Is Apple Anti-Charity?

Itching to donate to your favorite charity with a tap of your iPhone? Turns out there's not an app for that. Jake Shapiro, CEO of Public Radio Exchange—the developers of the Public Radio Player and This American Life iPhone apps—has come out against Apple's policy of gridlocking donations through applications, and asks the question, "Where's Apple's genius when it comes to supporting nonprofits?" Apple purportedly refuses to be a vehicle for charitable giving on the premises of accounting and accountability: The company doesn't want the responsibility of directing funds to a particular recipient. Shapiro insists that Apple could easily take a cue from Google Grants, TechSoup and GuideStar, who have resolved those problems. What's more, Apple is not only placing hurdles in front of developers, but directly barring non-profits from a vast marketplace of potential contributors by not allowing them to connect with users through one-click payments. "The opportunities for innovation around in-app donation are endless, with tremendous potential to connect people’s best charitable impulses to causes in the moment and on the go," Shapiro writes.