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Carriers Delay Paying Japan's Texting Donations
Julie188 writes "As the fallout from the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown tragedy continues to unfold, Americans want to help. We learned from the Haiti disaster that the easiest thing to do is to text a donation to our favorite relief organization. But, unlike Haiti, Japan's text-to-give donations will take as long as three months to get to the relief agency. And the company handling these donations, mGive.com, has not waived the transaction fees it charges relief agencies."
These companies profit from situations like this. This is their business case. What did you expect?
So we should text F' You! to mGive.com?
the easiest thing to do is to text a donation to our favorite relief organization
Why would any true geek text a donation? We're geeks. We want what's most EFFECTIVE, not what's easiest.
I wish there would be greater disclosure about this and many other things. It can take up to 3 months for the US, but some other countries such as Latin America and Asian countries not called China and Japan it can take up to 6 months. In the EU, some people don't have to pay their bill monthly, there are quarterly and bi-annual billing cycles. It's a shame, because if there was full disclosure many people would have donated via another method. Hopefully all this exposure will get them to declare this a "crisis" and get the funds moving immediately.
P.S. Please be careful when giving your child a cell phone, it's as easy to buy virtual goods with it as a credit card and companies like mine have no way of knowing that you have given it to your child. If you would like to block these types of purchases, contact your local wireless company and have them remove "Premium SMS" from your child's phone. I wish all wireless carriers were forced to disclose this whenever anyone purchases a "Family Plan".
I've had a problem in the past with the Red Cross because they do not segregate donations to specific causes (or, at least, they haven't in the past). That means that if you make a donation to the Red Cross for the Japanese disaster, that doesn't mean that your money necessarily even goes to Japanese relief. And if there is any left over after their (often very limited) efforts, it goes back into their coffers--irrespective of how it was supposed to be earmarked.
My grandfather always used to tell me that he would die before he ever gave to the Red Cross. When he was in Korea, the Red Cross used to show up and sell soldiers coffee and donuts (at a profit, no less). No money meant no coffee and donuts for you, G.I.
I'm not disparaging their work (I don't know enough to comment on that). I'm just saying that they need to be much more upfront with people about where their money is actually going.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Note, too, that when you typically text a donation, the organization receiving it has to pay a transaction fee which may or may not be passed along to you on your bill. The mGive Foundation is a non-profit, that charges nothing to certify a charity to the carriers. The carriers forward 100% of the donation amount to the charitable organization. But both the carrier and the similarly named "mGive.com" may still charge a transaction fee. mGive.com is a for-profit arm of the company Mobile Accord. It runs the technology involved in taking text donations (and performing other mobile fundraising campaigns for non-profits). In addition to setup fees and monthly fees it charges a per transaction fee of $0.35 + 3.5 %."
So mGive Foundation - the one you'll probably find if you do an internet search, is a non-profit who will certify the charity and tell you that 100% of the donation goes to the cause, but mGive.com - a separate entity - is for profit and takes their cut off of the top, then forwarding the remaining "donation" to be sent along. Nice. I wonder which MBA thought that one up. Whoever he is, he's probably sitting on a beach somewhere safe, sipping a Mai Tai right now.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The day the Tsunami hit I scampered out the door to give a pint of blood. Later that day I thought of putting a item on an eBay auction to raise some fundage for American Red Cross. Ebay listing page allowed me to pick a charity and a percentage to go there. Wonderful. The listing was published and had a big banner about the Red Cross added to it.
After the auction ended the trouble began. The buyer paid and I found the money sitting in my PayPal account, with their customary cut removed from it. WTF?!? I drop a note to PayPal that this must be some sort of error, the money should have gone straight to American Red Cross. No reply, typical.
Then I get on the online support with someone and tell them about it and ask them to send the answer to my email (the one I provided) and again I get nothing. Bother.
Finally over the weekend I spend 2.5 hours waiting through the queue for help by apparently the only on-line customer support person they had working (this smells like the business model: we have few complaints to our customer support so satisfaction must be nearly 100%, but I digress) It is finally explained to me that I had to set up a Mission Fish account first so the payment would have been routed to them. Excuse me? You let me list an item where 100% was to go to a registered charity, but didn't establish a precondition of publishing the listing that the Mission Fish account be set up first, while the charity logo and mission are splashed all over a listing - yet the payment for it can completely bypass the charity? Hello, this looks like enabling Donor Fraud.
I finally have had enough of their stupidity and go over to American Red Cross website and donate directly, including the sum I received for the auctioned item. I'm beside myself with the stupidity of corporations, but with eBay this is nothing new. Since 1999 they've gone from good to bad to worse.
Be wary of donating via eBay. No guarantee the funds you pay do go where you think.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I like the typo in the link. That's exactly how profiteers work -- by praying on the unwary. By the way, you can also paypal donations to Docsavage64109@gmail.com
Japan is a rich, technologically advanced, first-world country. I feel very bad for the people who have been affected by the recent events there, it's truly awful... but there are so many poor countries with horrible conditions, lack of food, basic human rights... who need money much more than Japan. ALL THE TIME.
If you really want to help Japan, go there and start digging through the mess and help them rebuild. If you want to donate money, donate to someone who actually needs money. Or donate in general to the Red Cross or other groups, without earmarking your money for Japan where it will sit for months or more, while thousands of people die of starvation in other parts of the world, maybe even in your own damn country.
like doctors, policemen, morticians, gravediggers, plumbers and lawyers?
oh wait...
the money was just resting in my account.
The Red Cross sold coffee and donuts instead of giving them away to military personnel during World War II.
This unfortunate policy came into being because service agencies in Britain helping British military personnel were less well-financed than the American Red Cross. Thus, these agencies were forced to charge British military members for the same items that American service members were getting free from the American Red Cross.
To avoid further embarrassment to the British, who were playing host to thousands of U.S. troops, the U.S. Secretary of War requested that the American Red Cross begin charging American service members for such items as coffee and donuts in its canteens. The Red Cross interpreted this request as a wartime demand and complied so that it could continue aiding U.S. troops. However, the Red Cross sold items at or below cost and never profited a penny from these sales.
Since the end of World War II, the American Red Cross has not charged military personnel -- not in the Korean, Vietnam, or Persian Gulf conflicts, for example.
-- http://www.redcross.org
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
No, what the internet excels at is spreading of myths and FUD by people who can't be bothered to get the basic facts straight before 'going viral on some punks'. This is a nice example of that. Read the post above yours.
The 'delay' seems to be the time between someone texting a donation, and the time the carriers give the money to mGive. The guy from mGive says that is 30 days. Are you suggesting that the carriers are earning interest on a text message? Until you pay your bill the carrier does not have the money, so they are not earning interest. It seems like what you really expect is the carriers to make an interest-free loan to mGive on your behalf, until such time as you get around to paying your bill. If you want to send money to someone in a hurry, texting is a pretty dumb way to do it. Fortunately, Japan does not need the money in a hurry (they need lots of help, but lack of immediate funds are not the problem).
That's rather unfair. I'm a volunteer myself and often give. I usually do it directly, which is the best way to see it gets where it's needed.
Whenever I donate to the local single mothers and young women working their way through college, I always do so directly. I usually place the dollar right in her g-string, which is the best way to see it gets where it's needed.
Cynicism, like optimism, is rarely completely correct. The reality almost always lies somewhere between the extremes.
There are certainly scammers, opportunists, and fraudsters in the world, and always will be. However, this is a minority in the 'emergency relief' field of endeavor, as well as most other forms of charitable organization. The people who create and operate the vast majority of these orgs are doing their imperfect best to help people under often very difficult and never simple circumstances.
It's also impossible to take donations and convert them into goods and services in the needed locations without any overhead. There are costs and delays involved in organizing, transporting, an distributing things, and that doesn't magically disappear when you are doing it for charitable causes.
If you still think that most charities are wasteful and are just scams, I'd invite you to experiment to validate that hypothesis. Find a handful of local charities, and go see what they do - or even better, donate a bit of your time and energy. In almost every case, you'll find that the organization is squeezing every bit of good that it can from every centavo donated, doing it with the cheapest possible equipment and facilities, paying as little as they can for the labor required, and always falling short of what they would like to accomplish. All while being jeered by the lazy, selfish cretins on the sidelines. If you know of a more efficient, lower cost way of accomplishing the mission, they'll be overjoyed to hear about it.
The fraud artists and opportunists should be exposed and eliminated whenever possible. They are not only diverting resources away from the need, they are also causing a reduction in the willingness of the general public to fund legitimate organizations. Don't let anecdotal evidence persuade you that the exceptions are really the rule, though.
And last of all, don't use cynicism as a smokescreen for your own laziness and selfishness.
WALSTIB!
Donations sent to the Twitter user "ReallyNotAScam" are taking forever to get to their intended recipient, Japanese aid victims. Hmm, go figure. www.redcross.org didn't seem like a safe place to send my donation so I texted it to a 900 #.