Mission

The sole mission and purpose of Charity Guide is to educate and inform the community about Charitable Giving.

Education and Information

Charity Guide was conceived as a result of a serious concern with the apparent dearth of information about the various ways in which charitable giving can be used for good, and, unfortunately, used for bad. Charity Guide exists to solve this problem through education about charitable giving and charities on this main page, as well as providing information and verification as to various Charitable Organizations and Charitable Requests.

General Education

The main page will provide short explanations and educational outlines all in a digestible and "easy-to-read" format, in order to provide general knowledge regarding Charitable Giving and how Charitable Organizations function. The intent is to allow people to successfully accomplish the charitable giving of their hard-earned funds in a comfortable, consistent, and confident manner.

Information about Specific Charities

The main page will also provide brief outlines of various charitable organizations that may be relevant at any given moment, or that Charity Guide believes is worthy of further attention. All reasoning behind the "worthiness" of any given charitable organization will be transparent and provided along with the outline. *Charity Guide will never accept funds from any charity or charitable organization in exchange for or as a quid-pro-quo for recommendations, reviews, publicity, deletion of negative material, promotion of positive material, or mentions of any kind.

Information and Requests for Verification of Specific Charitable Causes

Charity Guide will conduct randomized reviews of people or groups on the Steemit Platform requesting charitable donations or charitable giving of any kind. Charity Guide will contact the people or groups requesting funds or donations and will seek to have them provide relevant forms of verification and proof of the request's legitimacy, in order to ensure that the funds given are provided to the announced recipient of the donation drive. Any verification provided will be highlighted and made available on the Charity Guide main page, or, should no verification be forthcoming, this lack of response will be noted and highlighted as well. It is the hope of Charity Guide that this will provide an incentive for all individuals or groups requesting charitable donations to use the funds responsibly, in accordance with their stated goals, and increase the transparency of the general giving process. This, in turn, should induce more charitable giving by increasing the confidence of the community with regards to the legitimacy of charitable requests and donations.

All Payouts Declined (and a Note to Curators)

Whether by error because of the excitement of the launch or through the inadvertent clicking of the wrong button, this post went live with the payout choice of "50/50" as opposed to the intended "payout declined."

Any and All Funds Received from Upvotes on this Post will be donated as follows:

1. After the payout on this post, the funds will be converted into Bitcoin through Blocktrades.us
2. Blocktrades.us will be used to sent the funds, once converted, as a donation to the United Way through their Bitcoin Donation page. A picture of the wallet provided by United Way will be posted on the main page of Charity Guide as verification of the donation and transfer. For more information on United Way and their ratings as a charitable organization, please visit the United Way Worldwide page on Charity Navigator. *Please Note: Although Charity Guide would normally prefer to only donate funds to those organizations falling within Charity Navigator's "4 star" range based on both their high financial score and their high accountability & transparency score, because of the limited options of organizations which accept cryptocurrency transfers for donations, the United Way, with a high-three-star 86.04 out of 100 rating by Charity Navigator, was the best current option available.

All future posts will have their payouts declined. Any funds of any kind sent to the Charity Guide Steemit Wallet for any reason will be forwarded to a legitimate non-profit charitable organization.

Charity Guide is not intended to be a source of funds or income for those involved with Charity Guide or in any other way. Charity Guide has no official position regarding the relative value of Steem, Steem Dollars, Steem Power, the use and/or misuse of the reward pool, etc...

Charity Guide is, therefore, intentionally at a disadvantage with regards to publicizing its efforts, as any up-votes given to Charity Guide content will not, apparently, result in any curation reward for the up-voting party, but will reduce the up-voting individual's voting power.

However, we hope that the community will appreciate the value of having Charity Guide as a visible provider of education, information, and verification regarding charities and charitable giving.

The more visible Charity Guide becomes, the greater it's affect of encouraging transparency and honesty in those soliciting for charitable donations, and the great it's affect of increasing the confidence and desire of the larger community to make charitable donations.

Therefore, while Charity Guide will never solicit or accepts funds, we are asking that if you find value in Charity Guide and the service it is providing, to please up-vote Charity Guide's posts in order to increase Charity Guide's visibility, which in turn increases the usefulness and effectiveness of Charity Guide.

Thank you! We look forward to providing you with the ability to confidently (and dare we hope frequently) give to groups and causes who are deserving and increasing the goodness in the world one small step at a time.

Happy Giving!

Image by Raphael Silva