Welcome to Positive Portland! A Steem Funded Non-Profit to Aid the Homeless in Portland!

Welcome to Positive Portland! My name is Nick Higgins, and I currently run the steemit page @Nickh725. I am very excited about sharing my ideas with more people and growing my personal steemit account, but I have broader dreams for my impact on the platform and others.

After joining steemit last summer, I quickly realized that steemit would be a wonderful platform for charity! The steemit community is full of amazingly kind and thoughtful individuals, and the platform eliminates many of the barriers that traditionally hinder charitable organizations.

The number one reason that people don't donate, even to causes they strongly believe in, is because the money directly comes out of their pockets. Steemit eliminates that entirely! If someone wants to donate, all it takes is a like or a resteem. Neither of these cost steemit users anything, and they actually might gain from the curation rewards! Can you imagine donating to a cause and actually making money?! It is a win-win!

The ability to post pictures and provide continuous updates on steemit also provides an easy way to verify the validity and the progress of a project.

I have seen numerous posts that were designed to raise money for various causes that seemed to gain a lot of traction, so it seems that members of steemit are eager to help others!
I brought up the idea for Positive Portland at the Portland steemit meetup in February, and it was met with excitement! @Natureofbeing, @Greyhawk, @Doctorcrypto and others all seemed excited about helping the project!

What is Positive Portland?

With all of that in mind, I have decided to start Positive Portland. The goal of Positive Portland is to create the first ever steem funded non-profit! What that means, is that all of the proceeds from this blog will be used to create, and fund, a non-profit that will aid the homeless population of Portland.

Why Homelessness?

Unfortunately, Portland has a large homeless population that is in desperate need of basic supplies. The homeless population has increased over 10% in just the last 3 years, and one man died of hypothermia last winter. Every day I drive or walk past countless people that are trying their hardest to make ends meet, but I am unable to help them. It breaks my heart to turn them down, but I barely have enough money to pay for my food and rent. I’ve always wanted to help those in need, so I decided to start with the population that is most under served.

All of the proceeds from this post will go towards creating the non-profit (filling all of the paperwork and legal documents). See link https://nonprofitoregon.org/helpline_resources/tools_information/faqs/starting_a_nonprofit .The current goal is to raise the $500 I need to start the non-profit! 😊 After the money to start the non-profit is raised, all proceeds will be used to help Portland’s homeless population.

This project allows our steemit community to have a much broader impact on the world around us! I hope that Positive Portland can inspire others within Steemit to help the causes they believe in!