teamwatsi

Ah, there are so many incredible success stories!

One that stands out to me is Amon, a 17-year-old student from Kenya who was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain condition. We posted him on Watsi and donors funded his surgery within a few hours, but there were complications. During the surgery, his doctors realized that his condition was far more serious than they originally thought. He needed another surgery, and it was going to be risky. The hospital asked if we'd post him on Watsi again, despite the fact that his procedure was far riskier and more expensive than anything we'd ever done before. After a full day of debate, we decided to go with our hearts and post him on Watsi again.

Our entire team held our breaths during the time we knew he was in surgery. But now, he's made a full recovery, and it's a story we're constantly inspired by.

• Grace

Hi there! Thanks for making your first post :)

This is an awesome question, and something we've spent a lot of time working on.

tl;dr We've put processes in place to ensure we only work with organizations we'd support ourselves.

1. We only work with the best health organizations in the world, and we do a ton of due diligence before partnering with them. This includes references, site visits, a pilot phase, and a full financial review by not just Watsi, but the IRS (i.e. every partner must maintain a US 501c3).

2. We send funds directly to our partner organizations to cover the cost of the patient's healthcare, not to individual doctors or patients. This in itself isn't bulletproof, but it means it would require a widespread conspiracy (e.g. between doctors, nurses, accountants, patients, and/or auditors) within our partner organizations to defraud Watsi donors.

3. We require our partners to uphold our standards of complete transparency. We publish all operations and financials associated with each patient (even screenshots of funds transfers, check out our Transparency Document) publicly, along with the name of the representative and organization who submitted the patient, so that they're publicly accountable for the accuracy of the information.

4. We conduct random audits to ensure that everything is going smoothly. In the past, these have included scanned receipts and photos proving the procedure happened (we've even received photos of tumors being removed from patients during surgery). We also visit our partners and meet with patients to verify that they received the healthcare Watsi donors funded for them.

The caliber of the organizations we work with blows our minds. That said, there's always a risk when you're operating in the world's most challenging environments that something will go wrong. We're constantly working to improve our policies to prevent this, but if you have any creative ideas, we'd love to hear from you!

In short, we donate to fund healthcare for Watsi patients daily, and we would never partner with an organization that we didn't feel comfortable personally supporting and putting our names behind.

Hope we convinced you :)

• Chase and Grace

About three years ago, I was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica. A woman boarded a bus I was on and started asking the local passengers for donations to pay for her son's medical care. Lots of people donated and I couldn't figure out why they trusted her. It turns out they trusted her because she was passing her son's medical record around the bus. When she got to the back where I was sitting, I donated. And then I had an epiphany: there should be a website that makes it possible to fund medical care for people around the world. The experience inspired me to start Watsi and name it after the town I was traveling through at the time.

• Chase

That we're lucky enough to spend every day working with an amazing team trying to solve a problem that's more important than we are.

We also get to go visit the patients Watsi donors support, which is pretty awesome. Here's a blog post about a recent trip to East Africa.

• Chase and Grace

Thanks for the kind words! We really appreciate it.

We definitely think about this. The reason Watsi focuses on developing countries right now is simply that it's more often the case that a relatively small amount of money stands in the way of someone receiving life-changing healthcare. That said, we'd love for Watsi to be everywhere in the future.

Have you heard of Give Forward? It's essentially Watsi in the US.

• Grace and Chase