May 15, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
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?
