Truth and Fiction About Giving to Haiti

Filed in archive Charity on January 16, 2010

Snopes has a good page up at the moment that seperates truth from fiction on the question of how to donate to the Haiti relief efforts.

The most popular method for donating to the effort seems to be texting.

• Text the word "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross.


• Text the word "HAITI" to 20222 to donate $10 to the Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief Fund.


• Text "HAITI" to 25383 to donate $5 to the International Rescue Committee.


• Text "HAITI" to 85944 to donate $10 to the International Medical Corps

Haitian native Wyclef Jean is also has a program to collect money through texting, but as Snopes points out, there are questions about her charity's accounting practices.

There are a number of hoaxes out there. Most of them are the sort of viral things that flood Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis, anyway. As bad as the Haiti disaster is, I don't understand why someone would start these rumors. But I understand that they do. And the people who pass it one almost alway sthink that they are really doing something good.

One simple way to tell the difference is this. If you find a credible way to donate your own money to the effort, that works. With texxting, the money is going to show up on your cellphone bill. On the other hand, if someone tells you that you can do something that will make someone else donate money to the effort, that's probably a hoax. An example

The owners of Facebook have confirmed they will send $1.00 to the rescue fund for the Haiti Earthquake disaster for everytime this is cut and paste as a status. you only have to leave it for A minimum of 1 hour. lets all do our bit to help.

Not...