future!

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kfarzaneh
Well done guys!

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jgillman
Congrats guys! Well deserved :)

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foobarqux
How do you prevent fraud?

