Hello, if you are reaching out to me with donation requests or requests to share your fundraiser, here are a few quick things:
- I do not have a credit card. Both Chuffed and GoFundMe fundraisers often require you to have a creditcard, sometimes even if there is a PayPal option. If this is the case for your fundraiser, I will not be able to donate.
- I only share vetted fundraisers. My apologies to anyone with a non-vetted fundraiser, I know it is difficult to get vetted nowadays. However, I am not equipped to judge the legitimacy of fundraisers myself, so I rely on this vetting process.
- If I get a lot of asks, I will spread them out over a period of days to avoid overwhelming people and hopefully increase the chance of people donating.
- I try to keep up with the asks I get, but I may get tired/overwhelmed, which may mean I don’t respond. Apologies for that.
- I do not respond to mentions in the comments of an unrelated post.
If you are here to inform me all the Gaza fundraisers are scams: I have read the arguments and found them utterly unconvincing. All of the actual ‘evidence’ people use to argue against the validity of these fundraisers (non-Gazan organisers, large and perpetually shifting goals, multiple accounts, etc) are easily explainable if you’ve bothered to pay any kind of attention to how Gaza fundraising works. The other arguments (stock asks, asks with similar wording, similar names/stories, etc) boil down to nothing more than vibes, and are also easily explainable.
The vetting process for fundraisers is extensive. Arguments discrediting it fall apart if you know even the slightest bit about it, and realize that the prominent vetters for Gazan fundraisers have been on this site for years and years. The idea that these vetters are 'in league’ with the scammers is nothing more than a racist conspiracy born out of annoyance at being asked for money.
If you don’t trust a fundraiser, simply ignore it. If you wish to donate to grassroots kitchens/aid in Gaza rather than individual fundraisers, do so. If you only feel secure donating to established international orgs, that is your choice, but remember that none of that aid is getting into Gaza. There is no need to spread rumors of scams based on pretty much nothing but vibes and a lack of knowledge.
