Safeguard Your Donations To The People Of Haiti

Millions will be lost to fraud and mismanagement

The heart of America is pouring out to the people of Haiti. There will be a flood of generosity to fund the massive relief effort for a nation already beleaguered by heart wrenching poverty. Millions of American dollars will help to provide the search and rescue teams, medical personnel and supplies, food, water, clothing and temporary shelter required to sustain the earthquake survivors. Millions of dollars more will be needed to rebuild what infrastructure they had. Every one of those dollars will be crucial to the success of the relief efforts.

So it is critical that as donors we maintain responsible vigilance over our naturally giving hearts or the money will be wasted. And those we sought to help will continue to suffer.

Millions of hard earned donor dollars are lost to fraud and mismanagement by charities every year. This is especially true during wide scale disasters like the Haiti earthquake or hurricane Katrina. Well orchestrated charitable scams pop up literally within hours of the event. And even many well known charities can represent a threat to your donated dollars.

So before responding to the emotional appeal of heart rending television ads or mass mailed solicitations, take the time to investigate the organization itself. It is the responsibility of every donor, to know enough about the charity involved to be confident that the majority of donated funds will be used for the stated purpose.

CharityNavigator.com is a highly respected independent charity evaluator, providing financial information on over 5,000 charities. Each charity evaluated lists detailed revenue and expense information and is ranked with other charities in the same category. The site also contains Top Ten Lists on the best, and worst, charities in various categories, and offers valuable tips and resources for donors.

In response to the Haitian disaster, Charity Navigator has compiled a link of highly rated charities providing relief to the Haitian people.

The International Red Cross is our general preference and recommendation when donating to international disaster relief. The Red Cross reputation for honesty, sound financial management, organizational efficiency and the all important factor of experience can be relied upon to put donated dollars to best use.

A word on the Bush-Clinton Haiti Fund
The Bush-Clinton Haiti Fund is receiving an enormous amount of publicity and doubtlessly bringing in millions of dollars in donations. But we would do well to remember that one of the best examples of the risks involved with donating to well intentioned, but poorly organized charities was the massive Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. Thought totally honest and highly praised, the hastily patched together effort suffered from predictable problems in allocating donations quickly and effectively. Unfortunately, with two ex-presidents putting their name to the enterprise, donors just as hastily overlooked many well established charities that were responding to the disaster with incredible efficiency. Almost $200 million in heartfelt contributions poured in to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. And no one seems to know exactly what happened to the money.

There has never been any claim of fraudulent conduct. And the fund states that 100% of all contributions had been used for “grants”. Nevertheless, within a year, the charity’s executive director and seven of his nine religious advisors resigned in frustration over the fund’s inability to effectively disperse funds where most needed.

Even four years after Katrina, a visit to New Orleans will testify to the fact that a good portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars contributed to Katrina relief was simply lost due to fraud and mismanagement.

How many more would have been helped, how much more good would have been done, if the donors of those lost dollars had been more responsible in taking the time to investigate the organizations they contributed to? We’ll never know.

Donor responsibility
Responsible Donors are perhaps the most critical link in the whole fundraising cycle. No matter how dire the need, or how famous the personalities  involved, never donate to a charity without doing some basic research. Once you handed over your check or credit card number, you have no further control of how your money will be used.

So before reacting in an emotional, feel good moment, please remember all of those millions of dollars in donations lost to fraud and waste. It is a completely irresponsible act, rather than a charitable one, to donate to a charity you are not familiar with.