Texted Donations to Haiti Delayed

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-01-17 16:01:00 UTC
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Update, 1/19, 1:24pm: AT&T announces it will expedite delivery of mobile donations pledged to the Red Cross for Haiti relief efforts.

Update, 1/18, 5:32pm: T-Mobile says it will deliver all funds this week. That means that AT&T is the only major carrier that hasn't figured out how to rush customers donations to Haiti. Sign the petition below!

Update, 1/18, 1:15pm: Change.org is calling on AT&T and T-Mobile to join Verizon and Sprint in accelerating the release of texted donations to Haiti. You can sign on and add your name here.

Want to make a donation that will reach relief efforts in Haiti quickly? Be careful, then, about whipping out your cell phone.

It turns out donations given to aid Haiti via text messages may actually be delayed by up to three months. In fact, mobile carriers generally won't actually pass your donation to your charity of choice until at least one billing cycle has passed.

Which means that much of the over $9 million in pledges made to Haiti relief efforts via phone -- spurred on by Hillary Clinton, CNN, and Twitter users, among others -- might not actually reach the country until April.

Kudos to Verizon Wireless, who's announced that the company will advance the $3 million its customers have already pledged to Haiti, even before their bills have been paid. Sprint has said it will advance 80 percent of its customers' $1.2 million in donations immediately, with more to follow. No word yet on whether AT&T will do the same.

For now, check out some of Change.org's ideas on how to directly -- and quickly -- contribute to organizations working on the ground.

Photo Credit: Brooks Elliott

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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