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  1. #1

    Haiti Aid Advice

    I was amazed and heartened to see the statistic DBR cited about 40% of Americans will give in some way to the Haiti relief efforts. While that is an amazing number, it is crucially important for all charities involved that the money go to the best possible use. To that end, I hope that you read this blog post: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmo...oney-to-haiti/. It is from a Reuters blogger, a very reputable source. His message: when you donate money DO NOT restrict donations to Haiti. He gives the example of one of the finest charities in the world: Doctors without Borders. They have already received enough monetary donations to fund their operations in Haiti for the better part of a decade. They still, however, have presences in many of the world's most dire places that are struggling for any donations they can receive. Places like Darfur, Somalia, Zimbabwe, etc. By donating to a charity as a whole as opposed to earmarking money for Haiti in particular, you can be sure that your money will go to the best use to help those in most need.

    Governments have pledged hundreds of millions to Haiti relief and private individuals have pledged hundreds of millions more. It will be a long time before Haiti's chief concern is a shortage of aid money. For hundreds of millions across the globe, that IS the most pressing concern. There are hundreds of other places around the world where lives can be saved TODAY by donating to the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, or any one of many fantastic charities without earmarking the money towards Haiti. That way, your money can be spent in Haiti if that is where it is needed, or spent elsewhere in the world where it can be put to much better use if that is the case.

    I believe this is an important message that can save many lives around the world, and I hope you all will help spread it. More money is still pouring into charities, it's not too late to make a difference.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Deeetroit City
    Charitable giving is truly a wonderful thing. Charities are not always wonderful.

    With this "flood" of money coming in, fund raising expenses should be relatively small, and a high percentage of the funds going to relief rather than administration or additional fund raising.

    I recommend also looking at the nature of the work performed.

    Doctors without Borders is actually Médecins Sans Frontières, founded in part by French journalists in 1971. The organization does not recognize Israel, and performs much of its work in areas in Africa hostile to the US. The work the doctors do is admirable and incredibly selfless (they go places most of us would never consider visiting with an armed guard), but may not be the work you wish to donate to. I find it enlightening that MSF's response to the Haiti disaster is to merely make the existing facility fully staffed and funded, and to direct donations elsewhere rather than to temporarily expand its Haiti operation.

    http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/index.cfm

    I recommend donating to Rotary International, rated the second best of all large charities throughout the world. 91% of donations go to projects, 4% to administration and 5% to fund raising. Rotary has the benefit of millions of Rotarians around the world, and tens of thousands of Rotary clubs that organize charitable projects throughout the world. A recent emphasis of Rotary is to ensure that potable drinking water is available throughout the world, similar to Rotary's successful campaign to eradicate Polio throughout the world.

    With Rotary, you have one of the lowest administrative overheads and the comfort of respected volunteers overseeing spending at every level. Your money also generates quite a "bang for the buck" as much of Rotary International's spending is to match the funds of local clubs undertaking international projects. Let's say my local club raises $10,000 for water filtration devices for Haiti, Rotary International will match that amount.

    http://www.charitynavigator.org/inde...tail&listid=18

    Rotary International has established a Haiti earthquake fund and clubs from around the world are sending their assistance.

    http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNew...itirelief.aspx

  3. #3
    The whole earthquake thing in Haiti is weird because (although I don't keep up with exactly where earthquakes are), I don't remember an earthquake of this magnitude in the Atlantic.

    I trust Red Cross with both $$ and blood.
    ~rthomas

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by BD80 View Post
    Charitable giving is truly a wonderful thing. Charities are not always wonderful.

    With this "flood" of money coming in, fund raising expenses should be relatively small, and a high percentage of the funds going to relief rather than administration or additional fund raising.

    I recommend also looking at the nature of the work performed.

    Doctors without Borders is actually Médecins Sans Frontières, founded in part by French journalists in 1971. The organization does not recognize Israel, and performs much of its work in areas in Africa hostile to the US. The work the doctors do is admirable and incredibly selfless (they go places most of us would never consider visiting with an armed guard), but may not be the work you wish to donate to. I find it enlightening that MSF's response to the Haiti disaster is to merely make the existing facility fully staffed and funded, and to direct donations elsewhere rather than to temporarily expand its Haiti operation.

    http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/index.cfm

    I recommend donating to Rotary International, rated the second best of all large charities throughout the world. 91% of donations go to projects, 4% to administration and 5% to fund raising. Rotary has the benefit of millions of Rotarians around the world, and tens of thousands of Rotary clubs that organize charitable projects throughout the world. A recent emphasis of Rotary is to ensure that potable drinking water is available throughout the world, similar to Rotary's successful campaign to eradicate Polio throughout the world.

    With Rotary, you have one of the lowest administrative overheads and the comfort of respected volunteers overseeing spending at every level. Your money also generates quite a "bang for the buck" as much of Rotary International's spending is to match the funds of local clubs undertaking international projects. Let's say my local club raises $10,000 for water filtration devices for Haiti, Rotary International will match that amount.

    http://www.charitynavigator.org/inde...tail&listid=18

    Rotary International has established a Haiti earthquake fund and clubs from around the world are sending their assistance.

    http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNew...itirelief.aspx
    I do appreciate that you gave DWB some props before you dissed them. They worry more about helping people than about whether that particular country's foreign policy is in agreement with that of the US - I would hope that to be particuarly true for phsyicians (remember, even in war time our military physicans will treat the civilian casualties of the very country we are at war with - doctors are strange like that).

    Rotary does some great work. So do many other organizations. It is always good adivce to do one's due diligence before donating. But extolling one charity while criticizing another seems, well, odd given the present circumstances.

    In addition you (and me now by extension) are treading close to PPB material. I'm sure that won't be tolerated. Remember the timing. If you look at the date the sale of the site was announced, it seems pretty obvious that the former-owners-of-DBR/now-employees-of-SBNation were in sale negotiations at the time the PPB was closed. Given that SBNation tolerates no political discussion I'd be careful about treading too close to anything remotely not related to sports. In fact, I woulldn't even get too attached to the Off-topic board, from what I've seen on SBNation.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Asheville, NC

    Make sure

    To ask how much of the money will be going to administrative expenses. I believe any reputable charity should give you some sort of answer...Yes, they may lie or not know for certain, but it never hurts to ask.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Skinker-DeBaliviere, Saint Louis
    1) Lisbon had a pretty impressive earthquake in the 18thC. Also, I don't know if the New Madrid fault counts as on the Atlantic, but it's near the Mississippi River, which feeds into the Gulf, which is part of the Atlantic basin basically.

    2) I like to go local with these catastrophes. Olivia Wilde appeared on Rachel Maddow representing ArtistsforPeaceandJustice.com. So I just late-adopted Twitter because I wanted to follow Olivia Wilde. She has a pre-existing relationship with a doctor down there who runs a free pediatric clinic. She's been raising money for this guy for a while. She says the philanthropic "storefront" she pimps, artistsforpeaceandjustice.com is sending 100% of the donations through her Twitter to her contact, Father Rick. The banks are destroyed so they are literally converting the donations to cash to get the supplies they need.

    My mother-in-law worked for the Red Cross for about 25 years. By the time I met her, she ran the local chapter for about four counties around LaGrange, GA. She said that a lot of the donations after Katrina just sort of went into the maw. And the Red Cross is great. I'm too skeptical to believe that 100% of anything goes to anything. But when Olivia Wilde goes on TV and says she personally knows one guy who has a ministry, and that she's been there multiple times, well before the earthquake, that's good enough for me. I'm buying that this Father Rick is the real deal.

    Here's Olivia's interview on Maddow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baJRU6q6B4s

    Here's her Twitter: http://twitter.com/oliviawilde

    3) Taking down the PPB had absolutely nothing to do with the sale of the site. Zero.

    First of all, Julian had long displayed ambivalence about whether the PPB represented the site well. He trusted the moderators to keep an eye on it.

    By about late 2008, the majority of the moderation team was in favor of discontinuing the PPB. By that time, Cavlaw and I were the only ones speaking up for it, IIRC, possibly BlazinDW. Cavlaw wanted it moderated much more strenuously. We also argued that it would settle down after the Presidential election. It turned out that we were very wrong about that. By May 2009, another outbreak of rampant incivility foregrounded the issue again. By that point I was the only mod arguing to keep the PPB.

    The proximate cause of the timing of the PPB's discontinuation was that in late September, I posted on the mod board that, in my judgment, the PPB had devolved to such a degree that I was dropping my objections. Some discussions took place with Julian and the board was discontinued three or four days later. I'm not trying to make it sound like I think I'm important or something--I'm just telling it like it is. Once there was unanimity on the moderation team, that was it, and it was only a matter of consulting with Julian.

    At that time, most of the mods did not know that Julian was looking to sell the site. The timing was due to the PPB losing its last advocates, probably in an overdue fashion. It easily could have been discontinued a year earlier.

    A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
    ---Roger Ebert


    Some questions cannot be answered
    Who’s gonna bury who
    We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
    ---Over the Rhine

  7. #7
    There was also a fairly severe earthquake in Charleston, SC in 1886. Per Wiki, 60-100 lives were lost.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Deeetroit City
    Many Rotary clubs are sending "Shelter Boxes" to Haiti

    http://www.shelterbox.org/about.php?page=9

    This program is not exclusive to Rotary, but was started by a Rotarian and is a Global Rotary Club Project.

    The boxes contain a ten person tent ad a variety of other survival/energency items such as ground cloths, blankets, utensils, tools and water treatment. The boxes are customized to suit the emergency, and the boxes are coded and can be tracked to its final destination on the website.

    Doctors in Haiti have been using the first of the shelters to arrive to create a field hospital. Those left homeless will be receiving shelters that are en route, but many more are needed.

    http://www.shelterbox.org/news.php?id=235

    http://www.shelterbox.org/news.php?id=236

    For those looking to directly help Hatians, this is an option that may be attractive.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Deeetroit City
    Shelter is a dire need now in Haiti:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100126/...iti_earthquake

    Haiti's homeless plead for tents after earthquake

    ... Competition for the canvas homes has boiled into arguments and machete fights, a sign of the desperation felt by the hundreds of thousands of people without homes struggling for shelter in this wrecked city. Haiti's president has asked the world for 200,000 tents and says he will sleep in one himself. ...

    Tents are in desperately short supply following the 7.0-magnitude quake on Jan. 12 that killed at least 150,000 people.

    The global agency supplying tents said it already had 10,000 stored in Haiti and at least 30,000 more would be arriving. But that "is unlikely to address the extensive shelter needs," the International Organization for Migration stressed.

    The organization had estimated 100,000 family-sized tents were needed. But the U.N. says up to 1 million people require shelter, and President Rene Preval issued an urgent appeal Monday calling for 200,000 tents and urging that the aircraft carrying them be given urgent landing priority at Port-au-Prince airport.

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