Questions about RL causes in SL please help

I saw some places having donation prims for certain causes. Is there a way to check the legitimacy of the box and to know that it is really going to the cause in RL? I right clicked on the prim and the creator says unknown.

Also, I am interested in learning how to do such a thing in the future. And how would I be able to give reassurance to the person donating that it will go directly to the cause?(clicking on link on prim that will direct them to the donation that they just gave or something of that nature) or a website on the prim that they could visit?

Any landmarks? Legit associations already doing this? websites pertaining to SL charities for RL causes? ideas? suggestions?

I had a hard time looking for info on this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Find the organization being supported from one of its real world contacts, and from there, find its info about Second Life.

So for example, if it was 'Org X' - go to Org X's website, and look for their 'See us in Second Life' page, and use the SLURL there.

If you can't find a connection to SL from RL, don't trust the things you find within SL.

It's transparency that you're looking for I suppose. One good example is Relay for Life.

http://www.relayforlife.org/

As a general rule treat every donation box in SL just as you would any website asking for donations. Every tragedy in the world brings out the scum of the earth to leech off the people who can afford it the least. That, unfortunately, hampers many very well meaning people and organizations in their very sincere and worthy efforts to help people in need. But, as we all know, the assholes of the world ruin it for everyone.

You can contact Linden Lab directly to inquire about how you can successfully establish a safe way to provide such a service within SL. I'm sure that if you are sincere they would welcome you with open arms and help in any way they could. But it's likely to be a very involved process before LL would endorse your organization. Good luck.

Unfortunately there is no way of knowing unless you can legitimately find a real-world connection (like the donation item owner points to a news story on the charity's web site). Short of that you are basically just trusting the SL person to do what they say. If I wanted to give my SL money to, say, UNICEF, I can always cash out some lindens and donate the money on the unicef web site.

About the only exceptions are donations publicized by LL (they have a Haiti campaign and of course relay for life). There are also charities done by people you know in-world (for ex, last year there was a kid avatar donation drive leading up to the holidays that included RL publicity of the people involved).

My advice is this....Go to the website of these causes and give there... You really do not know.... So many now have "donations" boxes for haiti..... some are legit for sure however I have seen some questionable donation boxes...

I have donated only to people I trusted and have known in SL for as long as I have been here... Otherwise no offence I will go to the website and donate rather than drop L$ into someone I dont knows box....

People are weird and greedy, a person with good intent on giving all donations gathered "could" change their mind when they reach 100000L which translates to a nice amount of RL cash.

This by no means accuses anyone of anything. I'm just saying.

By the same token, there ARE decent people out there who have donation boxes in their stores and DO really send the funds. I've been cashing out and sending $$ to Heifer International for years from my donation boxes. Over a thousand USD has gone to Heifer from SL folks since Jan 2007. Not too shabby.

If you want to donate linden do it inworld using a trusted organisation's kiosk (ONE, RFL, heifer, and others). If you want to donate rl money go to the organisation directly.

As a rule, I won't donate any substantial amounts to any inworld appeal. I do it through RL methods only. I have learned of several worthy causes from SL, Heifer being one, but once I learn of them and decide to donate I do it in RL. I will occasionally throw a few Lindens into a box, which amounts to throwing spare change into the tip cup at my local coffee shop.