Help the Haiti Txt Msg Campaign Reach $20 Million By Midnight Tonight

Mashable:

The Red Cross text messaging campaign has raised nearly $18 million for Haiti relief, according to the State Department’s Katie J Stanton today. Just four days ago we reported that the total had passed $5 million.

Promos during the NFL playoffs helped boost donations, Stanton explains on her Twitter feed. … The goal isn’t unreachable: simple donations via text messaging combined with the viral spread of the campaign message on Twitter and Facebook have led to an unprecedented number of donations. It’s a model that will likely become the standard for disaster relief.

If you’d like to donate to the Red Cross campaign, text “Haiti” to 90999. For other ways to help, see Haiti Earthquake Relief: 9 Ways to Help Now.

NYTimes Bits on how it works:

The texted donations are being handled by a company called mGive, which started the campaign in a joint effort with the State Department and the Red Cross late Tuesday night. Thanks to a mention on the White House’s blog and lots of word of mouth on Twitter and Facebook, the campaign had raised well over a million dollars by Tuesday evening, mGive said. [...]

Each month, when people pay their wireless bills, the texted donations are collected from the carriers and shuttled into a nonprofit clearinghouse managed by an mGive foundation, which in turn cuts a check to the appropriate charity. MGive typically charges a licensing fee for its software platform, $4 to $1,500 a month, depending on the scale of the fund-raising effort and the additional services the company provides. In addition, after the charity receives the total amount raised from the wireless carriers, mGive charges a transaction fee for each collected donation.

In the case of the Haiti disaster, however, Mr. Aiello said the company had elected to waive all software and transaction fees.

Do it!