May 15, 2008
Why Isn't It Easier to Track Giving to Disasters?
Lucy Bernholz, writing on Philanthropy 2173, wonders why it’s still so difficult to track exactly how much people are contributing — and to what organizations — after a disaster.
Ms. Bernholz cites a Chronicle article that tallies giving to some of the larger humanitarian groups responding to the crisis in Myanmar. But, says Ms. Bernholz, “We still have no running ticker of online gifts through the myriad online giving sites – globalgiving, NetworkforGood, Google’s Myanmar cyclone site, or any of the sites buying adwords placements for Myanmar disaster relief.”
She continues: “Even if we don’t get a “ticker” of these gifts, isn’t it ironic that the best info we have comes from the Chronicle making phone calls to the big nonprofits and we still don’t have any faster, easier, reliable sense of what giving is going where? We can give instantly, but we still can’t track that giving.”
What do you think? Could and should sites like GlobalGiving have online tickers, or some other way to quickly see how much money is being raised?
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I created a blog that I would greatly appreciate your comments on. It seems to me that MOST donations are done for the wrong reasons and achieve very little. Please see http://overthestairsbelow.blogspot.com/
I’m very disappointed in the New Gates Foundation…what a waste!!! To have any real and lasting social impact, donations have to flow from the bottom…not the top down. By the time the donations reach the bottom there is nothing left.
If I was in charge of such a fund, you would see tangible results….show me results from the Gates Foundation or ANY other charity.
I would love your comments on this and my blog.
Sincerely,
Stairs
— Stairs May 15, 12:45 PM #
Just to be clear here – I’m not saying GlobalGiving needs a ticker – I think we need a collective “ticker” – a mashup if you will, that would aggregate these data from many sites so we could see the whole picture. Not just for disaster giving, either, though we could start there because it seems to be an area that motivates a lot of online giving
Lucy Bernholz
— Lucy Bernholz May 16, 11:56 AM #