If you’re interested in contributing to the Haitian earthquake relief efforts, one of the easiest ways to donate is to text “haiti” to 90999. Doing so will contribute $10 to the American Red Cross, and the $10 will be added to your next phone bill. (The Red Cross emphasizes that 100% of your $10 donation goes to the Red Cross for Haiti relief; the carriers keep nothing.)
More information is available here.
If there’s anything positive to be gleaned from the terrible crisis in Haiti, it’s the swift fundraising response that has been driven largely through social media. The Red Cross claims that over $3 million has been raised through the above text messaging campaign, which is remarkable given that this effort has only run for about 36 hours. 300,000+ participants in such a short time is a miraculous effort in itself.
There have been a number of other text campaigns working to raise money for this crisis; the Red Cross campaign actually emerged a few hours after Wyclef Jean’s effort (you can donate $5 to his Haitian relief campaign by texting “yele” to 501501). All of these text fundraisers are spreading virally, thanks largely to Twitter and Facebook updates. Observers have already called this “the largest text-based fundraising campaign for disaster relief in history.”
While we’re sometimes quick to dismiss the significance of social networking and social media, this news comes as a small consolation in the current crisis. “Impulse purchases” may often be dismissed as a lack of resolve, but in this case, the simple, rapid mechanism for donating has shown the upside of human impulsiveness. When we watch the videos of the disaster, see the photos, read the stories, and hear the coverage, most of us feel the pull to “do something.” Having a quick means of making a small contribution allows us all to act on that emotional compulsion.
When we have a chance to eventually reflect on these efforts, there will be a instructive lesson here for brands looking to drive social responsibility campaigns. The combination of a resonant cause with a simple mechanism for fundraising can generate significant contributions for a worthy effort. These methods can also call attention to pressing issues in a remarkably short period of time. Hopefully it won’t require another tragedy to generate the same kind of response.
