When Elon Musk tweeted[1] at the World Food Programme (WFP) to open their books and provide readily accessible accounting to solve world hunger, the organization used a lot of fancy words but did not honor his request. Why?
Why would an organization, whose mission it is to “Solve Global Hunger,” not do whatever they could in their power to accept an additional $6 billion from the richest man in the world? Are they hiding something? What if the organization didn't quite live up to its mission statement? I mean, how would we know? Are we expected to trust a few marketing pictures and accounting tricks to disclose where donations actually go?
This begs the question of transparency and its role among other charitable organizations. The Red Cross. Doctors without Borders. Save the Children. My intent here is not to smear any of these organizations. The question is: Do we believe charitable organizations have a duty to prove that money and support actually gets to the people that need these resources the most? Are there factors enforcing this type of accountability outside of mission statements and internal auditing? “Don’t trust, verify.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1454809318356750337?s=20[2]
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1454921466500222977?s=20[3]
What if we wanted to donate to a cause that we thought was just and right? A cause like the #FreedomConvoy of Canadian Truckers? We can see that centralized outfits like GoFundMe and GiveSendGo work pretty well at first. User interface is clean; personal funding is quick and easy. But what happens when these platforms deem your cause unjust? What pressures can centralized powers put on these crowdsourcing sites to justify instant funding freezes, or worse yet, use donations for something completely different? Who are they to decide what people do with their hard-earned money?
After venturing
