Texting Support for Haiti

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I thought this was cool. According to this article, the Red Cross has raised over $5 million (in one day, surpassing all of 2009 donations by the same method) by allowing people to send a text to donate $10. All you do is send a text to 90999 with Haiti as the message and it tacks $10 to your phone bill and sends the money to the Red Cross. I think it is pretty cool that that many people decided to help. It would be nice if this type of donation caught on in other charities.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/14/onli ... tml?hpt=T2

That is a great idea.

I saw that, and it scares me. It's good to be able to do that in an emergency like this one
but, once it's done, it becomes standard procedure. And a new way to rip people off.
There's so much room for fraud in that... I just want to find a cave to live in.

How to donate without risk topic

One way i have always done this is to go to an official charity office or my bank and give what I have, much like giving to the Salvation army at Christmas. I would rather not do so electronically.

I donated to Wyclef's Yele the other day through text message. I probably would not of been able to give otherwise.

"Hopefully" without fraud in the way, the "texting" ideas was ingenious.

Every time there is a disaster millions of well meaning people send millions of dollars.

Every time it turns out that very very little of the money actually gets to the people who need it.

I hope that the donated monies actually gets to the people that need it.

I don't have any money anyway but, if I did, I would stick to the old, familiar organizations
like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. Most charities, even the legal ones, spend
more than half of what they get on advertising. I hear that some spend 90%.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtQqN7nw8ww[/youtube]


The military is also involved in relief efforts in Haiti. I will be purchasing a support the troops sticker ribbon so the money will go to the troops providing relief.