I completely understand your apprehension, I've been around the BTC community long enough to know that people are wary of fake charities. The best confirmation I can give you is that the link is on the official town website. I did not set this up. My good friend is from Darrington and is the son of one of the main project coordinators. He went through a lot of hoops to get this link on the official site. He is working on getting the coinbase account linked to the main bank account (so we can have direct USD conversion), but Coinbase ignored requests to help us speed the process up. For now, he controls the keys, so you do have to trust him. Just know this is a very small town where everyone knows everyone. If he ran off with funds they would know (considering he had to contact the mayor to get this on the town site). And I would be very pissed at him. He just wants to help the town.