Where Does the Money to Run Anti-Cancer Commune Come From?

The original purpose of Anti-Cancer Commune is to create protection with the lowest threshold and the best value for money, so that more Chinese people can have adequate protection. That is why we adopted a free policy. Quite a few members wonder: where does the money to run the Commune come from? Here is a brief report.

From 2011 to 2014, it was mainly my personal funds. There was also nearly 10,000 yuan in support from Professor Hu Jingbei and several thousand yuan from two entrepreneurs. We also tried online fundraising, but because our influence was too limited we raised only a little over 500 yuan. We also tried equity crowdfunding and similar approaches, but crowdfunding platforms did not recognize us, so it did not succeed.

In October 2014, Ceyuan Ventures, believing our model was a good one, invested several million yuan in us. So from 2014 to 2015 we mainly spent this money, which allowed us to carry out some decent, larger-scale promotion. (Since Anti-Cancer Commune does not consider making a profit in the near term and cannot repay investors, we are currently considering returning this money.)

From the second half of 2015 through 2016, because we won several entrepreneurship, innovation, and public welfare awards, we received some prize money. Tencent Public Welfare ran a crowdfunding campaign for us, One Foundation and others gave us earmarked grants, and Sequoia Capital made a non-repayable donation. One Foundation granted funds to our project twice, and a project in cooperation with One Foundation also launched recently.

These were the main funding sources in the past. The most important thing not to overlook, of course, is the team's spirit of sacrifice: most of our team members have lived through a family member's critical illness and highly approve of the Anti-Cancer Commune cause, so team members take relatively low salaries (some only a third or a quarter of their previous pay) while still maintaining high morale.

Over the past two years, several investment institutions have also expressed interest in the Commune. Given that the Commune does not want to over-commercialize and does not pursue profit in the short term, we have successively declined at least three venture capital offers of more than ten million yuan each. Of course we do not reject capital support, but we hope capital will be patient enough to support the Commune in doing its current foundational work well.

At present our own funds are still enough to support the Commune for several years. We believe that if Anti-Cancer Commune has value, it will certainly not be trapped by funding problems. Meanwhile we are constantly thinking about how to give Anti-Cancer Commune the ability to generate its own income, and will keep trying, with the goal of breaking even in 2017.

The goal of Anti-Cancer Commune becoming a “Century Commune” will not change. When we set this goal, we had already considered the funding problems we might face and made full preparations. Members can rest assured.