Slog
News & ArtsMonday, January 18, 2010
Tech / International Texting Haiti
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 10:01 AM
As you've heard if you're within range of a computer screen or radio or television, Americans have donated more than $11 million to the Haiti relief effort through a simple, groundbreaking text campaign that allows anyone with a cell phone to send $10 to the Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to "90999".
The $10 then shows up on your cell phone bill at the end of the month.
I'm one of these HAITI texters, and I say this not to pat myself on the back—it's very close to the least I could do—but because being part of the text campaign got me curious.
Relatively speaking, how big a response is this? Here's one way to look at it:
Start with the total amount raised as of Friday—$11 million. If everyone's doing their donating in $10 increments, that's 1.1 million Americans giving a little bit to help the people of Haiti.
Heartwarming and generous, sure, but how many cell phone users are there in America?
There are about 275 million cell phone users in America.
Yes, Americans are giving in other ways than through their cell phones. Yes, $11 million (and counting) is a wonderful beginning.
But not even one percent of American cell phone users have joined the text donation campaign. That means there's both huge potential for this type of campaign in the future, and also a lot more that could be given right now.
So.
Have you given to the Haiti relief effort?
And if so, for the comment thread: How?
3
I donated to Docs w/o Borders through Secular Humanist Aid & Relief Effort (SHARE), and directly (via webform) to ActionAid International, which has been on-the-ground in Haiti since 1996, fighting the root causes of poverty by enlisting the locals.
6
1.1 / 275 = .004
That is .4%, which is decidedly greater (40 times greater) than .0001, which is one hundredth of a percent.
That is .4%, which is decidedly greater (40 times greater) than .0001, which is one hundredth of a percent.
7
Mercy Corps. They are on the ground now with emergency help and will remain staffed there for years helping the people of Haiti and their nation recover. They are local as well, www.mercycorps.org.
Ps. I used my phone to make the donation.
Ps. I used my phone to make the donation.
8
I gave to the Haiti relief effort last year on April 15 by e-file.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course. I am taxed for them. Is that not enough?
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course. I am taxed for them. Is that not enough?
9
I posted this last week in a comment thread:
Now this important update added Jan. 15th:
At the bottom of the article is a list of other mobile-based fundraising campaigns.
Haiti Text Donation Campaigns Face 90-Day Delays
Text-to-give campaigns have gone viral in the two days following the massively destructive 7.0 earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12. The immediacy of texting makes it incredibly easy for those following the quake from afar to show their support by adding a small amount to their cell phone bills (especially in the U.S., where the two major campaigns are based). But at this point, it’s far from immediate that the $5 you send to Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti foundation or $10 to the American Red Cross actually gets to Haiti, because it’s standard practice in the young mobile giving industry for donations to be delayed by 90 days...
Now this important update added Jan. 15th:
Update: Around noon PT Friday, Verizon Wireless said it had advanced $2.98 million in mobile donations committed by its customers to Haiti. “Time is of the essence, and it makes sense for us to toss aside our normal financial processes to get money where it can do the most good, in the fastest way possible,” said Verizon Wireless president and CEO Lowell McAdam in a statement.
At the bottom of the article is a list of other mobile-based fundraising campaigns.
10
As a general rule, you want to avoid encumbered donations, i.e. money that must be used for a specific effort. Several aid groups still have funds that they can only spend on Tsunami relief. If you don't trust an agency to make good decisions about how to spend your money, why give to them at all?
A well-regarded agency with established operations in Haiti is Paul Farmer's Partners in Health.
A well-regarded agency with established operations in Haiti is Paul Farmer's Partners in Health.
11
We donated directly to Doctors Without Borders - we give to them regularly.
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the rock star of knitting, threw up the Knit Signal the other day, and has prompted donations of way more than $50,000 - she still has a lot of emails to go through. You can see her post here: http://www.yarnharlot.ca/MT-3.35-en/mt-t…
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the rock star of knitting, threw up the Knit Signal the other day, and has prompted donations of way more than $50,000 - she still has a lot of emails to go through. You can see her post here: http://www.yarnharlot.ca/MT-3.35-en/mt-t…
13
The CEO of the American Red Cross makes $565,000 a year. If you want your money to go to relief and not executive compensation, donate to another organization. Mercy Corps' executive earns $239,773; Partners in Health's executive earns $74,127; and Doctors Without Borders' executive earns $115,640.
15
I donated through Doctors Without Borders website. Partners in Health would also be a good choice.
16
Does paying a lot in federal taxes count? I like to think I bought the case of bottled water that Hilary Clinton and her entourage drank while on the way down there.
18
I donated to the Clinton Foundation, simply because, I hope, Bill has enough money to not pay exorbitant salaries, AND they said 100% would go towards help in Haiti.
19
I gave to Doctors Without Borders through their website. I gave to them after reading an interview on Boing Boing where a spokesman said that they had set up an obstetrics hospital since the PAP ones were destroyed and that they "were still delivering babies".
YIKES!
I've never given birth, but if I ever do I can't imagine a worse situation to give birth in than right after an earthquake that killed 100K+ and destroyed everything.
I didn't give via cell phone because at first they said that the money usually takes 3 months to go through but that they wanted to "expedite" it. Not that I don't trust cell phones companies ... well actually I don't ... but taking a few minutes longer to donate via a website instead of doing it through my phone and having the money go through TODAY and not in April? No brainer to me.
YIKES!
I've never given birth, but if I ever do I can't imagine a worse situation to give birth in than right after an earthquake that killed 100K+ and destroyed everything.
I didn't give via cell phone because at first they said that the money usually takes 3 months to go through but that they wanted to "expedite" it. Not that I don't trust cell phones companies ... well actually I don't ... but taking a few minutes longer to donate via a website instead of doing it through my phone and having the money go through TODAY and not in April? No brainer to me.
21
Ask wife to be a dear and take care of it for us -> Charity Navigator -> Save the Children web site -> credit card.
22
I gave 50 euros to Ärzte ohne Grenzen ( Doctors w/o Borders ) through a direct-transfer, which has no bank rake-off. I'm hoping the US cell companies are not doing the profiteering thing, exploiting charity, the way they exploit their customers in their normal business.
23
We donate regularly to Doctors Without Borders, but we sent along an extra $250 post-Haiti quake.
24
As 10 and 15 said, Partners in Health is an excellent organization: founded by an anthropologist, with a long history of activism in Haiti. I donated to them, to Oxfam, and to Save the Children (which seem to be the only one partnered with PayPal - I wanted to donate my PayPal balance, and Save the Children was the only organization I could find that would take PayPal).
25
Red Cross, online. I don't do text messages. The only ones I've ever sent were "wrong number" to the boobs who keep texting Dwayne or Dwight or whatever the hell his name is, a year after I got his old cell number. "What up dawg u at da game", indeed.
26
Donated directly to Partners In Health through their site. My office also had a by-donation-only casual day for Haiti.
27
I donated through World Vision via a link on Slog, but would likely choose a more secular option next time. I'm sure they are a fantastic organization and I appreciate their work but I can't shake the nagging feeling that some of my $ will go toward the conversion of some poor helpless soul to Christianity.
28
Doctors Without Borders, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and American Red Cross, all online via https. Thought of the texting gimmick, didn't know if donating by text might see my number show up on marketing lists, didn't trust my mobile provider to handle donation properly, realized depths of my laziness, went online.
Cheers to everyone for the good suggestions.
Cheers to everyone for the good suggestions.
29
I did the text thing, but I also donated to Red Cross through my company, which matches employee contributions.
30
Thanks for the info on Partners in Health. I checked them out on Charity Navigator and gave $100.
33
I donated to Partners in Health via my employer's internal giving site, which matches donations 100% (up to $1k annually). I hadn't heard about them until a writer talked them up on Maddow, and I looked into it and was impressed. The 90999 campaign is interesting -- I work on a mobile property, so I'm generally interested in the new ways people are using technology -- but (1) I didn't want to donate to the Red Cross, (2) someone else pays my cell phone bill and I didn't want to stick them with the extra charge, and (3) I felt like my money would go further elsewhere. There are a lot of reasons why most of those 275 million US mobile users wouldn't donate via text, but that a million did is kind of impressive.
37
By text to Yele (Wyclef's org) and by text to the Red Cross.
@17: yeah, you're totally right. My nine-year-old self should've been donating her $3/week allowance to Haiti instead of blowing it on Hubba Bubba soda and nickel candy.
@27: my best friend's mother is one of the higher-ups at World Vision, and while they are a Christian org, they don't do proselytizing. She's offered to set us up with volunteer opportunities in Italy, but to volunteer for them, you have to commit to believing in Christ. Their goal is to do Christ's work (i.e. care for the less fortunate), but not proselytize.
@17: yeah, you're totally right. My nine-year-old self should've been donating her $3/week allowance to Haiti instead of blowing it on Hubba Bubba soda and nickel candy.
@27: my best friend's mother is one of the higher-ups at World Vision, and while they are a Christian org, they don't do proselytizing. She's offered to set us up with volunteer opportunities in Italy, but to volunteer for them, you have to commit to believing in Christ. Their goal is to do Christ's work (i.e. care for the less fortunate), but not proselytize.
38
$100 to Doctors Without Borders via their website.
@ Fnarf, if keshmeshi @ 13 is correct about charity CEO compensation, your donation to the Red Cross kinda contradicts some of the principles you stated over the weekend.
@ Fnarf, if keshmeshi @ 13 is correct about charity CEO compensation, your donation to the Red Cross kinda contradicts some of the principles you stated over the weekend.
43
There are (in the neighborhood of) 10,000 private charitable foundations working in Haiti. Haiti has the spotlight right now, perhaps rightly so, but my world, hope, and heart just grew larger watching Bill Moyer speak to Greg Mortenson about his 'schools for peace' in Afghanistan (thanks to a link in comment #6 in today's Morning News post). So my $$'s are going to Greg Mortenson.
46
@38, I honestly don't give a shit about charity CEO salaries. Really, I just do not give a good goddamn. The Red Cross is a huge organization, much larger than those others, and they'll pay whatever they see fit to pay. It's a negligible expense compared to the money they manage -- it's a negligible part of their own payroll, in fact.
And it doesn't contradict what I said yesterday. What I said yesterday was that US military intervention on a large scale is needed immediately, and that aid -- not money, but actual supplies that money can buy -- is a secondary priority to getting the distribution system going. That doesn't mean people shouldn't give money; it just means that it's going to be a while until the money starts to work, and that time can be reduced by the US Army. But you can't donate money to the US Army.
And it doesn't contradict what I said yesterday. What I said yesterday was that US military intervention on a large scale is needed immediately, and that aid -- not money, but actual supplies that money can buy -- is a secondary priority to getting the distribution system going. That doesn't mean people shouldn't give money; it just means that it's going to be a while until the money starts to work, and that time can be reduced by the US Army. But you can't donate money to the US Army.
49
Doctors without Borders, American Red Cross, and World Food Programme, all directly though their websites.
50
@ 46,
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…
I may have misinterpreted your comment about "low administrative costs" in this case, as I'm under the general impression that high CEO salaries would fall under that heading. I guess Red Cross is big enough that that's still low overhead, relative to other charities.
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…
I may have misinterpreted your comment about "low administrative costs" in this case, as I'm under the general impression that high CEO salaries would fall under that heading. I guess Red Cross is big enough that that's still low overhead, relative to other charities.
51
It's so gratifying to read that so many people have donated to Partners in Health. @33, if you're interested, the book Tracy Kidder wrote about PIH and Paul Farmer is called "Mountains Beyond Mountains," and it's a terrific read.
In addition to PIH, we've given to MercyCorps and also
Friends of the Orphans, an organization which lost two of its volunteers to the earthquake and which is operating one of the few medical facilities in rural Haiti. Their main hospital collapsed, but they have converted their school into an emergency hospital and are doing everything they can to attend to the injured.
In addition to PIH, we've given to MercyCorps and also
Friends of the Orphans, an organization which lost two of its volunteers to the earthquake and which is operating one of the few medical facilities in rural Haiti. Their main hospital collapsed, but they have converted their school into an emergency hospital and are doing everything they can to attend to the injured.
53
I donated via the text thing (send "Haiti" to 90999) and I also sent a credit card donation to Medical Teams International. Part of the reason I picked them was that they have doctors who are in Haiti treating people right now.
55
I should also add World Vision, we have three girls we sponsor and in addition do monthly support to their "Child in Crisis" fund.
Yes, World Vision is a Christian organization, but it is a non-proselytizing one.
Ps. Partners in Health sounds like an excellent group as well.
Yes, World Vision is a Christian organization, but it is a non-proselytizing one.
Ps. Partners in Health sounds like an excellent group as well.
56
Mercy Corps is local (PDX), religion-free, and more efficient (91% of their funds to go to their relief programs) than most comparable charities. http://www.mercycorps.org. I am not down with the Red Cross when Mercy Corps exists. I gave $40.
I agree that more than money, it appears what they need most there is medically trained people, heavy equipment for finding bodies and cleanup, and water. I sincerely hope that the money we are giving is leading toward those needs, or is working in tandem with someone else providing for those needs, or something.
I agree that more than money, it appears what they need most there is medically trained people, heavy equipment for finding bodies and cleanup, and water. I sincerely hope that the money we are giving is leading toward those needs, or is working in tandem with someone else providing for those needs, or something.
58
Texted immediately a couple of days ago when that info first became available. Today via the Médecins Sans Frontières website online donation page.
59
Doctors Without Borders at their website. Any money that I donate outside of my local area, goes to DWB.
61
Boots-on-the-ground friends working in various hellholes, in a position to know, all recommended PIH last Tuesday. Since I gave online they have sent unobtrusive but informative daily email updates noting their progress, describing their plan, and explaining how donations are being operationalized.
I find this level of transparency and accountability, all while getting shit done, to be amazing. A+++++++, would donate again (and so should you, if you can).
http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
I find this level of transparency and accountability, all while getting shit done, to be amazing. A+++++++, would donate again (and so should you, if you can).
http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
62
Matched donation to Doctors Without Borders through work. Unfortunately I have AT&T who have dragged their feet on promising to disperse aid to Haiti quickly. I'd rather give directly to an aid org and let them figure out the best time to use it.
You know that AT&T plans to sit on the money and collect interest on it for a couple of months before they pass it on.
You know that AT&T plans to sit on the money and collect interest on it for a couple of months before they pass it on.
63
Credit card companies are making a killing off donations, since they still charge their fees even for charities. And I looked up mgive just now, and it looks like they've got a .35 cent/message fee plus 3.5% (of the donated money, I presume). They're making just as much money as the credit card companies - 3.5% is about how much credit card companies cost. Granted, credit card companies are making tons of money in other ways, and one could argue that mgive needs to charge 3.5% of the money donated for "operating expenses."
http://www.mgive.com/FAQ/Default.aspx
"Do mGive’s per-message fees (.35 cents + 3.5%) cover or include the fees of The mGive Foundation as well?
" Yes. Part of each transaction fee goes to help the TMF maintain operations. TMF ensures compliance with US mobile giving standards, vet each charity that wishes to participate in mobile giving and distributes funds collected by carriers directly to nonprofits participating in the channel."
Okay, 3.5% of $11M is *only* $385K.
http://www.mgive.com/FAQ/Default.aspx
"Do mGive’s per-message fees (.35 cents + 3.5%) cover or include the fees of The mGive Foundation as well?
" Yes. Part of each transaction fee goes to help the TMF maintain operations. TMF ensures compliance with US mobile giving standards, vet each charity that wishes to participate in mobile giving and distributes funds collected by carriers directly to nonprofits participating in the channel."
Okay, 3.5% of $11M is *only* $385K.
65
I'm giving to Mercy Corps. This texting to donate money doesn't make sense to me. Also, if you're planning to eat out this Thursday, Coastal Kitchen is doing a fundraiser with proceeds to go to Mercy Corps. 25% of sales from the entire day will be donated and Mercy Corps reps will be there to collect donations and talk about their work as well. http://www.seattle-eats.com/coastalkitch…
66
I wrote a check to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Since church members already cover all overhead, 100% goes to relief.
67
I'm not sure the American Red Cross is the best organization to donate to in a foreign disaster. ICRC and the Haitian Red Cross are on the ground in Haiti. I'm not sure what ARC is doing or when they're going to do it. Immediate aid is what's needed right now, especially clean water, and lots of it.
There's a good article in the NY Times today about the text-giving, and the American Red Cross. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19c…
There's a good article in the NY Times today about the text-giving, and the American Red Cross. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19c…
68
Online to Lutheran World Relief, which has guaranteed that 100% of donations will go directly toward work in Haiti, not overhead.
They have a generally very good reputation, with nearly 91% of typical donations going directly to the work they do as oppposed to administrative costs - and they don't proselytize.
They have a generally very good reputation, with nearly 91% of typical donations going directly to the work they do as oppposed to administrative costs - and they don't proselytize.
70
Doctors w/o Borders and Mercy Corp website. Also at Walgreens and QFC Checkout by adding a 10 spot to my total.
71
the more interesting question is how many people who WOULD have donated MORE than $10 now donated LESS than they would have? and is the amount not donated because of that scenario more or less then the amount donated by the text compaign?
73
@71 I had this exact same thought, about my own donation, after I texted $10 to the Red Cross, so I gave $100 more to a churcy group the next day.
@61 And what is it costing them to send all those emails to paranoids who think their organization might be blowing all the cash on Mountain Dew and pull-tabs or whatever?
@61 And what is it costing them to send all those emails to paranoids who think their organization might be blowing all the cash on Mountain Dew and pull-tabs or whatever?
74
If you think Visa or Verizon is skimming a little off the top, just give that much more. Christ, you can afford it.
76
Yes, but not through Red Cross. I donated to Partners in Health, since they already had medical facilities on the ground and were a bit less hampered by shipping issues.
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