I just saw a story on the TV news where a family has been denied an insurance claim for an illness that their baby has. Of course, the news didn’t tell us why they were denied, and I wasn’t really paying attention to the dollar amount they require or the illness that the baby has, but I did notice what the news chose to focus on: Their accepting donations via PayPal.
This got me thinking a bit. Would it be possible to apply the Street Performer Protocol to charity?
Suppose there was a site that allowed people with hard cases like this family to register their needs. They would provide a description of their problem and the amount of money they’re asking for. Perhaps someone at the site confirms their situation - this might or might not be necessary. Charitable visitors to the site would peruse the cases and sponsor the ones that they want to contribute their money to. That sounds too simple, but then the street performer protocol kicks in.
You would pick multiple things that you think are worthy of your contributions. Only one or two of them are going to get enough contributions from other visitors to meet the required funding level. Those are the ones that get funded.
This is just a rough idea, with obvious problems. There could be a system that recommends you add your cash to specific funds to push it over the top, especially if your donation is sitting in an otherwise unfunded cache. Also, you might want your money split certain ways and not all sent to one place. That would take a little more control and a much more complicated algorithm to determine who gets funded.
The nice side effect is that you know that your money is doing immediate good. You can say you donated money to a specific cause and that they met their fund drive goal with your help. Maybe if the site was set up correctly, the donation could be a tax deduction. This would probably be difficult, since cases are user-submitted and not site-provided (hence my thoughts for moderation, above), but still something to think about. I know that charity is a reward in itself, but if people are looking to be charitable, it’s nice to know that there is some incentive, or maybe even a reward for doing more of it.
There must be something that does this, because the idea is so simple and I’m so out of the loop in this arena that I wouldn’t even be aware of someone doing it. For this couple and their baby, maybe the story on the news is enough. But think of all of the people who don’t get their story told on the TV that could be helped like this. It might be a worthwhile project.
