Notes from the Desk - 01/21/10

Last week, I gave $10 to Haiti without ever opening my wallet.

This stroke of monetary jujitsu was achieved without trickery or design. Instead, a few taps of my index finger were enough to complete the transaction and send the money on its way.

Thanks to mobile phone technology, international relief agencies are better prepared than ever to collect donations for crisis-afflicted regions worldwide. Through so-called “text-to-give” programs, anybody with a cell phone can make pledges to Haiti in increments of $5 and up. These programs have been nothing if not wildly successful.

The American Red Cross alone raised over $10 million for Haiti in the first three days of its mobile relief initiative — at a rate of $100,000 every hour.

By hooking themselves into a rapid, ubiquitous and growing form of communication, aid agencies have broken ground on a radically new fundraising model. Two years ago, American cell phone users were sending about a billion text messages a day.

By October 2009, that number had quadrupled. Relief organizations are just beginning to tap into a vast donor market that could make responding to disasters as simple as giving into a collective social habit. After all, what’s one more text message, especially if it’s for a good cause and the pinch doesn’t come until the end of the billing cycle?

Pledging by phone changes the act of giving in subtle ways. Paradoxically, mobile relief can be even less immediate than sending a check. Not only is the cost to the donor kicked down the road, but the donation itself can take up to three months to reach its destination. And while some cellular service providers, like Verizon, have agreed to advance millions of dollars to the Red Cross in recognition of the countless pledges its customers have made in recent days, suspending what Verizon’s president called “normal financial processes” for the Haitian crisis looks to be a temporary measure only.

More fundamentally, the text-to-give phenomenon challenges us to revisit our conception of philanthropy. When a donation of $10 becomes abstracted as another line item on another statement from another faceless corporation — the same corporation we otherwise curse for poor 3G coverage, or lousy customer service — can we claim to have made good on our duty to one another as global citizens?

I find the utilitarian response quite appealing. Money to Haiti is money to Haiti. Forget who the donors are. Forget their motives.

But I can’t, because I know that despite what I’ve already given, I could still offer more. And, because writing a check or making a credit card purchase typically involve much larger sums of money, donating by either method would probably have led to a heftier pledge — $30, perhaps. Or $50. At least in my case, text-to-give literally cheapened the value of my donation. I took the easy way out.

In an urgent crisis situation like the one facing Haiti, the sheer volume of mobile relief donations likely compensates for the paltry value of each individual pledge. In fact, the option to give by text probably convinced some to donate who otherwise might not have. Still, it’s worth asking how text-to-give changes the calculation we all make when deciding (how much) to pledge. When a gift becomes too easily given, how much is it really worth?

Here’s an idea — give until it hurts. If you’re a Starbucks addict, reallocate a week’s worth of coffee money to Haiti. Been eyeing a new guitar? Put off that purchase for a month.

Broadly speaking, if you find it easy to give, then you might be able to afford giving some more. And if you can, do.