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I am starting up a site for people to go to in order to post messages to the 33 Chilean miners who are trapped in that mine shaft for possibly 3 months. Is it legal for me to put up a donation button so I can collect donation money for the family and for the miners when they are rescued. I read on one of the news sites that these men will probably never see any kind of financial aide even after all they have been through. Things don't work the same down there as it does here in the USA. Not expecting to make a lot of money from donations, but anything to help those people.

Thank you!

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You are a nice person sir. best of luck – BhargavPatel Sep 6 '10 at 19:01

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I can't speak about the legal implications, but I can speak as an internet user.

Personally, I'm very leery about donating money to an organization (or someone) that isn't well-known. There are tons of internet scams out there and it's hard to tell the good people from the bad, so I don't risk it. After the earthquake in Haiti, scammers went crazy setting up fake sites pretending to collect money for the victims, but instead they stole the money. That said, obviously there are those that do donate to unknown organizations, otherwise online scammers wouldn't waste their time.

Maybe a better alternative is to team up with a well-known organization, like the Red Cross, to collect donations. You can set up a webpage and redirect people to an official Red Cross site where the donations will be collected. This saves you the trouble of having to deal with the legal implications of handling money, and you will probably get more donations because people trust the Red Cross.

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You'll need ask your personal lawyer about legal issues, especially for things that cross international boundaries.

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