I do hear that. But it seems to me, having the company take the deposit creates perverse incentives, e.g. the company is basically betting on the user breaking their commitment.

A key difference also is, by requiring the deposit before resolving the commitment, it removes the escape hatch of just canceling your credit-card. It also generalizes to any app on the platform.

I was considering supporting anti-charities (e.g. NRA, DNC etc..), but I thought that was unnecessarily distracting.