Giving Well in Response to Disaster

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-01-18 07:54:00 UTC
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The headline of Felix Salmon's post in the days following the earthquake in Haiti, "Don't give money to Haiti," may have been a particularly shameless bit of link-baiting.

But Felix isn't alone in making the case that donations shouldn't be earmarked solely for disaster relief in Haiti.

As editor-in-chief of Philanthropy in Action Timothy Ogden describes it, the basic anatomy of disaster relief efforts looks something like this: donations pour in; a flood of cash and materials creates a logistical debacle (and clogged ports) that take months to straighten out; by which time the world's roving spotlight has moved on, and reconstruction efforts -- and funding -- wilt.

Plenty of advice has been circulating online about how to make the best kind of impact with your cash. I'm no expert on this -- just someone who wants her donations to be effectively used -- and I'd love to hear your other thoughts in the comments. But in the meantime, here are three arguments that seem particularly on-point to me:

1. Give to an organization that you know has a local network, experience and an effective track record on the ground.

2. Give flexibly. If you're giving to an organization you trust, don't earmark the donations for immediate disaster relief in Haiti. Operations in Haiti will be a process of years, not weeks or months. Better not to create pressure for relief organizations to spend cash in ways they may not have the capacity to expend promptly or well.

3. Give over the long term. Since the headlines are ubiquitous, and the impulse to donate right now is natural -- and a good one -- write a check. Write a few. Then put them in a desk drawer and take one out three months from now, then six months from now. A year on out, do the same.

In the comments section of Felix's post, Médecins Sans Frontières's executive director takes exception to how the blogger couches his don't-give-to-Haiti argument.

But she also notes that right now, MSF isn't in a position to assess "the full scale of needs and definitively say how [they] can respond." Donating funds that are more flexible, she says, will allow her team to respond to needs in Haiti as they develop, "while also being transparent about the potential limits of what we can or are best suited to do."

Photo Credit: Andrew Pescod

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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