Don’t Give Money [Directly] to Haiti
Through telethons and charities, the world has donated billions of dollars to aid in the relief effort of the recent earthquake tragedy in the country of Haiti. All of that money has been earmarked especially for Haiti disaster relief, which is probably a bad thing.
Felix Salmon of Reuters posted on his blog about this very topic. He talks of the tsunami disaster in Asia nearly five years ago. From the post, “the Red Cross has still only spent 83% of its $3.21 billion tsunami budget — which means that it has over half a billion dollars left to spend.” That half a billion could have been spent on Haitian relief, if it wasn’t earmarked for the tsunami distaster.
Salmon also talks about Doctors Without Borders (or, properly, Medecins Sans Frontieres), a French charity which goes to areas around the world suffering from natural disaster, disease, armed conflict, malnutrition, epidemics, and exclusion from health care. I agree that MSF is an excellent charity to which to give donations.
Giving unrestricted donations to a charity also allows other areas of the world to continue to receive the help they most desperately need. The media attention given to Haiti–which, granted, is needed–has taken the attention from other parts of the world that need help, too. Here’s a note on the MSF website about giving unrestricted donations:
We are now asking our donors to give unrestricted funding, or to our Emergency Relief Fund. These types of funds ensure that our medical teams can react to the Haiti emergency and humanitarian crises all over the world, particularly neglected crises that remain outside the media spotlight.
Saundra Schimmelpfennig has a great post on her blog about what to do and what not to do when making charitable donations–Salmon also links to her post.
CNN has compiled a list of 34 reputable charities as rated by CharityNavigator.org–a not-for-profit organization whom evaluates charitable entities based on effectiveness and financial stability–and vetted by CNN journalists. Some are worth donating to and some I’d be cautious and follow Saundra’s advice. Here are a few that I, a non-profit skeptic, would donate to based on my experience as a prior donor or volunteer (links point directly to donation pages):
In the comments, please let me know what charitable organizations you’ve donated to or volunteered for in the past and your experiences with them.
[photo via Eric Marrapodi of CNN]
