I don't know if you have used or participated in the services of the serious illness fundraising platform.
Xiao Lei flipped through it and found that the earliest fundraising platform in China was Easy Fundraising.
After the business went through, various fundraising platforms also appeared one after another, such as Waterdrop and Worry-free, which we are all familiar with.
The above is still our name, and there are many small platforms, which did not take long to make ends meet, and then shut down the service.
Source: Kantar Group
As for whether such fundraising platforms for serious diseases are really useful, the answer is yes.
In recent years, fundraising platforms for serious diseases have become more and more standardized under official supervision, and many patients with serious diseases will choose to launch fundraising on these platforms.
Take water drop chips, for example, it belongs to the big brother of the big brothers in the field of serious disease fundraising, and its popularity and user recognition are relatively high.
By the end of March 2022, 403 million caring people had donated more than RMB50.9 billion to nearly 2.5 million patients with serious illnesses through Waterdrop.
Considering that there was no handling fee for water drop chips in those years, let's roughly calculate the number, which is equivalent to more than 20,000 yuan per patient.
Source: Mobile phone screenshot
In general, such platforms have indeed effectively supplemented the medical security system and really helped many patients.
Of course, in the past few years of the development of the serious illness fundraising platform, controversies and problems have never stopped.
Let's not turn over the old accounts, and today Xiaolei saw a very outrageous thing.
Raise 10,000 and take away 8,000, and the vampire calls the insider
Two days ago, 1818 GoldenEye reported the news that Big Brother Chen, who had been awarded the title of "Seeing Righteous Courage as an Activist", should have had a safe life.
Unexpectedly, his son was diagnosed with leukemia.
Although there are now channels such as medical insurance, commercial insurance and medical assistance, in the face of major diseases, these help is still not enough...
After thinking about it, Brother Chen finally thought of the fundraising platform for serious illness.
This fundraising method is simple and rude, and it can also be shared through social platforms, and generally the funds needed for treatment can be quickly raised.
Source: Weibo @1818 Goldeneye
Later, the fundraising went quite smoothly, and Brother Chen soon raised 10,000 yuan through the serious illness fundraising platform.
Just when he thought that he could alleviate the urgent need, he found that the 10,000 yuan on this account was actually only 2,000 yuan...
Well? Where did the 8,000 buck go?
1818 Golden Eye asked the party to know that it turned out that an intermediary took Brother Chen's mobile phone and transferred 8,000 yuan to his account.
Source: 1818 GoldenEye
All right... Seeing this, Xiao Lei knew what had happened.
This is actually a "professional fundraiser" to act as an intermediary, integrate the real disease information of the parties, and send it to the fundraising platform for fundraising.
When the fundraising is complete, the professional fundraiser will take a part of the handling fee on the grounds that "I helped you do the promotion and fundraising".
Professional fundraisers have emerged with the development of fundraising platforms, and it is difficult to directly characterize them as doing evil or doing good.
But if it is a reasonable fee extraction, even if it is a 10%, the party will not break the defense on the spot...
Now it's good, this old brother turned into a large-capacity dehumidifier, directly pumped 80% of the "water", how to treat the disease for 2,000 yuan?
Source: 1818 GoldenEye
Of course, some friends may be wondering, why would Brother Chen leave the fundraising matter to a professional fundraiser, and is it bad to post it on the platform himself?
In fact, it is still a problem of poor information.
Brother Chen is a typical "sinking market user", who has no understanding of Internet products, does not know how to write copywriting, and does not know how to use the Internet to ask for help.
At this time, a professional fundraiser specializing in ground pushing found him in the hospital.
People directly asked him: "Are you short of money, I can help you raise money, but you have to charge 100 million handling fees."
Source: 1818 GoldenEye
Brother Chen, who really had no other ways to raise money, could only bite the bullet and agree.
During the fundraising process, the patient information and resumes required by the platform were all handled by the professional fundraiser.
So there is the operation of the fundraiser to draw the handling fee later.
It is understandable that the fundraiser took some handling fees, after all, he also paid manpower and time, but he took 80% directly, which is really no different from robbery ...
But what can Brother Chen do? He also didn't understand what kind of routine it was.
In his perspective, even if it is only 2,000 yuan, it is a key life-saving money.
Source: 1818 GoldenEye
But if you look at it another way, you are one of the donors, and then you see that 80% of the money you donated is taken by professional donors, are you still willing to donate?
Most likely not...
To put it bluntly, netizens are very willing to do their best to help people who are really in difficulty.
And not professional fundraisers who don't have anything and use patient information to extract high fees.
Source: Zhihu
As for the relationship between the platform and professional fundraisers, Xiaolei went to explore it, and I found that in most cases, professional fundraisers work independently and have nothing to do with the platform.
They take both the donor's wool and the recipient's wool.
Due to the low cost, it also makes huge profits, and even derives a series of agency fundraising businesses, claiming to earn 1000+ per day, and also saying that it is enough to have a hand.
Source: China Economic News
Contrary to the high fees of "black intermediaries", the mainstream fundraising platforms are basically not pumping water now.
For example, Waterdrop Chip currently only draws 3% of the service fee, and the platform involved in this case easily raises 0 service fees, and 100% of the fundraising can be put into the parties' money bags.
Source: Easy Chip official website
So, now the problems with online fundraising are obvious.
It's not that fundraising platforms charge a lot, or that the real information of patients is difficult to prove, but that professional fundraisers are too widespread.
They are well aware that many ordinary people do not know much about the fundraising platform for serious diseases, so they run to offline hospitals to find target groups.
There are so many patients in the hospital, and if you go a few more times, you can always catch people to do fundraising business, and use patient information and netizens' love to make profits.
Source: 1818 GoldenEye
Does professional fundraiser have to be one-size-fits-all?
For many people in sinking cities, professional fundraisers have found new fundraising channels for them.
If the patient or family member is allowed to open the fundraising on their own, copywriting, application process, and promotion are all difficult thresholds to cross.
At this point, professional fundraisers help with a series of processes, which is also beneficial to the recipient.
But the core is that there are currently no clear regulations for such intermediaries in the industry.
Collecting more and less is the final decision of professional fundraisers, and if the fee is too high, it is undoubtedly harvesting the love of donors.
What can fundraising platforms do?
For professional fundraisers charging high fees, Xiaolei feels that the platform still has the ability to stop it.
And the platform itself has an obligation to stop this kind of black and gray production.
Because judging from the official response to this incident, the fundraiser brother is the person inside the platform.
But it's not Xiao Lei who said nonsense, the platform's apology statement appeared words such as "fire" and "consultant", and everyone understands it.
Source: 1818 GoldenEye
Therefore, the platform can first do a good job of internal management, since the main service fee is 0, it should convey this value to internal employees.
If it is public welfare, don't rush to commercialize, and don't flaunt public welfare if you charge, this truth is easy to understand.
As for fundraising organizations from third parties, the best way to limit their performance is to publicize more, so that the general public knows the proportion and use of platform service fees.
Only by truly eliminating the poor information can patients get real fundraising help, and donors do not have to worry about donations being "stolen", forming a virtuous circle.
Source: Zhihu @Waterdrop
Fortunately, the revenue model of the serious illness fundraising platform is still transparent, which simply means to help insurance companies introduce customers and then collect commissions from them.
Although the fundraising business itself is not profitable, it has a large amount of traffic, and the platform will guide users to open insurance in it to realize traffic monetization.
Source: Water drop chips
In addition to this part of the income, the fundraising platform basically lives on charging about 3% of the handling fee.
On the whole, the fundraising business itself cannot break even, and most of them have to rely on other business subsidies.
However, the coverage and traffic of online fundraising can be improved even further.
After all, young people still know more, and the middle-aged and elderly people in the sinking market need to be tapped.
Source: Kantar Group
By tapping more traffic from the fundraising business and turning the traffic into insurance company customers, the company's revenue will definitely grow.
It's just that this commercial business is driven by the love of donors, which is a bit embarrassing.
No matter how kind a move is, once it is added to KPI indicators, most of them cannot avoid the penetration of black and gray behavior.
Just like the ground push consultants inside the platform, they will charge high fees privately...
In short, there are still many problems to be solved in the field of online fundraising, and many rules to be established.