send a text donate to haiti

[Steve knight]

"Text 'HAITI' to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts!" or, "Text 'Yele' to 501501 to donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund."
be sure to confirm who your sending the text to is legit.

[Mitchell Andrus]

The major credit cards have agreed to wave their service charges to the major charities... for now. This puts an extra 2.5 to 3% where help is needed.
.

[Tom Godley]

I always donate to the Red Cross when disasters like this occur because what these organization really need are the funds to purchase and deliver what is actually required.

But I find the idea of instant donations like this fascinating because it allows a huge pool of people to donate small amounts that they otherwise would not have donated thereby providing the funds needed before the tragedy moves off the front page.

Does anyone know how the funds are actually delivered to the charity? In some countries you have a dedicated funding source for purchases made with your phone - since we are still in the stone age in the USA on this front -- how does it work?

[Glenn Clabo]

"The bulk of that cash is headed to the Red Cross and being handled by a Denver-based Mobile Accord. The company was contacted by the State Department Tuesday and asked to setup a donation account, said the company's chief operating officer, Bradley Blanken. MGive then contacted the Red Cross.
The most prominent system lets cellular phone customers send the message "Haiti" to a special number, 90999. The system then replies with a confirmation request, and then funnels the money to the carrier, which distributes the proceeds to the charity and adds a charge on the customer's monthly bill.
Most carriers are passing along 100 percent of their donations to relief organizations."

[Horton Brasses]

Apparently they have raised more than 3 million dollars through the text campaign. Pretty impressive and pretty fast. We made a donation but it was to Doctors without Borders as we generally support that organization and they already had people on the ground there.

[keith ouellette]

I was hopping to find a local charity that was collecting food ,water and cloths.

Believe it or not i have no idea how to text and no inclination to learn

but we do have some nice cloths we were saving for a garage sale and a good store of canned goods we don't use regularly that we would love to donate.

I'm sure many people in Haiti lost pretty much all they're belongings.

I guess its just easier for charities to collect money and then buy in bulk.

[Steve knight]

collecting and transporting it all would be a nightmare.

[Bill Cunningham]

There also finding that as many as 2/3 of the text donations do not get completed, because people are not replying to the 'confirm' message.. Ya gotta do both parts..

[Steve knight]

I never got the confirmation txt. so their system may be whacked. I did it again and got one right away.