I'm glad to see this topic brought up. I think Steemit presents a rather wonderful opportunity to create fundraising initiatives.

Personally, not a big fan of the huge charities, mostly because they tend to use a very substantial part of funds raised to cover their fundraising expenses.

What I would like to see more discussion on is how to best use Steemit in support of smaller private organizations. For example, my wife and I have a small non-profit we're currently to fundraise for in connection with creating an educational foundation... supporting those who wish to study and explore the connection and interplay between art and metaphysics ("soft") and conventional "hard" science. We're just four people in all, with local roots but global reach...

Anyway, my point is that we've been considering setting up a Steemit account for the organization... persuading our existing followers to join up here and supporting us through the basic Steemit ecosystem. One of the things we were talking about just yesterday is the notion of "verified" accounts (like twitter and Facebook have) for such ventures... to lend a sense of legitimacy, since pretty much anyone could create a Steemit account and claim to be a charity. Maybe some version of teaming up with @steemverify?