I am really disturbed by the incredibly large number of people who immediately scream “donate” when a major disaster like Hurricane Katrina occurs. Even worse are the individuals that also start criticising companies who do not immediately announce a relief effort. It’s as if an individual or company’s worth during a disaster is measured by how much money they can donate; either directly themselves, or indirectly by getting everyone else they know to donate. Here’s a post by Rex Hammock:

Perhaps symbolic of the collective delay in responding to Katrina has been how Amazon.com has responded. Universally praised for turning over its front page to tsunami relief almost immediately, Amazon.com did not add a donation link of any size to its front page until three days after the hurricane. Today, six days after, the dominant position of the Amazon.com front page is finally devoted to Katrina relief. This is not a criticism of Amazon’s response, rather a curious observation of how there was an apparent initial disbelief by lots of people that an unprecedented tragedy of historic proportions was unfolding. (I’ll reserve my criticism for Apple, who has hyped the Mighty Mouse in the dominant position all week.)

So he’s not criticising – but why say anything about Amazon.com’s delay at all? All a post like that does is perpetuate the myth that a disaster is an excellent time for a PR war. It’s sad.

I am more concerned that any money that is donated is actually being used for relief efforts. I don’t care that a major company hasn’t donated money – I care that the money other companies have already donated is being spent properly.

Here’s an idea for the future – a website that tracks the money! If two dollars is donated to the Red Cross for example, I should be able to go on the website and see where that two dollars was spent. It should be trivial to see if the billions of dollars that are donated in a disaster are actually spent accordingly. Unfortunately, I think we’re a long way from achieving this.