The reddit community has rallied around some amazing causes over the years. Way back in 2007, we named the infamous Mr. Splashy Pants. Since then, redditors raised money for Donors Choose in 2010, and Haiti relief in 2010. Recently, there has been a growing trend of subreddits creating their own fundraisers and donation drives in their community with impressive success. The biggest example of this is the "irreverent" folks over at /r/atheism raising almost $200,000 for Doctors Without Borders, but there have also been recent fundraisers at /r/christianity, /r/guitar, /r/islam, /r/twoxchromosomes, and yes even /r/starcraft (add any we've forgotten to the list at help/altruism).In the past, we've helped organize and promote these various fundraisers with blog posts, ads, and coordination with some of the non-profits involved. The fact that these recent campaigns have been so successful and completely independently run by reddit communities makes them all the more impressive and exciting. We love that subreddits have taken the initiative to organize and promote fundraisers, blood drives, and other volunteering, not to mention all of the random acts of kindness subreddits.
The reddit community has now grown and evolved to a point where reddit Inc. is not necessarily needed for promotion and organization. However, we are committed to supporting the reddit community's charitable efforts in any way possible. So, we'd like to propose a question to you: what can we at reddit do to help fuel these type of fundraisers and other organic altruistic activity? How can we make subreddit campaigns more powerful, easier to manage, or easier to join?
On a tangentially related note, we'd like to thank all 90,000 plus of you who signed our Stop SOPA petition and took other action to help save the internet. This bill is an existential threat to reddit and the internet as we know it. Thanks for making your voices heard, and thanks for having our backs on this.
