

Universal Fund - koopajah
https://watsi.org/universal-fund

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gracegarey
Thanks for sharing! Want to make sure we mention that thanks to the founders
of Teespring, donations are matched for the first 1,000 people to sign up. Let
us know if you have feedback!

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toomuchtodo
Hey Grace! Are you providing end of year reporting for tax purposes of the
contributions?

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gracegarey
Yeah! Every month, donors receive an email introducing them to the patient
they supported, which serves as a tax receipt for that month's contribution.
We also aggregate tax receipts for every Watsi donor and send them out at the
end of the year for easy reporting.

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liber8
I'm a little confused. For many months now, Watsi has charged my card each
month for the amount I specified whenever I first signed up. Each month, I get
an email explaining which patient my recurring donation was directed to that
month.

What is different about the Universal Fund? Is this just the formal
announcement of what was already in place? Also, will Teespring be matching
the recurring donations that were already in place before this announcement?
Thanks!

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gracegarey
The Universal Fund is a rebrand/official launch of monthly donations. Your
next month's donation will be automatically matched because you were one of
the first thousand to join (thanks for being a Universal Fund OG!).

You'll get an email about this tomorrow morning (we didn't intend to launch
today, but it got out on HN a little early :)

Sorry for any confusion!

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liber8
Got it, thanks for the explanation. Keep up the good work!

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gracegarey
Of course. Thanks again for the support! You're helping a lot of patients.

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keeptrying
Great idea for people who want to stay involved. Sometimes its easy to forget
to give especially with a busy job and so many other things fighting for our
attention.

When I fund a watsi patient, I usually post it to my facebook and try to herd
a whole bunch of my friends into giving to the patient.

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fillskills
This is absolutely great. Very impressed by the team, website, idea. Its so
amazing to see non-profits bringing transparency and reducing/removing
marketing.

Something to think about: How does a funder know if the partner is not giving
raised prices the operation. How well do you guys trust the partners and how
close are your relationships?

[Edit] Found more info about the partners in their FAQ:
[https://watsi.org/faq#what-is-a-medical-partner](https://watsi.org/faq#what-
is-a-medical-partner). I guess the FAQ pretty much answer my questions.

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gracegarey
Glad you found your answers! Feel free to shoot us an email with questions
anytime. I'm grace at watsi.org and the person leading our medical partner
program is dan at watsi.org.

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sudonim
Yay Watsi! I think this is a great extension to what you do.

For people who haven't tried the normal funding flow for Watsi -
[https://watsi.org/fund-treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments),
directly funding someone's healthcare is an amazingly personal experience.

It literally costs you $10 to be part of changing someone's life and sometimes
$100 to be the difference between them getting treatment or not. Making the
donation recurring lowers the friction for someone to keep helping people if
they had a good first experience.

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hotgoldminer
Amazing work! Beautiful design as well. Relevant NPR story:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/05/361433850/w...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/05/361433850/why-
your-brain-wants-to-help-one-child-in-need-but-not-millions)

Putting a face to the contribution bridges the gap. Sign me up!

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mallyvai
This is a really cool idea :-) looks like you guys are using Stripe's
recurring billing features?

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neodude
Thomas from Watsi here! When we were initially building the recurring donation
feature, we experimented with using Stripe's recurring billing functionality,
but we ended up building our own monthly charging (still through Stripe's
API). Stripe's feature is more designed for fixed-price "plans" that folks can
sign up for - i.e., SaaS products, rather than the Universal Fund's pick-your-
own-amount recurring charge.

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vimarshk
A Shoutout to Adam! He is doing an awesome job! This is something that will
change the world..

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kaahne
Just signed up.

I was wondering how you select which patient will receive the donation each
month ? Optimise impact ? Try and top up a maximum number of patient funds ?

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gracegarey
Amazing! Thanks so much for signing up.

Your donation will go to a patient who's fundraising on our website but hasn't
had their treatment fully funded yet (like these folks:
[https://watsi.org/fund-treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments)).

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coolnow
What a great platform. Loving the transparency, but i have to ask, can you be
transparent about where your funding comes from?

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gracegarey
Thanks for the kind words!

Our operational funding comes from investors and philanthropists
([https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-fund-its-day-to-day-
ope...](https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-fund-its-day-to-day-operations)).
You can see them all on our About page (just tab over from team to "Founding
Donors"): [https://watsi.org/about](https://watsi.org/about)

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coolnow
Thank you for the quick response!

Have you thought about teaming up with eBay or some other giant like that? I
know they ask me to round up/add a £1 extra to give to charity. Although i
think the monthly subscription is hassle free, you'd get much more pocket
change like that, which would compound. I'm not sure how you'd get listed
there though.

Edit: i see the tip option while subscribing which is better than nothing

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gracegarey
Np!

People are generous with tips, which is awesome and helps a ton. At this
stage, we're 100% focused on raising money for patients. But down the line
we'll likely start optimizing more for tips as well, in hopes of becoming self
sustaining ([https://watsi.org/faq#how-do-tips-
work](https://watsi.org/faq#how-do-tips-work)).

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brandonmenc
I just signed up, but can you show us what the average donation is?

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chaseadam17
Thanks for signing up! The average monthly donation is $39.50 and the median
is $20.

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joeariel
this is awesome, watsi!

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eximius
Bold move to put the number of members on the website while it's so low. It's
professional looking, but the low member count immediately makes me wary. I
would have waited until it was higher. :/

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TwoWheelWonder
How is this different from the typical charity/NGO donation drives of "donate
39 cents a day" ad? I saw how introducing personal connections to individual
medical treatments was different from the norm, however this now seems to
reverse that by going right back to the old school, typical, individual
international aid style of monthly monetary donations.

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JshWright
They're not reversing anything... They're just providing a way for people who
want to donate to Watsi, but don't care to spend the time to find a particular
patient.

They aren't doing away with the old 'pick a patient' method, they're just
adding another option.

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TwoWheelWonder
To be more clear: I'm not saying that they are reversing their "pick a
patient" method. I'm saying that I saw how the "pick a patient" powered by the
web model was an evolution among international aid / charity models. The "big
generic fund" model however clearly is not. I'm not saying it's not
convenient, I'm saying I don't see how going back to a model that's been used
for decades is useful when such a model is arguably ineffectual at building
deeper cross-cultural relationships. Not to mention that neither of these
models of international aid or public health build anything sustainable.

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neodude
A quick clarification here: joining the Universal Fund doesn't mean that we
charge your credit card an amount every month and you have no idea where or
who your donation is going towards. Every month, we automatically pick a
patient your donation goes towards, and you get an email with the patient's
story, and an update email after the patient's medical procedure.

