ACV11: How to Start a Charity (Dr Goh Wei Leong, Healthserve Founder, Part 2)

Alternative CV

Dr Goh Wei Leong, founder of Healthserve, shares practical advice about starting a charity in this episode. Even if you're not intending to start a charity, these are principles that are applicable more generally to any endeavour you may undertake.
Dr Goh Wei-Leong, a general practitioner, co-founded and chairs HealthServe (instagram, twitter: @HealthServeSG), an NGO that reaches out to under-served foreign workers in Singapore. HealthServe and Wei-Leong were awarded the ‘Singaporean of the Year 2017’. He has a personal mission to be a ‘Catalyst Bringing Life!’ and is passionate about social justice and connecting people to one another. He also thoroughly enjoys engaging millennials over a good cappuccino. Dr Goh cares deeply about life and keeps a regular rhythm of rest, reflection and work to constantly calibrate true north.
3 things I learned

1. When staring a charity, you need a team around you. Don’t be afraid to sell your friends about your vision, and look for domain expertise amongst them and then ask for help - people with the skillsets that can help solve your problems (e.g. provide legal or financial advice)
   
2. You might face rejection, but choose instead to celebrate the little successes - the people who say yes and get behind you. And even the people who say no at first - they may come on board a couple of years later
   
3. Practically - funding structure for charities. You want to tap on the larger corporate CSR budgets, but at the same time it’s useful to mix that with a broad base of individual donors so that you’re not beholden to one giver.