Research for Haiti

Donations by Phone Text Messaging: Stanford Social Innovation Review

An interesting brief article on the text-giving: Five-Digit Giving (June 14, 2010) | Stanford Social Innovation Review. At least one survey found that one-in-eight households said it used text-giving to donate to some cause.

The cons of raising donations through text messaging:

“Nonprofit leaders also worry that mobile giving will result in less money raised. “There is a fear that people who give smaller amounts through texting will not give otherwise,” says Katrin Verclas, a MIT Media Lab fellow and cofounder of MobileActive.org. Indeed, the average online donation in 2009 was $92, reports Network for Good, whereas text donations are capped at $10. Verclas says the other possible downsides of mobile giving are the fees that nonprofits incur, the complexity of setting up a campaign, and the payment delays that nonprofits face. Donations take from 30 to 60 days to process, though in the case of Haiti, wireless carriers remitted millions of dollars to nonprofits well before donors paid their cell phone bills.”

One commentator on the article notes that mobile phone donation systems can be set up that allow users to opt to give larger amounts, not just a set amount. If so, that could help raise the amount given, by some donors, to the more traditional amounts one sees through mail solicitations.

The pros:

“[The] pros of text giving are growing as the dollar amounts rise. At the top of the list is the discovery of a new generation of donors who want giving to be quick and easy. A week after the earthquake in Haiti, the Pew Research Center reported that 14 percent of American donors gave money by text. That group, according to early analyses, skewed young.”

Update: Tracking the $3 Billion and Now Private Funds

A prior post provided some early thoughts on where the money is going and where it is coming from. I know see an interesting "make a table" function at Relief Web that presents data from the Financial Tracking System (FTS) of the UN. The page and the instructions are a little confusing, but here's the table I produced (I move to the second tab some text the table generates, sorted by recipient (called "appealing agency" awkwardly fy FTS, and I hid some columns to make the table tidier, but not date was removed). The figures are updated from the prior post and it has more details (as well as fewer acronyms). Please try out the make a table function and let me know if you get something different.

I think it is urgent that larger recipient groups begin re-granting to small NGOs in Haiti, especially in the countryside, to jump start relief efforts that are focused on the planting season, on decentralizing population, and on putting people to work. This should be tracked, too, so the grants are transparent and that we know where the money is finally going and for what.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) has a Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog set up. They note that the Federal Procurement Data System has set up a special page for accessing data on US government contracts in Haiti (note: you have to set up a free account to access the data). I have not had a chance to play with it yet, but CEPR discusses what they have learned on their page. Press and advoactes will be making lots of heat around for-profit contractors (especially those that have parent companies with financial interests in Haiti, or that have had scandals in their past) receiving money for work in Haiti.

Where is the $3 Billion to Haiti Going?

Relief Web has posted some tables on the amounts INGOS and donor nations are giving to Haiti. I had an analysis posted here, but the formatting was going haywire for some reason. The observations I made are now in this file.

Direct Giving and Microloans: Fonkoze Launches New Organization

Fonkoze and others are about to launch a new program named Zafen that will offer "a secure, easy and reliable online tool for making loans or donations to specific, viable projects in Haiti that has not before been available to those who wish to invest there."

Zafen will focus on donations and/or loans to groups, not individuals. Moreover, in contrast to some other microloan groups, Zafen says donors' gifts or loans will fund projects in "real time," meaning they will not gather funds in the name of an individual or group but really use the donation to backfill prior loans.

It is not clear yet how this all will work, but given Fonkoze's past great work, it will be something to watch (read about their general anti-poverty strategy here). Here are some photos from Jan. 25th showing Fonkoze staff working in open-air makeshift offices to help Haitians access their banking services. That their staff, in the midst of all that is going on around them in Haiti, can pull their organization out of the rubble (literally!) and put it back together so quickly is very heartening.

Fundraising: Avoiding (or Benefiting from?) the Crisis Mentality

"Crisis Mentality" (written by Keith Epstein almost four years ago for the Standford Social Innovation Review) discusses why money pours in for crises but not for chronic problems. The answers may not be surprising, but skim it and jump to the end where the people he interviewed give some interesting thoughts on how to raise money consistently using the dynamics of human nature that underly the "crisis mentality."