Bitcoin Forum

Not only are the ICRC doing great work all over the world for years, but it would really help BTC towards general acceptance if organisations like these high profile charities accepted BTC.

I have no idea why they don't already, I thought charities would be beating retailers to the acceptance finish line considering how much it could benefit them to get money quickly and easily and also allow people to send a few pennies rather than the minimum amounts credit cards restrict people to. Not to mention how much easier it would be for them with tax status and borderlessness:p
I also think Charities would be more receptive to petitions too as they are all about spreading awareness etc so have some kind of sympathy with this kind of thing.

Anyway, if this goes well I'll try the same with other charities. Please spam people on FB and whatever with it.

https://www.change.org/petitions/the-red-cross-icrc-accept-bitcoin-donations

Also, sorry; yes - another petition ugh:p

Given that they accept donations, I don't think there is any reason they would be against accepting BTC. I would think they would be open to accepting any kind of money. I know that I would,  if I was in charge of a non-profit

I signed this. I am surprised that one of these petitions havent been created until now. Anyways I agree with the above poster... there is no reason for them not to accept it!

Charities need to be able to report how they spend their money as donations to them are tax deductible. Accepting donations via bitcoin will complicate this greatly as it is not easy to prove exactly how much was spent on what when you are dealing with bitcoins. Yes all transactions are publicly available on the blockchain but it is not always clear exactly when someone paid money to someone else or when someone just transferred their own bitcoin to another address that they control.

They could easily just transfer the said bitcoins to fiat, correct? Then they shoudnt have a problem reporting it as long as they show all transaction history.

im sorry but can people please read their financials.. these corporate institutions are not as charitable as you think. for instance, the haiti disaster. with well over $100mill donated, less than $30mill got to the actual peopl on the frontline that needed the fnds in haiti. the other near $100mill was cyphoned off to admin, wags, travel, PR, advertising.

so i do not at all think bitcoins should be givn to such institutions. imagine it for every bitcoin donated only 0.22 reaches someone in need!!

bitcoin is suppose to be different and is suppose to turn the corporate profiteering upside down and then bury it. so please people think smart when using bitcoins, and stop just thinking about the PR it may give bitcoins just so that you can sell out at a profit. think about the long term retirement millionaire you can be, instead of the small profit of a 6 month investment. purely due to a advertising pmp and dump, such as what doge done with the racecar...

think long term, think wisely about bitcoins true value.

Any company will still have some sort of margin. Whether its goodwill or the red cross, they all have different types of fees that NEED to be paid.

It is worth the extra work, if it can help save people in need though, don't you think?

start a petition so that a company is willing to accept free money?!  ??? ... i give a shit on the red cross. when they dont want free money, others will take it.

Although it is a worthy endeavor to have a charity accept bitcoins, the Red Cross isn't one of those charities. There are many more worthwhile charities to be focused on. Maybe this idea should be expanded to something along those lines?

I would question if it would even be possible to reliably audit a company's bitcoin holdings when the entity may be under-reporting the amount of coins that they hold. It would be easy to verify that an entity has at least "x" coins because the company could simply sign a message with all addresses that hold coins. But there is no real way to confirm that they don't have less bitcoin then they are reporting.

we should not be advertising that we are throwing away good money.. (bitcoins)

we should be advertising that we are smarter then the FIAT lot, that we care about keping bitcoin to have a true value and that people should be throwing their FIAT away..

for instance

bitcoin is $650
"for every bitcoin bought we will give $20 not to the red cross but to a frontline poverty/crisis service actually there helping those in need face to face, (EG seans outpost)"

not
"someone gave 5000 bitcoins to red cross, red cross converted it to fiat for a spot price of $600 each (=$3m) and red cross used 500k for disaster relief and red cross CEO got his pension pot refilled with the rest

I've signed the petition as well as emailed them.


Anyone else who doesn't like red cross or doesn't want to support them,  that is certainly their choice and I respect it.  Ultimately choose whatever charities/programs you feel are best,  and if they aren't accepting bitcoin already then talk to them about it.

agree with everything franky1 says in his posts

also look into greenpeace, recently, how they lost millions just speculating on financial markets, yet don't even accept btc
there are some real idiots at big charities.

support the really small charities that have a proven record on a shoestring, with pure volunteers, they risk being wiped out like small business yet have some of the best people,  a small donation can mean a huge difference to the charity and the people they help

don't get me wrong redcross do amazing work but will never go out of 'business' they get gov. money too and are very high profile

again people like seans outpost are truly good people.

I agree that ICRC are not perfect, and of course they are not 100% efficient (I didn't fully digest their long ass reports in which they outline their spending: http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/annual-report/icrc-annual-report-2013.pdf) but they are highly visible and active charity who, if they adopted BTC, would go a long way to getting others to start using BTC to give to charity and other charities to jump on board AND help some people in need along the way - not in a 100% efficient way, but still in some way. And despite any operational costs etc I still believe RC do good work and have a long standing reputation that most charities do not and are active world wide - that doesnt mean there arent any other charities that are more efficient or do better work, Im sure there are loads of them that do a better job than RC in many ways but the RC is a good balance of size, reach, range of work they do, reputation and results. Again, that doesnt mean they are perfect or other charities dont deserve attention too! If there are other charities that should be petitioned then lets go for that too:)

In regard to wasting BTC by giving to RC, as other said, RC and ANY organisation have some operational costs and inefficiencies, thats unavoidable, but if you were to send BTC to a disaster or war zone right now, then who should you send it to? If RC accepted it today, I would send some for the work they do with Palestinian prisoners because of the current 'conflict'. If next week theres a typhoon in SE Asia killing another 200k people, then I'd send it to the RC to help out there too. If I were looking for an alternative where 95% of the BTC will be 95% effective to the people on the ground in the way franky is hinting at, then what do i do? Scour the internet for someone claiming to be a beaten kid in an israeli prison or someone whos house was washed away? Im sure that would create some BTC to go spent in unintended and uncharitble ways...

Maybe theres a charity metacritic site somewhere (copyright me if not! ; ) where I could find better organisations for different things, but right now I think getting big names like RC on the BTC train is the way to go. If anyone else wants to start a petition to get another charity on board Id be happy to sign that too:)

Thanks to you and everyone else who signed it so far:)


ditto!

please start the petition, I will link to it from bitcoinadoption.org
also looking for other petitions. pm me

Have you tried asking them?

It's running:
https://www.change.org/petitions/the-red-cross-icrc-accept-bitcoin-donations

thanks for linking it:)

sent an email, no reply.

Name one.

Convoy of Hope. There one.

But here are a few others: Direct Relief, Young Life, Samaritan's Purse

Don't get me wrong, Red Cross is a very solid charity (although financials tend to hover around the second quartile rather than the top quartile). When I say worthwhile, it's more implying that there are charities that would benefit much more from an organized transactor gateway in bitcoin.

I feel that setting up the Red Cross for this would lose some of its worth because of the size of the red cross. Focusing on smaller gateways that can serve multiple charities would be significantly stronger in my opinion.

If they don't want to except Bitcoin to help those in need then that is something they will have to live with.  Clearly a poor decision for a charity to turn down donations for those in need.  I view that as irresponsible and I'm not sure I would even want to donate coins to them.  At very least they should make people aware that they could receive Bitcoins if they need help the don't have to hold them if they don't want but don't deprive others who needs the help.

added:  http://bitcoinadoption.org/petitions.php

Send me a PM with any links to other petitions! - Jonald

this must be a better idea! And that bitcoin is doing charity as well.

Might as well throw your wallets out the window. At least greedy 'humanitarian' bureaucracy won't eat 90% of your donations that way.

Aid organizations are corrupt in the most deceptive form: each and every one of the bleeding hearts actually willingly spread their legs to aid in the corruption while spouting idealism.

Well, they must have seen this petition... ;)
http://www.coindesk.com/american-red-cross-now-accepts-bitcoin-donations/