DEC adds online donation facility for Asian floods disaster appeal
Howard Lake | 29 December 2004 | News
Four days after the devastating floods in the Bay of Bengal the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has started accepting online donations for its emergency appeal which it launched yesterday.
The DEC’s Tsunami Earthquake Appeal today began accepting online credit and debit card donations, following the appeal’s launch yesterday when it offered a telephone donations service.
The Tsunami Earthquake Appeal is featured on the DEC’s front page, although the site remains dominated by information about the current Sudan emergency appeal. “More Information Will Be Posted Shortly – Please Come Back Soon” reads the notice published today underneath the link to the online donation facility. Donations are encouraged by credit, debit and CAF Charity Card.
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The appeal consists simply of the following, in capitals, and with no photo or illustration:
“DEC TSUNAMI EARTHQUAKE APPEAL
YOU CAN HELP – EVERY PENNY COUNTS
DONATE HERE:”
The online credit/debit card donation facility, handled by securetrading.net, was unavailable, unfortunately, when UK Fundraising tried to access it from 23.22 – 23.25. It is to be hoped that this was due to a high demand for its facility from donors. When the page was finally accessed it loaded very slowly indeed, taking over one minute to load completely.
A subsequent update to the page explained that the reason was indeed heavy traffic: “Due to high volume of traffic on our website you may experience difficulty making a donation online if this is the case, you can make a credit card donation by telephone on 0870 60 60 900 or please please try later, we need your money.” The ability to handle many near simultaneous donations over a very short period is a key requirement of online emergency appeals, but it seems the DEC site doesn’t yet have this functionality.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.