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Online donations outstrip phone gifts by US donors to Asian appeal
Howard Lake | 30 December 2004 | News
Americans are more likely to give online to the Asian floods emergency appeals than via the telephone.
Writing at MSN.com, Jerry Markon and Leef Smith, report that “online donations to the [American] Red Cross outstripped traditional phone banks by more than 2 to 1.” Specifically, by Tuesday 28 December, 25,000 people had made online donations to the American Red Cross, compared to 9,000 people donating via the emergency phone hotline during.
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Visitors and donors accessed the Catholic Relief Services Web site in such numbers that the site crashed.
AOL (America Online) published details of how to help the relief effort on its front page to its millions of subscribers. At the same time it donated $200,000 to the American Red Cross and pledged to match the first $50,000 that AOL employees give.
By the end of 29 December, the Los Angeles-based humanitarian relief and development agency International Medical Corps said that a substantial proportion of the $160,000 that it had raised had been donated via its Web site. This included a single donation of $5,000.
- Rapid public response internationally to Asian floods appeals (31 December 2004)
- DEC appeal reaches £60 million (1 January 2005)
- Guardian Christmas Appeal passes £500,000 (1 January 2005)
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.