Making Charity Great Again! Peer-to-Peer Charity, The Way it Should Be! Plus 5 SBD prize!
The thing that stops many people from giving to charity is not knowing who they should give the money too. I believe that most people would give a share of their money to help people in need if they were only aware of the people that most needed it.
Many people say that the governments should do more "charitable" things. But charity is supposed to be about helping each other, not having our money stolen (which makes us angry) and then given to someone else from the government (which makes them feel entitled and ungrateful). It should be about you giving money from your own free will (which makes you feel good) and someone receiving help from you. (Which makes them feel grateful)
This last month there was a girl in my small town that got in a snowboarding accident. She ended up in a coma and needing brain surgery. A few members of our community put together a fundraiser. They asked local business for donations of food and products for a silent action. Many members of the community baked desserts and had a bake sale. They were able to raise thousands of dollars to help this family. How do you think we all felt as we participated in this event? How do you think the family felt when they saw the community getting together to support them. It became about more than just the money. This is how it should work.
We could've just raised taxes and then sent them a check from our town. It would've been the same amount of money spread across the community. But how different would that've felt?
I have often thought about how we could better bring together the people who need charity with people that want to help. I think that with blockchain technology we now have the tools to make this a reality.
We could have an organization where people can request donations for themselves or others who are in need. Then people can join by donating every month and then vote on which people receive donations. This would be like if gofundme.com and steem had a baby. The more you donate, the bigger your vote.
So where would blockchain come in? Well blockchain's killer feature is trust. It is a system that allows us to build an organization that we no longer have to trust that they will do the right thing. You don't have to worry about your charitable funds being wasted by irresponsible organizations. You won't have to worry about if you are being scammed. Just simple, peer-to-peer charity.
Would you make a monthly donation to such an organization?
What suggestions do you have to make this a better idea?
Do you have a better idea entirely? Let's hear it!
The best comment (chosen by me of course!) will receive a prize of 5 SBD or half of this posts payout whichever is greater!
I love your point about the difference between when people willingly give to an individual versus when government takes it from everyone and distributes it how they see fit. The biggest difference is the feeling of compassion on the one side and gratitude on the other. That's such an essential part of what makes giving worthwhile.
This idea definitely has merit and I could see it as better than the current system because of the fact that there would be no centralized power governing who got money or not.
One problem that I see though, is that since you wouldn't personally know the people requesting money, it would be hard to tell when people were making up stories about what they needed the money for. It might become more of a "who can dream up the most elaborate story" contest rather than the funds going to the people who actually needed it the most who maybe weren't as eloquent in their presentation of their request.
The only thing I can think of to solve this would be to have some kind of verification process to validate the user and their request. But I don't know how you would do that without a centralized judging committee. I guess there could be some kind of a pre-voting process done by those who had proven themselves to be contributing members of the community. But I'm not sure how that would work.
What starts out as a simple and brilliant idea can quickly become a complicated mess just by virtue of the fact that we can't fully trust one another to be honest. In a perfectly trustworthy society, I think your idea could be a perfect solution.
Love charity. Charity is love. It very important to do charity when it is so much needed by people. Stingy is never a gift. Beautiful idea. Great post.
Did you read my post or are you just comment spamming. Since you didn't even bother upvoting the post I assume you are comment spamming.