Dear Boro Park Community,

Each year around Purim, thousands of collectors fan out across our neighborhoods raising funds for yeshivos, mosdos, and charitable causes. For many organizations, these few days provide critical support that helps sustain their work throughout the year.

In recent years, several digital charitable platforms have emerged to make giving easier. These services offer donors conveniences such as referrals, tax receipts, and simplified digital payments. In principle, these tools should be a tremendous benefit to the charitable ecosystem.

But increasingly, the competition between platforms to attract donors has created unintended consequences, many of which are being felt most heavily by the very organizations these systems are supposed to help.

One major shift has been the transfer of processing costs. In the past, donors absorbed these fees as part of the convenience of using the platform. Today, in many cases, the fees are deducted from the organization receiving the funds. For mosdos operating on tight budgets, this represents a significant and often unexpected loss.

Another challenge is delayed funding. Some platforms distribute books of charitable “checks” before the funds are fully available or before they are properly linked to an account. When organizations attempt to redeem these checks, they sometimes discover that the donor has not yet funded the account - or worse, that the check cannot be connected to any account at all. In previous years, this has resulted in waiting periods of weeks or even months before funds were released. In some cases, the funds never arrived.

This creates an obvious question: why should a donor have the flexibility to delay honoring a charitable commitment for months after it has already been distributed to an organization?

Unfortunately, these systems have also created opportunities for abuse. Individuals can obtain books of checks and distribute far more than they have actually funded. Because Purim collections often involve hundreds of children going door-to-door, it is nearly impossible for organizations to trace the source of problematic checks once they arrive in the office.

Another growing issue is the distribution of extremely small-value checks, sometimes as little as one dollar. While every contribution is appreciated, the administrative burden of redeeming hundreds or thousands of such checks can be overwhelming. Staff must scan and process each one individually. Some organizations have even had to hire additional help just to handle the paperwork, only to find that the value of the redeemed checks does not even cover the cost of processing them.

A simple solution could help: establish a minimum value - perhaps five or even ten dollars - for any digital charitable check. Donors who wish to give smaller amounts can easily do so in cash, avoiding unnecessary administrative strain.

This year, a new complication emerged with the distribution of checkbooklets tied to accounts that donors were expected to activate by scanning them. In many cases, these booklets were distributed but never linked to any account at all. Collectors innocently brought the checks back to organizations, received credit for their collections, and only later did administrators discover that there was no account behind the checks to redeem them from.

None of this is written to criticize the idea of charitable platforms. On the contrary, these tools have the potential to make generosity easier and more impactful than ever before.

But as these systems evolve, it is crucial that the needs of the receiving organizations remain at the forefront. Charitable platforms exist to help donors support important causes - but they must also ensure that those causes are not left carrying the administrative burden, financial risk, and frustration created by poorly designed systems.

As a community, we should encourage innovation in charitable giving. But innovation must come with responsibility. With a few thoughtful safeguards:

• proper funding verification,
• reasonable redemption timelines,
• and minimum check amounts

These platforms could truly strengthen the charitable ecosystem rather than strain it.

Our mosdos work tirelessly for the community. The systems built to help them should make their work easier, not harder.

With great respect,

An Administrator