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gwern comments on Charitable Cryonics - Less Wrong
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Alcor is already a charity, funded by people who wish to see cryonics spread - Alcor runs at an annual loss of hundreds of thousands, made up by donations and other such charitable generosity. As it happens, they also choose to spend their extremely limited cryonics slots on their most generous donors; what's the problem?
So Alcor runs at a loss and doesn't actually freeze that many people because it can't afford to?
Maybe the reason there's not much freezing going on is that the major players in it aren't very aggressive.
This seems extremely misleading. Unless I'm very much mistaken, Alcor cryopreserves every one of its members upon their legal death to the absolute best of its ability, as indeed they are contractually obligated to do. They even now have an arrangement with Suspended Animation so that an SA team can provide SST (standby, stabilization, and transport) in cases where Alcor cannot easily get there in time. (SA is a for-profit company founded to provide exactly this type of service; they also have a working relationship with Cryonics Institute of a different sort.)
To my understanding, Alcor runs at a "loss" (in quotes because donations are just as much a source of revenue as membership and cryopreservation fees) for similar reasons that any small-but-growing business would: because growth is the best way to ensure long-term stability, and keeping the price of cryopreservation as low as possible given the other constraints promotes growth.
Finally, I think it's worth mentioning Alcor created the Patient Care Trust fund and gave it legal independence specifically to prevent funds from being usurped that are intended to go toward the care and eventual resuscitation of Alcor's patients, regardless of Alcor's future financial situation. Even if Alcor collapses financially, these funds are contractually mandated to be used toward protecting Alcor's patients, and maximizing their continued chances of being successfully revived (for example, by transferring them to another cryonics organization).
They're non-profits, I wouldn't necessarily call them charities, as I meant it. But that's a semantic point. I think people are disinclined to trust them, because they're still asking for people's money. If you could build a system where cryonics would be funded by someone (or someones) else and then donated to another recipient, I think that would make people give it far more serious consideration.
Also, I don't necessarily think Alcor and CI are perceived (which is what matters) as non-profits. I thought they were for profit companies until I started researching this post and read otherwise.
Specifically:
— http://www.cryonics.org/comparisons.html