4 ms·

Did anyone else notice that most of the organizations that are facilitating these treatments seem to be Watsi clones, or at least very similar in spirit? http:

Did anyone else notice that most of the organizations that are facilitating these treatments seem to be Watsi clones, or at least very similar in spirit? http://amhf.us/ http://amhf.us/, https://secure.cure.org/curekids/donate https://secure.cure.org/curekids/donate, http://rickhodes.org/ricks-patients/ http://rickhodes.org/ricks-patients/, http://www.csc.org/donate.php http://www.csc.org/donate.php, http://www.nyayahealth.org/donate/ http://www.nyayahealth.org/donate/ This makes me worry that this is not direct donation, but through one or more layers of brokering. [Links taken from the transparency document, https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZSaEF1X1JsRm1yZ251d0RQZ0VmRGc&output=html https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah...]

fiatpandas 14y ago
From what i can tell, the only "broker" from the list you provided is AMHF. All of the others directly operate clinics and hospitals in various impoverished countries, and directly employ doctors, nurses, pay electricity, buy equipment, etc. AMHF seems to partner with pre-existing health facilities which are in need of funding, which I guess makes them kinda like Watsi, but not really a clone.
chaseadam17 14y ago
Because the IRS requires us to route funds to entities that have an affiliated 501c3, we sometimes have to partner with organizations like AMHF which serve as financial conduits. However, AMHF and other partners that play this role (Hope For West Africa in Nigeria also does this for a new pilot partner Faith Alive) do not take any cut of donations despite the enormous amount of work they do to help coordinate patient care and manage funds (a huge benefit, since foundations often have more experience with international transfers and disbursement than on-the-ground hospitals do). Because of this, donating via Watsi is arguably as efficient (and possibly even more efficient from a donor's perspective because we pay the credit card processing fees) as donating to one of our partners directly. With regard to the the fact that some of our partners also fundraise on a patient-by-patient basis themselves, we think that's awesome! Watsi is proving that truly transparent peer-to-peer giving is better than traditional "Donate Now" forms of giving, and we're ecstatic that our partners are adopting the model. In fact, down the line, we'd like to white label our platform so that partners can feature patients on their sites as easily as they can feature them on Watsi (CURE being the one exception, since they've done a great job of p2p giving or a while now).
- josefswann 14y ago
  Thanks for explaining. Understanding how to efficiently and effectively help is probably one of the most important problems, so kudos for taking a crack at that.

fiatpandas 14y ago

From what i can tell, the only "broker" from the list you provided is AMHF. All of the others directly operate clinics and hospitals in various impoverished countries, and directly employ doctors, nurses, pay electricity, buy equipment, etc. AMHF seems to partner with pre-existing health facilities which are in need of funding, which I guess makes them kinda like Watsi, but not really a clone.

chaseadam17 14y ago

Because the IRS requires us to route funds to entities that have an affiliated 501c3, we sometimes have to partner with organizations like AMHF which serve as financial conduits. However, AMHF and other partners that play this role (Hope For West Africa in Nigeria also does this for a new pilot partner Faith Alive) do not take any cut of donations despite the enormous amount of work they do to help coordinate patient care and manage funds (a huge benefit, since foundations often have more experience with international transfers and disbursement than on-the-ground hospitals do). Because of this, donating via Watsi is arguably as efficient (and possibly even more efficient from a donor's perspective because we pay the credit card processing fees) as donating to one of our partners directly. With regard to the the fact that some of our partners also fundraise on a patient-by-patient basis themselves, we think that's awesome! Watsi is proving that truly transparent peer-to-peer giving is better than traditional "Donate Now" forms of giving, and we're ecstatic that our partners are adopting the model. In fact, down the line, we'd like to white label our platform so that partners can feature patients on their sites as easily as they can feature them on Watsi (CURE being the one exception, since they've done a great job of p2p giving or a while now).

josefswann 14y ago
Thanks for explaining. Understanding how to efficiently and effectively help is probably one of the most important problems, so kudos for taking a crack at that.