How Public Blockchains Can Take the Guess Work Out of Giving

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Have you ever donated money and thought, “I wonder where that’s really going?”  It is a sad reality that donated funds do not always wind up where we think they will. In fact, you can actually find entire charitable organizations whose sole mission is to help you find other charitable organizations worth giving your money to. This phenomenon of your money not going where you think it will happens at every level. Some organizations spend most of your donation on operational expenses, some are outright scams – even the guy asking for change on the corner probably won’t be spending that money on food.

The trick is finding reputable organizations that will use your money responsibly. You want a charity that is transparent.

Transparency on how donations are being allocated helps to build trust among donors, and an easy way to be transparent is to accept donations via cryptocurrency.

 Most cryptocurrency has a fantastic feature that should be leveraged by philanthropists across the globe; the public blockchain. A blockchain is a complete record of every transaction made with a certain cryptocurrency. Every time a piece of this digital currency is spent, thousands of computers across the world verify the transaction simultaneously, and record it. This is what allows crytocurrency to work globally without any bank affiliations. The data is hosted on thousands of servers, which makes counterfeiting nearly impossible, and a tight record is kept of every transaction. Public names are not posted to the blockchain, but if a philanthropist gets his hands on the public address of the charity they are contributing to, they can simply search for that address on the blockchain and see every transaction the charity makes. This type of hyper-transparency would force charitable organizations to be honest, and would help donors to make more informed decisions when it comes to giving.

 Now, this scenario requires charitable organizations to completely manage their finances through cryptocurrency. This is not yet our reality, but it may not be as far away as you think. When it comes to technology, change happens rapidly and old systems are quick to become completely obsolete. Keep an eye on the world of giving, pretty soon it may all be happening on a blockchain.