how to: help Haiti

how to : Help Haiti


This seems like a rather silly "how to", but I spent HOURS researching this and wanted to share the information I'd learned, to help others (possibly) help in the best, and most meaningful way possible.

To me the best non-profit and or aid organizations are the ones that maximize the amount of money people donate. So if you donate $1 to the org, the more money that goes to helping people the better, right? I'm sure I'm not alone in this. As such I used charitywatch.com to double check what I'd found, as well as checking up on the websites of the organizations. They usually say how much out of every dollar actually goes to help people, the other part of course going to cover staff and rent and advertising and other such businessy things. So here are my top two org's for donating to:

The American Red Cross

The Red Cross gives 92% of all the money donated to them straight into their programs, and sending their doctors and nurses and whatnot around the world to help people. That's the highest figure I've found so far. They've also been around forever and have a solid infrastructure that seems to get things done in a great way. They get an A- from Charity Watch, but because such a high percentage goes to the programs, they've made my list.

The International Medical Corps

The IMC not only gets an A+ from Charity Watch, but 92% of the money people donate to them goes to programs to help people. And they're all doctors so they are extremely helpful!


The third org, Oxfam, is more of my pet non-profit, the one that I would LOVE to work for someday. I recommend them for day to day donating to help people, although they do have lots of staff working in Haiti right now. (Unfortunately one of their staff members was actually killed in the earthquake.) They have this really cool program called Oxfam Unwrapped where you buy something (like a cow, or a child's school uniform, or books, or a well for a town) and Oxfam makes sure it happens, but they send a card to the person who you bought it in the name of, and the card says what was sent, and you can personalize it. That's a bit confusing but it's a really neat program. My sister and I bought school uniforms for children in honor of my mom for her birthday last year. She said it was the best gift we've ever given her. I would recommend donating to them because they provide shelter and water, and put on programs to support literacy, and are an all around awesome non-profit. ALTHOUGH, I haven't been able to find out what percent of donations actually go to programs, which makes me wary.

Other ways to help:

+ Comment on this entry of the amazing blog "oh, hello friend"!! For every comment on the entry (up until Jan. 22nd) the blog owner will donate $1 to World Vision. Super easy way to help, and a very generous thing of her to do.

+ Here's also a cool way you can help Haiti, while getting yourself something nice. Etsy has a list going called "Handmade for Haiti", and it's all the sellers that are donating a portion of their profits to non-profits working in Haiti right now. I think it's a great idea and I recommend looking at some of the stuff.

That is my take on the best way to help Haiti right now.
A lot of people want to donate clothes or toiletries, which would be very useful, but getting things out to Haiti is very difficult right now. I looked around A LOT for ways to send clothes and things but couldn't find anything, so for now that isn't really an option. Although if anyone sees anything on that please let me know, I'm very interested!