5 ms·

Send a $10 Donation by Texting ‘Haiti’ to 90999

91 points by stuntgoat 17y ago

nazgulnarsil 17y ago
has this method of collection been tried before? if not I'm guessing this is an untapped goldmine for the right entrepreneur: set up charities with simpler donation vectors.
- jackowayed 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure "text FOO to ##### to give $n" has been done before, I think as far back as Katrina.
- randomwalker 17y ago
  I was more curious about the business of the middleman in this process, and I looked into it earlier today. This particular short code operator, mGive (http://www.mgive.com/ http://www.mgive.com/) focuses on charities and was launched 2 years ago. I'm guessing this is their first big exposure. Wikipedia has the basics of setting up a new short code: "Common short codes in the U.S. are administered by NeuStar, under a deal with Common Short Code Administration - CTIA. Short codes can be leased at the rate of $1000 a month for a selected code or $500 for a random code." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code) More info here: http://www.mmaglobal.com/shortcodeprimer.pdf http://www.mmaglobal.com/shortcodeprimer.pdf
- cmelbye 17y ago
  Wikipedia used this to raise donations for development on their new mobile friendly site. I don't think it's a new/"untapped" type thing.
- john_conroy 17y ago
  It's about 2 years old. It's regulated by the Mobile Giving Foundation - http://mobilegiving.org/ http://mobilegiving.org/ The interesting thing here is that the carriers have agreed to pass your full donation amount to the charity, they don't take a cut.
patio11 17y ago
Unless they're getting a deal on their payment processing for being a charity, I'd suggest taking the extra minute to go to their website. Credit card payments will cost them less than fifty cents of that $10. Cell phone providers charge much more. Also, while charities love to use current events to drive fundraising appeals, their current disaster is almost universally paid for by funds they collected months ago. If you're going to give, give smart. (Relatedly, this is why sending non-monetary goods after a major disaster is perhaps less effective than you might wish it would be.)
- rbritton 17y ago
  Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what cell phone providers DO charge for these types of payments?
  - patio11 17y ago
    That depends on your agreement, locality, and what provider you're doing business with, but if you're thinking 30 ~ 50% you are probably in the right ballpark.
- noodle 17y ago
  are you certain that they aren't figuring in costs and billing you for $10+rates? while that would mean the end customer pays more, it does mean they would be getting more than a paypal donation.
  - patio11 17y ago
    Well, think that one through: if your advertisement says "Text 12345 to 45678 to donate $10 to the Red Cross", and you do so, and then your itemized cellphone bill says "Red Cross: $20", what is your reaction likely to be? Merchants foot the bill for transaction costs to encourage transaction volume. It is the same reason I quote my prices as $29.95 not "$29.95 plus whatever your credit card costs me to process."
    - 17y ago
jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
hey, ive been playing around with an idea: pixelsforhaiti / adsforhaiti.org get sites to donate a small ad block that links to a donation/ways to help haiti page. obviously fully nonprofit. list all other sites/companies involved like they did with the nomoreie6 page. thoughts?
kqr2 17y ago
Amazon also has a donation button on their home page for Mercy Corps to help victims of the Haiti earthquake. http://www.amazon.com/ http://www.amazon.com/
- qohen 17y ago
  Given the demographics here, perhaps this might be of interest: Jimmy Jean-Louis, who plays "The Haitian" on the TV series, Heroes, is actually from Haiti (and has family affected by the quake) he runs a charity called Hollywood Unites for Haiti: http://www.hufh.org/ http://www.hufh.org/ (I know little about the charity beyond what I read on its website but, again, thought it might be of interest to people here). Related (via reddit.com): http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/13/jimmy.louis.haiti/?hpt=Sbin http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/13/jimmy.louis.haiti/?...
dariusmonsef 17y ago
BEFORE you RT that RedCross donation message or donate any cash yourselves... please consider. Red Cross is a giant beast of a company. It is $600,000,000 in debt. It has ridiculous overhead. As fellow hackers... We're all trying to build startups/ideas because we think big companies are missing something... that we have a better way to do things... that we can build a better product. If you want to help Haiti. Give directly. I spent 2 years building a non-profit (a start-up if you will) that sets up volunteer centers in disaster areas. We are a super lean organization with an executive director that takes a $0 per year salary. Donations are being gathered to directly help the people in Haiti. Donations Can Be Made Here: http://bit.ly/HODR_Haiti http://bit.ly/HODR_Haiti Sorry to rant... but the RedCross-fest on Twitter right now is killing me. EDIT: I created a new post with more info here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051914 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051914
- alnayyir 17y ago
  Thanks for your work, I despise the Red Cross.
  - dskhatri 17y ago
    Could you please elaborate? I'm sure a lot of hackers who give to the RedCross would be interested to understand your reasons so that they can make better decisions about donating to relief funds in the future.
  - kqr2 17y ago
    Red Cross CEO earns $565,000 in salary. What's interesting is that this is higher than the CEO cap the Obama administration placed on for-profit companies which received bailout money. The Red Cross received $100 million in bailout money. http://blog.charitynavigator.org/2009/02/non-profit-ceo-pay-and-government.html http://blog.charitynavigator.org/2009/02/non-profit-ceo-pay-... http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3277 http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
    - natrius 17y ago
dhess 17y ago
I was curious about how this service works, mostly to know where the money is actually flowing. I Googled for awhile and came up with nothing, but thanks to randomwalker's post in this thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051844 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051844), I was able to dig up some info. I summarized what I found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/aoyin/text_haiti_to_90999_to_donate_10_through_the_red/c0iqe8k http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/aoyin/text_haiti_t... It's not definitive, but hopefully it'll help people make a more informed judgement about using this short code for donations. p.s. this charity was mentioned on Reddit: http://www.pih.org/home.html http://www.pih.org/home.html I'd never heard of it, but the founder, Paul Farmer, has a long history of working in and for Haiti.
albertsun 17y ago
I'm curious about what short codes can carry extra charges like this. For regular phones, people are generally aware that 900 numbers are toll lines and you'll be charged for that, but for these text numbers I don't know what the rule is. Seems like there's a lot of potential for scammers to tell people to text a certain number without telling people that charges would apply. At the student newspaper I used to work for, we told people to text "follow name" to 40404 (Twitter's short code) to get text message updates with news.
ajju 17y ago
My family lived through the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, India which was of similar proportions. Based on their personal experience, the things immediately needed after an earthquake are: 1) Heavy earth moving equipment (to get people out from under the rubble) 2) Tents and blankets (it is cold) 3) Medicines 4) Food Many organizations only focused on 2 and 4 in India. In the end, there was a glut of food, tents, clothes and blankets and not enough earth moving equipment and many people who could have been saved, died. The situation may be different in Haiti but they are an underdeveloped nation and I doubt they have as much equipment as is needed. I have already seen reports that there's a scarcity: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0113/Haiti-earthquake-a-call-to-a-common-humanity http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0... Obviously medicine is also in short supply. It may be a tall order to organize to get this there but at least we have someone here who has done it before. If dariusmonsef (or anyone else) can vouch for a group on the ground in Haiti who can actually manage these things well, it may be worth the effort to try to borrow these things ourselves and try to arrange for comped air transport. I know some folks in the airline industry who I can ask about transporting the stuff for free. Do you guys think this is doable and worth the effort?
- Tichy 17y ago
  Ultimately these things happen because somebody decides to do them. Major hats off to anyone who just acts in such a situation.
poutine 17y ago
A good alternative option for a larger web based donation is Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, they are already on the ground and operational: http://bit.ly/7anR0x http://bit.ly/7anR0x
koevet 17y ago
Does anyone know if there is a Europe based phone number where it is possible to send donations (something similar to 90999)?
- hendler 17y ago
  Don't know, but google search looked promising http://www.google.com/search?q=SMS+text+donation+money+Europe http://www.google.com/search?q=SMS+text+donation+money+Europ...
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jason_tko 17y ago
I've set up a small site at http://haitibizrelief.blogspot.com/ http://haitibizrelief.blogspot.com/ designed to give people a fast and easy way to donate, view donations through ChipIn, and to get some exposure for their startup or business.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
coolestuk 17y ago
The International Federation of the Red Cross is a hypocritical organization. In Muslim countries it is called The Red Crescent (and any aid packages/vehicles are marked with a crescent moon). Yet only one muslim country (Kuwait) figures (low down) in the accounts of top 25 donor countries for the IFRC for recent years. But 10 of the top 25 beneficiary countries are muslim. Thus the many of the donations from christian countries to an ostensibly christian emergency relief charity actually end up going to help muslims and are branded as aid from a muslim charity. (Either most of those oil-rich muslim countries aren't giving to charities, or they're only giving to charities that aid other muslims -- and it's probably the latter.) I have no objection to people receiving aid whatever their religion (or lack of). But it disgusts me that that aid given to a "christian" charity uses the religious imagery of the donating country to raise money and ends up deceiving the recipients into believing it came from a muslim charity. Donor and recipient end up being deceived by this duplicitous organization. Most people I've talked to about this have no idea that the IFRC is branded as the "Red Crescent" in muslim countries. I prefer to support Médecins Sans Frontières. They seem far more honest about what they are doing. The American Red Cross looks like it is not part of this IFRC duplicity.
- ElliotH 17y ago
  But a big part of the Christian message is to give what you can to those who need it. Note that it doesn't at any point say in the Bible 'Give money only to Christians in need' and because of this the 'Donor being decieved' isn't especially important. However, I disagree that anybody is really being decieved at all, it is readily available knowledge that the Red Cross give money under the Red Crescent branding in muslim countries. It would also make no sese at all to brand themselves at Red Cross in muslim countries - the symbology would have no meaning to the locals at all.

91 points by stuntgoat 17y ago

has this method of collection been tried before? if not I'm guessing this is an untapped goldmine for the right entrepreneur: set up charities with simpler donation vectors.

jackowayed 17y ago
I'm pretty sure "text FOO to ##### to give $n" has been done before, I think as far back as Katrina.
randomwalker 17y ago
I was more curious about the business of the middleman in this process, and I looked into it earlier today. This particular short code operator, mGive (http://www.mgive.com/ http://www.mgive.com/) focuses on charities and was launched 2 years ago. I'm guessing this is their first big exposure. Wikipedia has the basics of setting up a new short code: "Common short codes in the U.S. are administered by NeuStar, under a deal with Common Short Code Administration - CTIA. Short codes can be leased at the rate of $1000 a month for a selected code or $500 for a random code." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code) More info here: http://www.mmaglobal.com/shortcodeprimer.pdf http://www.mmaglobal.com/shortcodeprimer.pdf
cmelbye 17y ago
Wikipedia used this to raise donations for development on their new mobile friendly site. I don't think it's a new/"untapped" type thing.
john_conroy 17y ago
It's about 2 years old. It's regulated by the Mobile Giving Foundation - http://mobilegiving.org/ http://mobilegiving.org/ The interesting thing here is that the carriers have agreed to pass your full donation amount to the charity, they don't take a cut.

patio11 17y ago

Unless they're getting a deal on their payment processing for being a charity, I'd suggest taking the extra minute to go to their website. Credit card payments will cost them less than fifty cents of that $10. Cell phone providers charge much more. Also, while charities love to use current events to drive fundraising appeals, their current disaster is almost universally paid for by funds they collected months ago. If you're going to give, give smart. (Relatedly, this is why sending non-monetary goods after a major disaster is perhaps less effective than you might wish it would be.)

rbritton 17y ago
Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what cell phone providers DO charge for these types of payments?
- patio11 17y ago
  That depends on your agreement, locality, and what provider you're doing business with, but if you're thinking 30 ~ 50% you are probably in the right ballpark.
noodle 17y ago
are you certain that they aren't figuring in costs and billing you for $10+rates? while that would mean the end customer pays more, it does mean they would be getting more than a paypal donation.
- patio11 17y ago
  Well, think that one through: if your advertisement says "Text 12345 to 45678 to donate $10 to the Red Cross", and you do so, and then your itemized cellphone bill says "Red Cross: $20", what is your reaction likely to be? Merchants foot the bill for transaction costs to encourage transaction volume. It is the same reason I quote my prices as $29.95 not "$29.95 plus whatever your credit card costs me to process."
  - 17y ago

jasonlbaptiste 17y ago

hey, ive been playing around with an idea: pixelsforhaiti / adsforhaiti.org get sites to donate a small ad block that links to a donation/ways to help haiti page. obviously fully nonprofit. list all other sites/companies involved like they did with the nomoreie6 page. thoughts?

kqr2 17y ago

Amazon also has a donation button on their home page for Mercy Corps to help victims of the Haiti earthquake. http://www.amazon.com/ http://www.amazon.com/

qohen 17y ago
Given the demographics here, perhaps this might be of interest: Jimmy Jean-Louis, who plays "The Haitian" on the TV series, Heroes, is actually from Haiti (and has family affected by the quake) he runs a charity called Hollywood Unites for Haiti: http://www.hufh.org/ http://www.hufh.org/ (I know little about the charity beyond what I read on its website but, again, thought it might be of interest to people here). Related (via reddit.com): http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/13/jimmy.louis.haiti/?hpt=Sbin http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/13/jimmy.louis.haiti/?...

dariusmonsef 17y ago

BEFORE you RT that RedCross donation message or donate any cash yourselves... please consider. Red Cross is a giant beast of a company. It is $600,000,000 in debt. It has ridiculous overhead. As fellow hackers... We're all trying to build startups/ideas because we think big companies are missing something... that we have a better way to do things... that we can build a better product. If you want to help Haiti. Give directly. I spent 2 years building a non-profit (a start-up if you will) that sets up volunteer centers in disaster areas. We are a super lean organization with an executive director that takes a $0 per year salary. Donations are being gathered to directly help the people in Haiti. Donations Can Be Made Here: http://bit.ly/HODR_Haiti http://bit.ly/HODR_Haiti Sorry to rant... but the RedCross-fest on Twitter right now is killing me. EDIT: I created a new post with more info here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051914 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051914

alnayyir 17y ago
Thanks for your work, I despise the Red Cross.
- dskhatri 17y ago
  Could you please elaborate? I'm sure a lot of hackers who give to the RedCross would be interested to understand your reasons so that they can make better decisions about donating to relief funds in the future.
- kqr2 17y ago
  Red Cross CEO earns $565,000 in salary. What's interesting is that this is higher than the CEO cap the Obama administration placed on for-profit companies which received bailout money. The Red Cross received $100 million in bailout money. http://blog.charitynavigator.org/2009/02/non-profit-ceo-pay-and-government.html http://blog.charitynavigator.org/2009/02/non-profit-ceo-pay-... http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3277 http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
  - natrius 17y ago

dhess 17y ago

I was curious about how this service works, mostly to know where the money is actually flowing. I Googled for awhile and came up with nothing, but thanks to randomwalker's post in this thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051844 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1051844), I was able to dig up some info. I summarized what I found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/aoyin/text_haiti_to_90999_to_donate_10_through_the_red/c0iqe8k http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/aoyin/text_haiti_t... It's not definitive, but hopefully it'll help people make a more informed judgement about using this short code for donations. p.s. this charity was mentioned on Reddit: http://www.pih.org/home.html http://www.pih.org/home.html I'd never heard of it, but the founder, Paul Farmer, has a long history of working in and for Haiti.

albertsun 17y ago

I'm curious about what short codes can carry extra charges like this. For regular phones, people are generally aware that 900 numbers are toll lines and you'll be charged for that, but for these text numbers I don't know what the rule is. Seems like there's a lot of potential for scammers to tell people to text a certain number without telling people that charges would apply. At the student newspaper I used to work for, we told people to text "follow name" to 40404 (Twitter's short code) to get text message updates with news.

ajju 17y ago

My family lived through the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, India which was of similar proportions. Based on their personal experience, the things immediately needed after an earthquake are: 1) Heavy earth moving equipment (to get people out from under the rubble) 2) Tents and blankets (it is cold) 3) Medicines 4) Food Many organizations only focused on 2 and 4 in India. In the end, there was a glut of food, tents, clothes and blankets and not enough earth moving equipment and many people who could have been saved, died. The situation may be different in Haiti but they are an underdeveloped nation and I doubt they have as much equipment as is needed. I have already seen reports that there's a scarcity: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0113/Haiti-earthquake-a-call-to-a-common-humanity http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0... Obviously medicine is also in short supply. It may be a tall order to organize to get this there but at least we have someone here who has done it before. If dariusmonsef (or anyone else) can vouch for a group on the ground in Haiti who can actually manage these things well, it may be worth the effort to try to borrow these things ourselves and try to arrange for comped air transport. I know some folks in the airline industry who I can ask about transporting the stuff for free. Do you guys think this is doable and worth the effort?

Tichy 17y ago
Ultimately these things happen because somebody decides to do them. Major hats off to anyone who just acts in such a situation.

poutine 17y ago

A good alternative option for a larger web based donation is Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, they are already on the ground and operational: http://bit.ly/7anR0x http://bit.ly/7anR0x

koevet 17y ago

Does anyone know if there is a Europe based phone number where it is possible to send donations (something similar to 90999)?

hendler 17y ago
Don't know, but google search looked promising http://www.google.com/search?q=SMS+text+donation+money+Europe http://www.google.com/search?q=SMS+text+donation+money+Europ...

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jason_tko 17y ago

I've set up a small site at http://haitibizrelief.blogspot.com/ http://haitibizrelief.blogspot.com/ designed to give people a fast and easy way to donate, view donations through ChipIn, and to get some exposure for their startup or business.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

coolestuk 17y ago

The International Federation of the Red Cross is a hypocritical organization. In Muslim countries it is called The Red Crescent (and any aid packages/vehicles are marked with a crescent moon). Yet only one muslim country (Kuwait) figures (low down) in the accounts of top 25 donor countries for the IFRC for recent years. But 10 of the top 25 beneficiary countries are muslim. Thus the many of the donations from christian countries to an ostensibly christian emergency relief charity actually end up going to help muslims and are branded as aid from a muslim charity. (Either most of those oil-rich muslim countries aren't giving to charities, or they're only giving to charities that aid other muslims -- and it's probably the latter.) I have no objection to people receiving aid whatever their religion (or lack of). But it disgusts me that that aid given to a "christian" charity uses the religious imagery of the donating country to raise money and ends up deceiving the recipients into believing it came from a muslim charity. Donor and recipient end up being deceived by this duplicitous organization. Most people I've talked to about this have no idea that the IFRC is branded as the "Red Crescent" in muslim countries. I prefer to support Médecins Sans Frontières. They seem far more honest about what they are doing. The American Red Cross looks like it is not part of this IFRC duplicity.

ElliotH 17y ago
But a big part of the Christian message is to give what you can to those who need it. Note that it doesn't at any point say in the Bible 'Give money only to Christians in need' and because of this the 'Donor being decieved' isn't especially important. However, I disagree that anybody is really being decieved at all, it is readily available knowledge that the Red Cross give money under the Red Crescent branding in muslim countries. It would also make no sese at all to brand themselves at Red Cross in muslim countries - the symbology would have no meaning to the locals at all.