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Help me find a Haiti relief agency with peer online fundraising
- 16 January, 2010
- 9 comments
Like many people, when I heard about the disaster in Haiti, I wanted to help. And I wanted to give others a way to help, too.
Here's what I decided to do: go to a relief agency's web site, and set up a peer fundraising page (along the lines of what Convio, Blackbaud and DemocracyInAction create for their clients).
These are pages where you can collect donations onĀ behalf of the charity; they handle the credit card transaction and tax receipts. Health charities in particular have become adept at creating those pages - think Run for the Cure or our friends at BC Children's Hospital Foundation - and the breakout success story for peer networked fundraising was the Howard Dean presidential campaign.
My thinking was, for every donation over a certain amount - say, $50 or $100 - I'd send the donor a signed print of their favourite Noise to Signal cartoon. While I can't handle credit card transactions or charitable receipts, I can handle printing, signing and mailing prints.
I'm all ready to go at this end. But I can't find a Canadian relief agency that would let me do this.
Pretty much everyone takes donations online, but whether I'm missing something or it's just not there, the fact is I couldn't find one enabled for networked fundraising.
So I'm turning to Social Signal's readers and the nptech community: can you help me find the right agency? Here's what I'm looking for:
- Ideally, I'd like to work with a Canadian charity. But if I can't find a Canadian partner, I'm happy to support another agency. (Ammado looks like a possibility.)
- I need to be able to track who has given how much (or at least who has given more than the threshold amount).
- I need to collect their contact information - at the very least, an email address - so I can send them their print.
Suggestions?



Comments
Jennifer says
Looks like about 50 such peer fundraisers have started up here - hit show all!
David Geilhufe says
I don't know of a specific charity, but if they are using CiviCRM, they just need to check a checkbox... they don't have to go back to their vendor to buy something extra.
Nancy White says
Rob, one way is to tap into the project Flickr is doing with prints.
A Canadian NGO I heard about today also sounds intriguing. Global Medic http://www.facebook.com/pages/GlobalMedic/40657997157
Rob Cottingham says
I'll be sure to check out that NGO, Nancy - thanks!
And tell me more about this Flickr project... Sounds very intriguing.
Anonymous says
check out this page on unicef's site, this is what we're using at our company
https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/LoginRegister.aspx?EventID=28991&LangPref=en-CA
Donate For Haiti says
Hey..I was also searching for a way to donate for Haiti & I found a really easy & safe way to help Haiti relief. You can also contribute from there.
Rob Cottingham says
I visited the site you linked to, and it uses PayPal to solicit contributions. But it doesn't mention how they'll be used, or which organizations will be receiving the funds - which I think you'll agree is absolutely vital to know.
Instead, it seems to direct the funds to a company called e-intelligence - something the site doesn't disclose.
I've asked PayPal to look into the site. I would hate to think anyone would try to divert funds meant for people who are suffering under the worst conditions imaginable, so I'm hoping this is a case of poor disclosure.
In the meantime, I hope you'll understand that I've removed the link until I can verify the legitimacy of this site.
Donate For Haiti says
Hey..Check out this site.. [link removed]
I have donate for Haiti from this secure way.
Rob Cottingham says
So... yes, it was comment spam. And I won't be restoring the link.
How anyone could justify siphoning money from the most vulnerable people on the planet, at a time of huge suffering, boggles my mind. I can only assume we think about the world - and our place in it - very, very differently.
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