Saturday Deep Dive: Participating in a Charity

Today's Dive into the depper archive of Webcomics.com comes from Dec. 5, 2011, when we discussed participating in a charity.

This question comes up from time to time* -- and it becomes particularly relevant this time of year. Perhaps you've been asked to participate in a charity by providing art so some people can use it to generate funds that they will, in turn, give to a charitable organization. Or perhaps you've been moved to organize such a charity.

Participating in a charity

I'm always a little frightened by this -- especially if the charity is one of the many grass-roots, "on a shoestring" kind of efforts. I'm always concerned that...

Either

(a) The person running the charity falls to temptation and either skims some (or all) of the money for himself/herself.

or

(b) The person that runs the charity hasn't filed the proper registration nor the correct tax documentation, and as a result they fall into questioning by a government agency (like, say, an IRS audit)

and then

My participation in the charity -- through either donating art to enable the charity to operate or by promoting the charity on my site, social media, etc. -- becomes complicit to any wrongdoing that this person -- intentionally or unintentionally -- enacted.

Read the entire post and comment there.

* Post Update: This post was originally written in 2011. Since then the charity I originally linked to, Comics Creators for Freedom, has officially partnered with Love146, which lists its 501(c)(3) accreditation on its Web site.