I didn't mean to seem so harsh.. I have been thinking about these issues for a while and trying to organise donations for a few causes now already..
A few things that may be relevant here:
I've been working on a tool called steemface to cross-verify account ownership between steem and facebook that has similar features to what you describe - it could be extended to include verification by other means..
I've also been running @steemleak, donating to wikileaks via donations like you're proposing - made a simple website and reporting system and auto convert to btc via @shapeshiftio .. Its not pretty yet, but the idea was to work towards making a turnkey solution for charities to reproduce their news updates on steem from fb/twitter/rss and automatically do reporting and conversion without technical knowledge..
This was a long term project though keeping in mind that I'm sorta stuck handling @steemleak for at least 2 years for free :P
If the community decides to support this project then I'm happy to donate any relevant code and tools I make for free. I'm just in it for the karma :)
Well for one we would like to thank you for even asking the questions that needed to be asked. It shows people in the community are aware there is room for abuse and hopefully we can all make sure it is kept to a minimum. Because we can't stop it all. But thank you for the posts we will be checking it out for sure. If we run into any coding issues or need any help we will let you know thank you for offering. You can join us on steemit.chat if you like our room is in the post if you would like to keep up with what were doing.
I'll join the rooms, and keep an eye on the project - I AM happy to see more charity efforts I'm just scared of the abusing ruining trust for everyone. Good luck with everything I'll be watching :)
I also immediately grasp the importance of the security measures against gaming the system, and red-flagging potential abusers. Giving away money naturally attracts scammers. The other thing is, like you say, it does take some money to set up a secure system, and the big plus about running it through Steem is that anyone can see who is getting what, and they can also double check, if they are inclined to do so.
It's funny also, I have a situation myself, where I need a fairly big whack of change to break through administrative cost boundaries to get my residency permission. But most of that money only needs to be in my account long enough to do the paperwork, and once they give me the permission, I can get the ID card and I have 1 year of being a proper Bulgarian Long Term Resident. The money can go directly back to the donor. And with that ID card, banks will give me a loan. I don't need a huge one to then cover the cost of getting the no-job-advance-rent-payment lease agreement and pay that back as well. The point is that then I am in a position to offer hosting services directly out of my residence for witness or miner systems. I can't do that in my current location.