Being charitable and thinking long-term.
When I was young there was charity organisation in Australia that was getting a lot of donations of clothes and money to help those in need. It turned out, that the clothes were being dumped and 90 percent of the money was eaten by administration costs. The CEO was on a salary that was on a 600,000 a year salary plus bonuses and perks and so were the board members. This was maybe 1994, so 600K is significant.
Raising Steem
Charity fraud is actually very common in the world and is a double edged blade when discovered. Charity itself is generally based on an emotional response and is returned with a good feeling. When one's charity gets abused, it makes a person feel used and angry plus, much less likely to support the next charitable requirement.
On Steemit, there have been some quite notable charity fundraising with the highest I have seen go over 30,000 dollars I think it was. This is a nice thing to see when a community gathers to help one of their own. But since then, there are an increasing number of hard-knock stories looking for support from the community.
There are many
I am quite a compassionate person but, many of us are in positions that are not comfortable, struggling and doing our best to keep head above water. In some cases, entire countries are in this position. If everyone in a difficult situation puts a hand out and gets a return, there is essentially no pool for anything else and the platform has no chance to ever grow and help a large number.
But, this is not just about the greater good. I have read many of the posts asking for helping hands and some seem somewhat disingenuous and fraudulent. I am not saying that they are per se, but they seem it. This may also be partly because of differences in English levels, but not all.
Now, without Steemit, there would be no Steemit charity behaviour at all and those in a hard way may have no access to other funding. For example, the outpouring for one Steemian could have been shared among a number of such cases. Out of 300,000 members, I am sure there is a lot of heartache ongoing.
Trust, they said
There are also a lot of people raising money for a family member or another Steemit member in their name but, there is no way to know whether all of the funds are transferred through. With the in-house member, there may be some chance, but with a sick granddad or mum, who knows.
It is because of these doubts that I do not give to charity, I do charity directly instead. But, that is not always possible here other than sending some SBD or Steem to an account. There is no way to really know if a story is true or not and this is the internet where Nigerian princes and catfish scams are common.
When payouts and rewards are low, when there is a mountain of spamming and following, the chances that many of the charity stories are fake is high. If a charity post gets 50 dollars, for many here that would be the equivalent of maybe 100 or 200 spam posts. It makes more financial sense to charity post. True or not.
Community support
Steemit and those within should perhaps be charitable in some way to make this platform a community that helps its own however, this is the blockchain. There must be a way to formalize and somehow track the charity behaviours and posts to limit people taking advantage of other's giving nature. I do not know what this could be but perhaps,
- Those raising for internal Steemians must use a feature that sends the payout directly to the other account. This would make a slightly higher hurdle as they would essentially have to make two consistent accounts to take advantage.
Or perhaps,
There could be a group of poorly paid volunteers looking to help to sort through charity applications and do the due diligence work to limit fraudulent claims. Perhaps it would be with some kind of interview process, the technology is available.
People could also donate to the charity pool some amount or set up an auto donation per month where that organisation can filter and distribute cases.
This is awkward
The reason that I am writing about this is because there are so many charity type stories circulating that there will be no way to stem the flow and again, this is the internet and there are many ways to game a system. The worst of them however are those that rely on the gaming of people's compassion.
I feel somewhat awkward about writing this too as I think it makes me sound cold but, I also think that for Steemit to really be able to help many globally, it has to first grow into a position where it has the capabilities. It is not there yet.
How I see it is that the pool must grow heavily in order to really be able to be charitable and effective and this means that quality content must be developed. If quality was the focus, and everyone truly put the effort into developing original content, there would likely be a great deal of growth. This means that more people within the system would have the ability to donate to charities plus, less people would need to ask for charity.
A soup kitchen cannot be funded by the users of it and requires financial support by those with the means. Currently there are not enough people with the means to even get Steemit working the way it is intended let alone as a mechanism for charity.
Quid pro quo
Again, I feel cold for saying this but, I myself have been in financial as well as health difficulties and have been doing all I can to close the gaps I must in order to get through. This in part means working my ass off to produce the kind of content that will both hopefully raise direct investment and grow the platform so that a dollar I earn today will be worth more tomorrow, not less.
Not everyone has this option it seems and that is understandable in some cases but content should also be king here as the community is built upon it. Asking for charity without adding to the community seems underhanded and overly presumptuous for many of the cases I have read.
When I was growing up in Adelaide when I was maybe 14 or 15, there were beggars outside the railway station. Some had their hands out and I never gave to them. There were two though I consistently gave a few cents to. One was a mentally disabled man who had an electric casio piano with a few missing keys and attempted to play tunes. The other was a guy with dreadlocks that joined into his beard and wearing a grey overcoat, would sing and shuffle with a hat upon the ground. They both offered what value they could to the community. It wasn't charity, it was payment for their effort.
I do not have many answers as to how, but am sure that with all of the charitable people and all of the smart tech-heads, there must be a way that we can create some type of support system to help those who need it and as many as possible, plus limit those that look to deceive, while still growing the platform successfully.
Any ideas?
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
This is not the first time I have written about charity, below is from four months ago
The link: text below to save the click.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tarazkp/a-question-of-charity-steemit-development-marketing
As a future development of Steemit, is it possible to have a percentage of earnings automatically transferred to another account?
I am thinking that we are here to improve the world in some way, both as a platform and individuals. What if Charity organisations (verified) created accounts, shared their stories, pleaded their cases as they do normally and we as a community and individuals can choose to donate to them either automatically or per case.
I think for many, making charity an automatic part of our world would mean that we don't need to be convinced each time we donate. It would also remove a lot of the administrational costs associated with foundations and would enable a much more dynamic and fast response option for crises.
It would allow for progress updates to be easily shareable, locals involved to link stories and hopefully in time, improve things for some people in this world. It could also provide access to various revenue streams to locals in need (wherever they are) perhaps through the market place.
What if we could truly microfund large scale projects whilst simultaneously generating and spreading additional wealth for the community? Of course, this would be an opt in situation but would definitely create valuable media buzz and showcase some of the many benefits of a decentralized system and currency.
Perhaps, we can even save some lives directly as the Steemit community.
An idea worth spreading?
Taraz
I feel selfish when I say, you can't do anything about it...
I think it's better to know a person. If they can open the internet to ask for charity they can talk to you.. a lot before you decide wether to give them your money or not. I know this is hard on the giver and the reciever... But that's why most of those spamming won't do that... and the time they spend with you is better for them spent on other spamming posts.
That's my way... though I'm not in a situation to give anything to charity...
I don't need the money so much that I have to ask for them, but I'm 25 and still depend on my parents financially, Lately I finally started to get money from the internet to pay them back but that's only enough for me.
We may also heed the words of Mother Teresa, who told an audience at the United Nations that there are many people throughout the world who are “unwanted, unloved, uncared for, and forgotten by everybody...I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” Mother Teresa’s comments apply across all cultures around the world, where many are starved from social isolation and loneliness. There is a great need for nourishment of the soul through connection and community as well as food for the physical body.
This a good point also. This IS a place to connect, an uncensored place. There aren't many, it should be developed to include more.
I agree with you. I'm new here, and I've noticed that a lot.
Something nice to be cooperating to help the others. But the problem is fraud. And we can't distinguish between a real needy and a crook.
In my opinion, a team can be set up to study each case and this team decides after examining each case
https://steemit.com/nature/@ismail1986/the-smallest-16-animals-in-the-world
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Interesting thoughts and I have to agree with you broadly here.
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Perhaps going the tech route would be over complicating. You could make a charity token or something, but like you say, you gave for effort to (I would say) side step the ethical quandary of whether or not a donation was the right thing to do. On Steemit the parallel is just writing content like anyone else. If you have the facility to access the network (i.e. computer + internet + time) you have what anyone else has.
So really real charity will always be on behalf of someone else, like sick relatives, or something else, like a traditional charity organization. That should require an additional avouchment of fact, that the situation is legit and the money gets spent on the thing. Pretty much exactly like the beggars at the train station.
I've been scratching my head for nearly a year trying to come up with a way to create these kind of vouch networks that preserve privacy and allow for information control while at the same time providing assurance of personal fact. I have yet to crack it, but it would fit this kind of thing.
The best I can think of is simply an escrow where the 3rd party are like the fact checkers you had in mind. You'd have to have someone trustworthy without a conflict of interest, low paid as you say (I presume to reduce the incentive to abuse) though I would go as far as not paid.
This is of interest to me in particular for the future of @treeplanter by the way, and not just idle speculation. I hope more people comment on this, resharing.