· Medtu Care Team
Fundraising for Treatment in India: The Harambee Committee's Checklist
A working checklist for harambee and family committees funding treatment in India: documents to demand, what an itemized quote looks like, clean money rules.
When a Kenyan family funds treatment in India, the payer is rarely one person. It is a committee: a family WhatsApp group, a church, a chama, a harambee with a treasurer and a target. Publicly documented M-Changa campaigns have raised several million shillings for single India treatment cases, alongside the traditional weekend harambees that still move most of the money.
A committee spends other people’s money, so it needs something a lone patient can survive without: documents. Verifiable quotes go up before the fundraise, receipts come back after it, and every donor who asks where their contribution went gets a clean answer. This checklist is written for the treasurer, the chairperson, and the cousin who was volunteered to “look into the India option”. Their diligence decides whether the money raised buys treatment or pays for padding.
Vetting an India option for your committee right now? Message us on WhatsApp or use our contact page. We respond within four business hours.
Before the fundraise: verify the plan
The costliest failure mode is not theft. It is enthusiastically funding the wrong plan. Before a target is announced:
- Confirm the diagnosis and treatment plan independently. A specialist with no stake in the answer should review the file. Our $150 written independent second opinion does this: an Indian specialist, paid a flat fee, sets out all reasonable options in a written report the whole committee can read. Where the honest answer is “this can be treated closer to home,” the report says so.
- Get the medical questions answered before the financial ones. A $50 remote consultation lets the family put questions to a specialist directly; the fee is credited in full toward the written opinion.
- Only then set the target, built from real documents, per the next section.
What a real itemized quote looks like
This is the document the whole fundraise rests on. A genuine hospital quote for international treatment carries:
| Feature | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Hospital letterhead | Issued by the hospital’s international desk, naming the patient and diagnosis, not an agent’s own PDF |
| Line items | Room category and expected stay; surgeon and anesthesia fees; implants and consumables; investigations; medications |
| Inclusions and exclusions | Stated explicitly: what happens if the stay extends, and what is billed separately |
| Validity | A date and a validity window, so the committee knows how long the number holds |
| Currency | Stated clearly, so the treasurer can plan exchange honestly |
Ask for quotes from two or three hospitals and compare line by line. Differences are informative: a much cheaper quote that excludes implants is not cheaper. When we coordinate a full journey, the first milestone deliverable is this: three itemized quotes from named hospitals, compared side by side in writing. The committee can circulate that document to every donor.
A bundled single figure from an agent, with no hospital paperwork behind it, is not a quote. Industry analyses have documented quotes to international patients padded 25–35% through commission channels; an itemized document is the committee’s main defense.
The committee’s document file
Assemble before announcing a target; keep current throughout:
- Medical file: diagnosis, the independent second opinion, and the treatment plan being funded.
- Two to three itemized hospital quotes, as above.
- The full journey budget: treatment, flights (patient plus attendant), visa fees, accommodation and food, local costs, and a contingency buffer. A budget with no buffer is a plan to run out of money in a foreign country.
- Facilitation fees, if any, as a separate line: published rates, invoiced separately. Ours are $50 / $150 / $1,000 (₹4,300 / ₹12,900 / ₹86,000), each credited in full to the next step; the complete schedule is on the fees page. INR equivalents are approximate, at about ₹86 per US dollar. The USD figure is the fee.
- The accountability plan: who signs off payments, how updates reach donors, and what paperwork comes home.
Assign the roles early, and separately: one person who holds the medical file and talks to doctors, one treasurer who holds the money and the receipts, and one communicator who keeps donors informed. When one exhausted relative carries all three jobs, documents slip at the moment the committee needs them most, and a fundraise that cannot show its paperwork stalls, however deserving the case. The division of labour is itself a trust signal: donors give more readily to a committee that looks like it will still be answering questions three months from now.
Clean money rules
Four rules protect the committee itself, and none of them is negotiable:
- Treatment money goes to the hospital directly, on the hospital’s own invoice and into the hospital’s own account, never through an agent, a fixer, or a facilitator. We never hold or route treatment funds; any intermediary who asks to is asking the committee to take an uninsurable risk.
- Every fee to every intermediary must be published, flat, and receipted. A fee that scales with the hospital bill gives the fee-earner a stake in a bigger bill. Our own fee is flat whatever the treatment costs. We take no commissions from hospitals. Our fees are paid by you, published upfront, and itemized separately from your hospital bill.
- Milestone payments, not lump sums. Money should move when named deliverables arrive: quotes delivered, admission confirmed, treatment completed. Our own journey fee is structured this way (30% / 40% / 30% against published deliverables) so a committee never pays for work that has not happened.
- Everything in writing. Quotes, the locked admission rate, refund terms, receipts. Anything an agent will not put in writing, the committee should assume they do not mean.
During and after: closing the books with donors
Harambee runs on trust, and trust survives on reporting:
- During treatment: brief updates the family can share (admission confirmed, surgery done, recovery progressing). When we coordinate a journey, our written milestone confirmations are designed to be shareable artifacts for this purpose.
- At discharge: the final itemized bill, audited line by line against the rate locked at admission. This audit is part of our final milestone, and we take up any discrepancy before the family flies home rather than after.
- Back home: the treasurer’s closing file, listing total raised, total spent by line item, receipts, and the discharge summary. Committees that close their books this way find the next harambee, theirs or a neighbour’s, far easier to raise.
The one-page version
Print this:
- Independent second opinion obtained before target set
- 2–3 itemized hospital quotes, on letterhead, compared line by line
- Full journey budget with contingency buffer
- All intermediary fees published, flat, invoiced separately
- Treatment money flows family → hospital, directly, always
- Payments milestone-gated against named deliverables
- Everything in writing; updates shared with donors
- Closing file: final audited bill, receipts, discharge summary
A committee that can tick every box has turned collective generosity into verifiable care.
Want the documents your donors can trust? Send us the case: message us on WhatsApp or use the contact page. We respond within four business hours, and our honest read on whether we can help costs the committee nothing.