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(ARA) - Two weeks after the tsunami disaster, the overwhelming outpouring of support from all over the world, including hundreds of millions of dollars from individual Americans, continues. An unprecedented percentage of these gifts have been processed online. The Internet response to the tsunami has been so significant because of the magnitude of the disaster and because opportunities to participate in the relief effort were never more ubiquitous and straightforward. Network for Good, a Web site that includes detailed listings of more than 1 million U.S.-based charities and a searchable database of nearly 80,000 volunteer opportunities, is one organization that has been leading the online charge for tsunami relief. “Our system is built for exactly this kind of disaster response,” explains Bill Strathmann, CEO of Network for Good. “We already had relationships in place with AOL and Yahoo! and we quickly reached out to other media companies and online news outlets to encourage additional donations towards tsunami relief.”
Within a week links to Network for Good appeared along side news stories on the tsunami disaster in almost every major online news source, including: Google, CNN.com, NYTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com, LATimes.com, USAToday.com, NPR.org, Foxnews.com, ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com and others. “As a result we processed $10 million in donations during the two weeks after the tsunami from more than 80,000 donors to more than 40 relief organizations - that’s more than we typically do in six months,” adds Strathmann.
AOL urged its members to give through a variety of means. Opportunities to give are still being featured on its Welcome Screen, Banners and News channels; it even created an e-mail “e-tab” in its inbox urging members to donate to tsunami relief.
Relief organizations welcome the reach and exposure they receive from their Internet partners. An added benefit of the support provided by organizations like Amazon and Network for Good is that their systems can handle the peaks in traffic that occur when Americans make a donation every second or two, as they were on New Year’s Eve. Some nonprofit organizations’ servers crashed as a result of the outpouring.
Estimates vary on the total amount distributed to tsunami relief online in the past two weeks, but the unique relationships that have formed and the magnitude of the online response has been unprecedented. Donations will continue to support relief efforts in particular with the recently signed bill allowing taxpayers to claim charitable donations to Tsunami relief made during January 2005 on their 2004 tax return.
For more information, visit www.networkforgood.org.
Courtesy of ARA Content
