Show HN: We created a funeral fundraising site
guidestick.com
guidestick.com
I’m looking for some feedback, good and bad and questions about the end of life industry.
Excited to hear your thoughts.
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.]
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?
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"?
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.
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.