EDIT: Reddit should make a rule banning monetary donations to individuals and users should be able to guilt-free report violations of this rule via the report button.

Monetary solicitations for established charities are great, e.g., Haiti relief (though they still need to abide by no spamming). Its just too easy for someone to fake a story and too difficult to verify.

Originally had:

At the very least, there could be some sort of gold star system similar to IAmA, where (a) an admin/mod verifies the person's true name and address (in case later their story doesn't check out), and (b) attempts to verify as many parts of the story as possible, and (c) people with unverified stories would have a unverified tag (similar to NSFW) saying please do not give this person money, it is likely a scam.

which I no longer agree with as too difficult to implement in practice for mods/admins.