Hacker News Reader

Comment by chaseadam17 | Hacker News Reader

Great points. Transparency is huge, and we have done everything possible to put as much info on our site as we can. We love the app idea, and building an app for the MP's to document the entire process (patient work up, waiver, profile info, provide updates, track recovery, etc.) as easily as possible is one of our next steps.

We definitely need to make some money to keep this thing going. But right now we are still just looking for proof of concept. If we fund these treatments, then our goal is to go out and raise money to really expand the organization. We have tons of financial sustainability ideas, a few are:

1) a "tip" jar where donors can add to their donation to cover overhead 2) Grants and competitions 3) Co-branded CSR programs for companies

Hope that helps to answer your questions!

View on HN

Your operation could maintain 2 sets of cash flow: one for patient care, and one for administration. Maybe you could qualify for NGO status and get some government to fund some of the administration side.

This would be somewhat similar to Costco's model, where most (all?) of employee wages come from membership card fees, not product revenue. With this model, you could still let people donate 100% of their funds to the patient if they wanted.

You could even make a slider with an animation that displays the percent which goes to each part of your business - so 10% or 15% of the donation could goto administration.

I love your idea, it's tremendous. Good luck!

Those are awesome suggestions. Thank you! We were actually just approved as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the states, and that will open us up to a lot of funding opportunities. But we love the Costco Model idea!

You're getting the paypal charity rate, right? I thought I saw in your faq that you mentioned 2.9%, but the 501c3 rate is 2.2%: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/donations

You could even make a slider with an animation that displays the percent which goes to each part of your business - so 10% or 15% of the donation could goto administration.

This is a great idea. Check the Humble Bundle's (http://www.humblebundle.com/) sliders at the bottom of the page to see how they handle their "Humble Tip", maybe you guys can do something similar.

Wow, that's an incredible UI

I also strongly suggest this humblebundle ui on 'Question 2' on the bottom. This would be ideal... HOWEVER, there also is the possibility you end up having not enough for the patients and plenty for the salaries.

Maybe make it 'what is the max percent you want to see spent on admin cost'. that way you are allowed to use as much as you'd like to for the patient.

We love the "max percent" idea. We've never thought about looking at it that way. Thank you!

Awesome! Glad I could help. Keep us posted. Also, do you have a newsletter of some sorts? I'd like to signup.

This is why HN is such an amazing place. So much helpful feedback, all over. Unbiased. Informative.

If that fails, perhaps you could appeal to Heroku to waive hosting charges for this.

You never know!

I have experience running a website that made running costs + more from donations, let me know if you want to have a chat about what worked and what didn't!

We'd love to pick your brain. Please feel free to reach out to chase (at) watsi (dot) org.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com