You need a charity to offer it to people for free so that it doesn't seem like a scam to them.

I suppose I really don't follow that reasoning. All Board members are required by Alcor Bylaws to be Alcor members, so you already have some degree of "clearly these people believe in it and are committed to it." I'm not sure how a charity that was founded exclusively for this reason would come off as the slightest bit more trustworthy. An established third party evaluation, certainly. A number of noteworthy celebrities, perhaps, but they're known to advocate all sorts of crazy stuff - we don't want to tip our image even more-so in to "weird crazy cult".

I suppose mostly, I can't think of any legitimate group that feels the need to do a "first one is free" policy - it makes me think drug dealers and cults, not medicine and science.